New curtains and more fabric bolts!

I started out by painting the first coat of white on the new fabric display for the Quilt Shop.

These little Michael's hutches are made out of pine so soak up paint like a sponge. Looks like I'll be needing 1 or maybe even 2 more coats for a nice finish. After that I decided to make more fabric bolts.  You know the drill, First, I cut all the pieces of wood for another batch.

You notice that I stuck a piece of painter's tape to my miter box so I wouldn't have to measure each one. Once I had a pile of those,

I moved on to picking out more fabric and preparing it.

A little paint,

and snap!

 All done!

Just like those recipe videos we all see on Facebook. I now have 50 of these done

and will probably need 50 more...well, maybe a few more than that, but we will see how well-stocked the Quilt Shop looks by then. I've also been thinking about curtains in my shop. The idea of pink gingham sprang to mind so I mulled that over for a few days. I went to the thrift shop to drop some things off and decided to poke around while I was there. You'll never guess what I found...2 pink gingham valances! For only $1.97 each...my kind of price. So I brought them home and washed and dried them. Since they are made of 100% cotton, it took a while to iron them. My heart goes out to my mom for all the time she spent ironing my dad's shirts back in the 50's before permanent press. I remember her using a sprinkling bottle on the shirts first as she didn't have a steam iron either. What a large part of a day went to ironing clothes back then! So after pressing the heck out of them, here is how they look:

I know, it's pink, but I am unashamedly a girl and this is my shop so I will pink it up all I want! LOL! Have a great day! (I think it needs some butterflies...😃 )

A new fabric display for the Quilt Shop

Back in the spring, I showed you how to turn this:

and this:

into these:

Bill cut the top cabinet sections off on the bandsaw which was incredibly helpful as pine is harder than it looks when you have a fine tooth saw and achy hands. I was left with 2 bases that I thought might be used down the road for sideboards.

The other day, I was looking through Pinterest (dangerous place! LOL!) when I saw a back to back fabric display that I thought I could duplicate for Marlene's Quilt Shop. I played around with the 2 leftover bases and liked what I saw.

I pried off all of the feet first and then realized that the ladies in the quilt shop would very likely trip over those corners near the floor.

Then if I put feet on the whole thing, they would be barking their ankles....who says I overthink things? ;) So I placed each piece in my miter saw and sawed away. 

Very good workout for the triceps...on 1 arm anyway. After some sanding, I applied some wood glue to the back of each piece,

spread it around and clamped it together.

I used a damp rag to clean up the excess glue and let this whole thing sit for awhile while I went and ate some lunch. I took it out of the clamps and decided it needed feet so dug through my bead stash and found some old pony beads that look just right.

This is going to be white, so I was lucky to find white pony beads in the container. So here it is with the knobs I glued in waiting for its first coat of paint.

And of course, I had to try it out in place...

Now I get to make about 30 more fabric bolts, and the Quilt Shop will have more storage too.  Looks like I'll be back over to Marlene's house with my scissors...Have a great day!

Improving the fabric selection at the Quilt Shop!

Now that my shop is all nice and organized, I have been itching to get to work in there! It was a hard decision, shall I clean up the kitchen....

or work in the shop....guess which one won! LOL! It is the weekend after all...So I put on my work apron and decided to make more fabric bolts for the quilt shop. One day last spring, I was over at my sister-in-law's house and she let me go through her scraps to find fabrics. I knew the approximate size of the finished bolt, so happily snipped away while she worked on one of her beautiful quilts. I came home with pieces enough to make at least 100 fabric bolts!

I can't remember if I showed you how to do this before, so made sure I took pictures of the process. Earlier, I had purchased some 3/4" wide stock that was 1/8" thick. These came in long pieces so all I had to do was cut 1 7/8" pieces to start the bolts. I sanded the ends smooth with my favorite sander

and got them ready to paint.

Speaking of my sander, I know I promised I'd let you know where I found it and what the packaging looked like. I have been looking for quite awhile and finally found it at Lowes. They must have been out of stock as I have looked there multiple times. So here it is!

                                      
It was available in a couple of different grits and comes with a generous amount of hook and plush strips. I was wondering what I would use after the strips ran out as Lowes didn't appear to stock them. Well, Bill received a catalog the other day

and while I was looking through it, I found that you could buy this type of sandpaper by the roll.

So when I run out, I know where I can find more. Just a short rabbit trail...now back to the fabric bolts! While the first coat of paint was drying, I went through my pile of fabric pieces and picked out enough for the bolts that I had cut. I starched and ironed each piece

 and then folded them in half and ironed them again.

I took a brief break to add a second coat of paint to the ends of the bolts and then trimmed each fabric piece to measurements I had taken

and started gluing and wrapping.

I put some lively music on for this part and before I knew it, I had a small pile all finished...

                                      
and I had to try them out in the second hutch.

I have one more hutch and then I want to make more fabric bolts to scatter around the shop, add to the cutting table, etc. I hope this has been helpful to you and that you are inspired to build a fabric shop or quilt shop for someone you care about. Have a great day!

A Dastardly Deed!...and more...

Every morning while the coffee is brewing, I look out my back door and and watch the birds, trees and flowers all bursting with spring. As I looked toward one of the birdhouses, what I saw made my blood run cold. There, scattered across the lawn were large white feathers.

I rushed outside to see if there was someone's poor chicken huddled away somewhere. We do have a hawk that hangs around you see. As I looked at the evidence, there were no signs of a struggle, no blood, and when I looked closer, the large white feathers seemed almost as if they were arranged. I kept searching and found two small white eggs.

I thought it would be easy to put them back in the swallow nest, but when I turned them over, both eggs had been peirced and the tiny chick inside had gone to birdie heaven. I peeked in the birdhouse to see if any other eggs had been spared and had the male swallow swooping at my head the whole time. The nest was empty and I wondered who the culprit was.

When I looked out at the house later in the day, there was a sparrow with his head peeking out with a very smug expression on his face. (Can birds have smug expressions?) So he is my number one suspect for now and we're hoping the swallows take back their house. Had an Uh oh moment with the quilt shop. I was messing around making an astragal for my tea cabinet the other day and happened to glance at the instructions for the quilt shop building on my bench. I was supposed to put pieces around the front edges!

Whoopsie! Fortunately, the hinges only have one screw in them right now so they can be removed and repositioned...after I paint and glue the pieces on. Now I'm thinking I should probably do the outside and the wallpaper inside before putting on the strips...So that is where that is right now. And last but not least, I found a new tea kettle that I really love! The flowered kettles in the MacKenzie Childs catalog are beautiful but beyond what I want to spend so I just did without for a long time. The Pioneer Woman to the rescue! She came out with a beautiful flowered tea kettle for only $25 and it now brightens my kitchen. 😁

It's a beautiful day here in Tennessee today, have a great day!

Spending time in Bill's Shop...

The top molding and hinges needed to be done on the quilt shop before more progress could be made. So since it is raining outside today, I got out my umbrella and carried the quilt shop out to Bill's shop. We evened up the sides and added a clamp to keep everything lined up while the hinges were being applied.

He used a spring punch to march where the screws needed to go

and just put one screw on each side of the hinge to see if it was going to work the way I wanted.

The screw coming through the door side had plenty of room

so I added some Gorilla super glue around the screw.

When that's dry, I'll nip off the point of the screw and file it down even with the wood. Where the hinge was attached to the body of the quilt shop, there wasn't as much for the screw to grab onto so Dear Hubby was searching for a thin piece of wood. "How about a paint stick?" I said. And of course, that's exactly what we used...😊 When he cut the pieces on his big radial arm saw, the pieces flew through the air! We managed to find them

and then removed the hinges from the wall and glued the extra wood in place.

So, what to do do while the glue dries? I came back into the house and went into my shop and found the jar of paint I had picked up at Lowes a couple of weeks ago.

The white craft paint I had was getting kind of old so I wanted to try this out. After a light sanding, the window frames were ready to start painting.

This is going on pretty good so far.

Tomorrow when I go into Johnson City for my visit with the chiropractor, I'll stop by the glass place to pick up the doors for the china bookcase, I mean, cabinet. The doilies are all dry, I'll just have to wash all the china before it goes in. Now I know why my collection isn't any larger....have a great day!