Quilt Progress plus Fabric Acquisition

Another post all up in my head has been about the quilt that I started. I'm still actually working on it! Slowly but surely. I have about twenty blocks done now, I think.

It'll have a solid dark outline around all the blocks and the outside border when it's done, but I don't have those pieces cut yet. I know that it's scrappy and random and kind of wild but I think it's turning out pretty fun. I've always liked quilts that were made to be useful and warm rather than just pretty, and I love love love love love that I have sentimental attachments to most of the fabrics. It's stuff left over from the two baby quilts I've made, stuff left over from M's short-lived quilting career (if you remember that, circa 2004. It lasted about two weeks.) and my favorite parts? A lot of it comes from fabric that belonged to both of my grandmothers. Since that pleased me so much, I also stole some from my mom, so there's something of her in there too, and I also rummaged around until I found a suitable cotton shirt that belonged to my brother. I am thinking of cutting strips out of that. Nineteen year old boys don't have much yardage so a shirt will have to do. ;) It's fun and easy and low-stress. It's pretty forgiving. It's putting me in the mood to try my hand at fancier versions. We'll see how that goes.

I've also sewn a couple of skirts for Evie and an ironing board cover, plus cut the sleeves off of one of her shirts that developed a hole in the arm and added lace to the edges of the new sleeves (to hide my poor stitching..seriously, why can I not get the hang of sewing knits??) and some other random things. :) Slowing my progress down some was my realization that a) I seem to be in a sewing mood, in general and b) we have absolutely nothing better to do with our sunroom than make it into a craft room/playroom. So I've spent a lot of my available sunroom time upgrading my temporary setup and turning one wall into space just for me. I have a sewing table and two new low bookcases. I spent one day sorting the multiple places I have stored general adult crafting stuff, PILES of child crafting supplies, plus sewing stuff, and for the first time probably ever? I have a neat, functional space to actually do stuff. It's great! Realistically, if I have to clean up my stuff when I'm done for one session of sewing, then I don't sew. I put my stuff away once when I used the dining room to sew in and pretty much never got it back out, until now. This is part of the whole Household Improvement Program that we're on. I'm organizing in a lot of different rooms, and even cleaning some. I apparently have taken today off but.. it's a rainy, dreary day. Hard to get too motivated with weather like this.

I did at least make it to the gym today. Evie loves going to play with the kids now and it really is working to help her learn to socialize. We also had a couple of great days at the park on the first few days of beautiful weather. The first time I had taken her and another little girl came up and totally took over and made them instant BFFs. They bonded over their love of dairy. It was adorable. I had been about to leave when the girl showed up, but I thought that how she was acting was so good for E that we stayed longer than usual just so she'd be exposed to more of that normal random kid interaction. It must have made an impression because the next time M took her, and she announced to him that she was planning on making a lot of new friends when she was there. And she did. So she is still a little shy around kids and in need of more social playtime, but she had a major breakthrough so I am much less nervous about that than I used to be.

Back to the sewing thing for a minute.. if you suddenly had yards and yards of satin in a wide variety of colors, what might you do with it? Also some velvets and some lace and tulle. I went to an estate sale and spent eight bucks and came home with a crocheted baby blankie, some miscellaneous fabric bits and pieces that didn't end up in the picture and tihs:

I spent eight bucks. This picture is terrible (and ignore the mess) because a LOT of colors are hiding between the ones you can see. Satin is slippery and my pile kept getting wonky when I tried to move it so you could see. The flowers on the left is actually a flat sheet. The striped fabric beneath it? It is about ten yards long and probably close to two yards wide. You should have seen me trying to fold it back after I washed it. There's also a really pretty soft and slinky black fabric with flowers on the right..you can't really see it though..that's a couple of yards. I bought this as two overstuffed bags and an arm full of sheet+blankie over the course of several transactions--I had no clue what exactly would end up being in there, since I could only paw through it a little bit. There was also a few yards of white tulle and a roll of pink tulle and some netting, plus the bottom half of peach lace from a prom dress or something...I threw that last one out because it was both nasty and ugly. . So.. anyone have any ideas whatsoever about what to do with all this? Most of it is yardage but some are clearly salvaged from a garment. Oh, there was also a poorly sewn velvety homemade dress that actually fits me but is stinky and... well, truly awful. I can keep it for fabric but I'm not sure I will. I can't figure out exactly what this lady had all these for. Most of them are whoele yards, uncut from when she brought them home. Some pieces are larger.. that pale pink could make a wedding dress. I am sure I will try at some point to come up with some princessy outfits, although I find that fairly intimidating. :) But what else? I must think of something cool to do with a boatload of satin! Help! :)