Not-so-NeedleworkTuesday

When I sat out to write a Needlework Tuesday post, it pointed out two things:  

•  I didn't stitch anything this week.
•  I'm slipping back into bad blogging habits - no posts for a week.

I hope to rectify both of those things in the coming week.

Just because I don't have any sewing to report doesn't mean I wasn't in  my sewing room.  I was there for hours - but most of it was spent "un-sewing".  

I started with trying to make a Halloween costume.  Friends of ours host a costume bash every year, and I'm always the party-pooper who refuses to dress up.  This year I decided to try, so I searched Pinterest and found one costume that I thought would be original, pretty and minimally embarrassing  - a peacock.  (Stop laughing.)  I purchased 40 yards of peacock blue tulle (because it was cheaper by the bolt than by the yard) and 100 peacock feathers (which were much smaller than I envisioned).  

Reader's Digest Version:  It didn't work as planned, I looked like an idiot, I "un-sewed" it and sold the entire bolt of tulle to another crafter.  (I kept the feathers - I'll find a use for them some day.)

Remember the World's Wildest Quilt I've been making for Amanda?  It was my first attempt at machine quilting each block individually and then assembling.  I finished four blocks and put them together just to see what I thought.  I thought I liked the design but hated the process.   I forced myself to trudge on and quilt two more blocks, then it sat in stacks on my cutting table - getting in the way of every other project I worked on - just to remind me that I need to get moving.  She'll be home December 10th.

After several weeks of staring at it, I made the decision to "un-sew" it.  As awful as undoing 6 blocks sounded, completing 18 more sounded even worse.  It really wasn't as difficult as I expected, and I got all six done in one evening.  Now I'm going to assemble the blocks in the traditional manner, add the borders and then figure out a new plan for finishing it before 12/10.

Yes, I have a stack of 14" backing fabric and batting squares, but they'll be just the thing I need for some project down the road.

In craft-related news.  A friend of Dave's bought a commercial building that has been sitting, unused, for years.  At one point, there was a second-hand store of some sort in a portion of the building.  We could see through the windows that there were shelves and shelves of books, so Dave got permission for us to see if anything was salvageable before they do a mass clean-up.  As we figured, dust, water and mice had destroyed most of the books, and many of what remained were Harlequin romances.  We did go home with a couple boxes of books, a basket, a couple hand tools, a Burger King toy from mid-90's -still sealed in the package (turns out to be worth about $4), and a promise from the new owner that we get dibs on the sewing machines we spotted, but couldn't get to without unstacking heaps of other junk.  Plus - a copy of Do-It-Yourself magazine from 1959.  The contents are mostly about jewelry making, nothing I could really use, so I framed it and it will hang in my sewing room - just as soon as I figure out how to hang things on concrete walls.

If you have been stitching (or un-stitching) anything this week, visit Heather at Books & Quilts  and link up.