Lillian's Star Quilt

A couple of days ago, I finished painting the doors and the door trim in the spare bedroom and moved everything back in from the living room.

In my first post about this project, I neglected to mention why we chose blue.

It was to coordinate with this quilt. (The walls in this photo are rather washed out. If you look at the bit of wall showing through the nightstand, that is closer to the new paint color.)

This is a quilt that I made for my daughter a number of years ago, probably around 2002 or 2003. The block is “Ohio Star” from 50 Fabulous Paper-Pieced Stars by Carol Doak, one of literally hundreds of books I illustrated during my 20-year association with Martingale & Co.

The original block as presented in the book did not have the little star units at the corner. I added those, and I also designed an alternate setting block.

The bed frame and side table are part of a set that includes a dresser. They are made of maple and date from the 1930s, when they first belonged for my mom's younger sister, Fern. The furniture was passed on to my family, I think it was sometime in the early 1970s. I remember having the set in my bedroom when I was in high school.

Later on, the pieces passed into my possession and I put it in my daughter's room when she outgrew her toddler bed.

The piece on the dresser was made by my dad, who was an accomplished woodworker. He specialized in making smaller items with lots of detail. This fisherman was originally made for my uncle Ray, an avid sportsman. At some point, my older sister acquired it. Recently, she offered it to me during a round of downsizing.

The fisherman shows a particular characteristic of some of my dad's work. His profile exhibits my dad's unique cartoon-style of drawing.

The Blue Room

The spare bedroom no longer looks like the inside of a cave.

As you can see, I decided the bed was in the way.

Getting Ready to Paint

On my summer To-Do list is "Paint the Spare Bedroom."

When we moved into this house four years ago, one of the bedrooms had been occupied by a teenage boy and was painted a dark forest green.

In our eyes, not pretty. But since it was rarely occupied and functioned mostly as a storeroom, not high on our list of home-improvement projects.

Now, however, that I am not a full-time student, I determined that it was time to remedy the situation. Thus, earlier this week, I removed all the boxes and furniture, except for the bed. I had thought I would leave it there and cover it with a sheet, but I may reconsider if I think working around it will be too troublesome.

There are a variety of small holes that need to be filled, but the instructions on the container of patching compound said that the surface should be clean. I took this to mean that I should wipe down the walls with a damp cloth, which I proceeded to do this morning.

In the course of doing so, I discovered a few places where the green paint had chipped away to show the previous paint color — a dark blue. I suppose in the grand scheme of things, more attractive than the dark green, but maybe not by much.

The color we chose is called Blue Mist. It is a light blue which should coordinate well with the quilt that lives on the twin bed in the room. It also will go with the color I eventually hope to have on the outside of the house, which will match the color of the shed I painted last summer.

Summer Vacation

Today, I'm taking a break from painting the shed, after working on it every day last week. I got all three sides primed (one side is inaccessible because it butts up against our neighbor's garage) and one side painted. We picked a light blue, which looks especially nice in sunlight.

 It used to be gray, like the house.

Eventually the house will be blue as well. It remains to be seen whether we decide to have housepainters do it next year. Right now, I'd say the odds are about 50-50.

Besides painting the shed, I have a laundry list of other projects to tackle. Among them:
• work on my next Craftsy pattern
• do production work on an art book for a designer friend
• learn Flash
• finish knitting Tim's mitts (all that is left is one thumb)

And that's just the top four.

Busy Weekend

With my six-week-long break between summer and fall quarters coming up fast (last day of class: next Wednesday!), I did some work to get ready for doing some house painting. I'm going to start with the converted garage, but I needed to cut away some vegetation (daisies and lavender, mostly) and scrape away dirt and pebbles that have collected on the west side where the ground is higher.

Our inspector pointed this out to us three years ago, that there was some ground-to-earth contact there. Not a good thing. When I was out there yesterday, I could see where the lowest row of siding looked kind of chewed up. :-(

Tim and I went to Lowe's to look at some paint colors. We're leaning toward a light blue with white trim.

This morning, I finished up the latest in my continuing series of hand pillows.

This one is a little different than usual, in that it has a four-patch background, instead of the customary large square. I've done one or two of these, and they're a nice change. Sometimes, I don't have enough of a particular fabric for an entire large 17" square.

I also picked out the fabric for the next hand pillow, and fused the hands to the background.

This afternoon, after spending a couple of hours in the computer lab at school, I came home and made some banana-walnut-chocolate chip bread. (It's baking as I type!)

Just one of the many reasons why I *love* the interwebs! Whenever I want to find a recipe with a particular set of major ingredients — presto! Found this recipe, and this one. I only had two bananas, and the second recipe gave me the idea that I could substitute some buttermilk for one of the bananas.
(I usually have some in the refrigerator, because I use it to make my grandmother's cornmeal muffin recipe.)

It's still in the oven, but it sure does smell good, and that is always a good sign!

Now You See It, Now You Don't

Ever since it became clear that the tree in the front yard was pushing up the driveway, we've been talking about getting it removed. About a month ago, we finally had an arborist come out and take a look at it. We finally found out what kind of tree it was (Atlas spruce) and that it would only get bigger. So, today it finally came down.

Before (this morning) 

 

After (this afternoon) 

It was a three-man team, one in the tree and two on the ground. The fellow in the tree worked his way up, and then worked his way down.

 

 

I must say — the kitchen and the front room are a heck of a lot brighter now!