Hiatus from Quilting

Yesterday, Aaron (my niece's husband) and I brought our trailers home. We had them stored in a the yard of a local trucking company that he used to work for, and we had to get them when the gate to the yard was not locked. Ah, it feels good to have my trailer home again. Now, I can get back to working on the interior. 

It's a 1985 trailer and the window treatments were kind of gross: rust-coloured velvet valances, and these two strips of the same fabric on the front window, above the bed, pretending to be drapes. And mini-blinds, dirty, yukky mini-blinds. And some ugly beige curtains to separate the bedroom area from the rest of the trailer. 

I like to sleep with it as dark as possible, and mini-blinds and those ugly beige curtains didn't block much light, so that was my first project. I sewed new dividing curtains in a white fabric with a purple pattern (butterflies), lined with black-out fabric. I replaced the mini-blinds in the bedroom area with sage green room-darkening roller shades on both sides of the trailer. At the front of the trailer, I would have had to special order a roller shade for that window, so I just went with room-darkening fabric, in a darker sage green, that can be tied up with ribbons when I want to open it. Now I want to put some sheer white curtains on those three windows, plus valances in a purple patterned poly-cotton fabric. There was not quite enough of the fabric I used for the dividing curtains to make pillow shams for the bed, so I will do the borders of the shams in the same fabric that I am doing the valances in. I already have a purple comforter on the bed. 
In the kitchen area, I still have the mini-blinds up and I expect they will stay up for now. They are fine for privacy when I want it and I don't need the room darkening qualities that I require in the sleeping area. I have some orange poly-cotton fabric and some orange lace fabric, so I will probably do the valances and curtains in the kitchen area in orange. It's not a loud, bilious orange, more of a softer, medium colour. I'll have to post pictures when I get it done. 

So, I think I will be taking a hiatus from my quilting and crocheting projects in order to get my trailer in shape. All of these pictures were taken before I made any changes. Don't get me wrong - I love my trailer. I just wanted to fix up the decor a bit. The upholstery on the benches could really use some help as well, but I don't think I'm ready for reupholstering yet. I think the covers zip off, but I might just leave them on and maybe make some slip covers to go over them. Haven't figured out how I can change the wallpaper. That might be too much work. This year I think I'll stick with the window coverings and pillow shams. If I just get the windows in the "bedroom" done, I'll be happy.
I've already made some changes in the bathroom, though more of a functional nature, rather than decor. First I trimmed this shower curtain as it was too long for the short space in a trailer shower and too much of it was laying on the bottom of the tub, trapping water and grunge. I hung a towel bar at the end of the tub and another towel ring or two on another wall. I believe there was only one towel ring when I "moved in," which was fine for a hand towel, but where do I hang my bath towel? I also installed a hook for a shower caddy on the wall above the tub. That way I have a convenient place for soap, shampoo, etc. Of course, I've added bath mat, soap dispenser, toothbrush holder, etc.
I was really hoping to take my trailer to a seasonal site this year. I'm not really fond of towing it, so if I just had to do it at the beginning and end of the season, I'd be much happier (except I'd still need it for campmeeting). That way, I could take off every weekend if I wanted to, without having to worry about hooking, towing and unhooking my trailer. Plus backing it into my driveway. So far I have always gotten Aaron to do that. He's a truck driver and does it like the pro he is. Me, on the other hand - I don't much like backing up at the best of times. Doing it with a trailer and not knocking my garage down is a challenge I'm not quite prepared for. But Aaron's not always available and I'm not supposed to leave the trailer in the street, so it would be much easier if it could just stay on a site for the season. However, that's not in my budget for this year. 
Meanwhile I need it in my laneway so that I can work on the curtains. And last year, I wanted to make a list of staples I need to stock in the trailer, plus a cookbook of "easy to manage in a trailer" recipes, but I never got a chance to do this. Hopefully I will this year before I take it out. It's hard to get everything done, but I'll have fun trying. 

A Pleasant Surprise

At work this afternoon, I received a phone call and was quite surprised to find that it was the Amazon marketplace vendor of the Quilters Design Mirrors that had cancelled my order. (He had my work number because he ships by courier, so I gave my work address and number for the parcel to be shipped to). He asked if I still wanted the mirrors and explained that someone had walked  into their shop and bought the last set the same day that I placed the order. He had not had the opportunity to update the inventory before I made my online purchase. Apparently this company is the Canadian distributor for the company that makes those mirrors. Seemed like a very nice person and I told him I was glad he called me because I now felt better about him. He said that he's been at the same quilt shows as our local quilt shop and that he will be at the one in Edmonton next month. I told him I will make a point of coming to his display to introduce myself. 
I believe that was great customer service and his company deserves a link posted on my blog. It's actually a bookstore, which, interestingly enough, sells nursing books as well as quilting books, and lots of other books as well. Here they are: Copperfields Bookstore.
And if you're interested in the quilt show in Edmonton, here's the link: Edmonton Festival of Quilts.

Some of us get most of our exercise jumping to conclusions. I have to make a concerted effort to get my exercise in healthier forms. :-)

Disappointment... Resolved!

I could have been grumpy today. I just got an email saying that my order for the Quilter's Design Mirrors has been cancelled because the items I purchased were out of stock. Hmm, that's funny, because when I placed the order it said that there was one left. Where did that one go to? Seriously, I didn't mind paying $25 for the set, but I don't intend to pay $50, the next lowest price, and definitely not over $100 for a used set, as advertised on eBay... Will think twice before I order from that particular vendor again (and no, it's not Amazon. It's a vendor from the Amazon Marketplace).
So, I've been googling and found this vendor site: Stitch in the Ditch. Yippee, it's even Canadian. And the Quilter's Design Mirrors are only $18.99, plus shipping and GST of course. And I can pay using PayPal, which I like. So, I placed an order and included a Lazy Angle Ruler. Here's a video on this ruler: 

I love the Fanfare Log Cabin quilt made with this ruler. Very pretty:

I'm looking forward to trying it out, but I'm beginning to wonder when I'm supposed to have time for all of this. It's too bad I have to work for a living... LOL. I only work to pay for my quilting supplies. ;-)
BTW, I really love her lime green rotary cutter. I wonder where she got it.

George Strait - She Let Herself Go

And this is Divorce Anthem #1.
One day I was in the local dollar store and this song came on the overhead radio. I believe I was still married at the time, but the relationship had become toxic and the marriage was dying. When the song started, my thought was, "Oh brother, some dumb guy singing about a woman who fell apart when he left her." But I listened to the whole song and found out that instead, "she let herself go" and do all the things she wanted to do, but she couldn't while she was with him. She let herself go and enjoy life. And I decided that I really liked that song.
My motto is, "The best revenge is to thrive, not just survive."
Yes, "I've got better things to do," and I'm just going to "let myself go" and do them.
Yes, there is life after divorce, and that life is good.

Terri Clark - Better Things To Do

And now for a total change of topic.. I'm really surprised that I haven't posted this song before. I call it Divorce Anthem #2. It meant a lot to me earlier in the post-divorce period and I still think it's a great song. To those going through it, remember, you've got better things to do...

Mother's Day Gifts

There are certain advantages to being divorced. One of them is that you can buy your own gifts and get exactly what you wanted. It may not be as exciting as having the surprise of unwrapping a present, but it sure beats the disappointment of getting something you didn't really want. If you're familiar with the "Five Love Languages," you know that one of the languages is "gifts," i.e. giving and receiving gifts. Here's the book if you're interested:
Well, gifting is probably my primary love language. I enjoy giving them, and I generally give them well. Even when my daughter was a fussy teenager, I still managed to pick clothes that she liked and would wear. On the other hand, I also enjoy receiving them. One day I was discussing gifts with my oldest sister, and she said something about some people not knowing how to choose gifts. I replied that I think our mother was so good at choosing gifts that it almost spoiled us for other gift-givers. I believe that Mom's love language must have been gifts as well. She knew well how to choose a gift that was appropriate to the individual and the occasion, a gift that you knew she chose with the recipient in mind, not just a generic, obligatory gift. I miss that. Her gifts made you feel that you were important enough that she would choose a gift specifically for you. It took time and effort, not like just running into the local flower shop and grabbing a dozen roses. Not that I'm faulting roses, but if that's all that you ever get for any and every occasion, you begin to suspect that you're just not worth the effort for that person to put some thought into the gift. Especially when that person has known you well enough for long enough to know what your likes and dislikes are. I feel the same way about gift cards, not very exciting. And while I enjoy and appreciate both roses/flowers and gift cards, especially from people who don't know me well enough to personalize the gift, I appreciate so much more the kind of gift that my mother gave - something that made me feel special, a recognition of who I am as a person. When your love language is gifts, it's not that you're being materialistic. It's just that that's how you most readily express and recognize love. A refusal to speak to someone in his/her own love language is tantamount to telling him/her you really don't love him/her after all, that he/she is not worth the effort.
Fortunately, I do speak my own love language. :-) I do believe that there is a danger in being self-centred and self-indulgent, but I also believe in the importance of taking care of yourself. I spent a lot of years looking after hubby and daughter. My career is all about looking after others. And I do believe in being generous, compassionate and helpful in my daily life. But in order to avoid caregiver burnout, I have to look after myself. Jesus said that the second greatest commandment (after love to God) is to love your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:39). Jesus Himself, our Creator, recognized that in order to care for others, we must care for ourselves. Self-care has become important to me since being on my own. And occasionally that involves giving myself gifts. So for Mother's Day this year, I got myself a couple more Craftsy courses. While a trip to Belize might have pleased me more, I had to fit it into my budget. :-)

The first is Scrap Quilting. Basically, it's quilting the old-fashioned way, using up your fabric leftovers from your sewing projects or other quilting projects, where all the fabrics don't have to perfectly match. It's one of the less expensive courses on Craftsy (not that any of them are terribly expensive). The second course is Quick-Strip Paper Piecing. Again, here's the link: Really, I didn't think I was going to do any more paper piecing after completing my Block of the Month quilts, but it wasn't as bad as I thought and the projects you can do are terrific. For this course, I need quilter's design mirrors, so I ordered a set on Amazon, here: Well, admittedly, while this is the one I ordered, mine was substantially cheaper, but I got the last set from the vendor from which I ordered. Try looking for this on eBay. There's a US seller selling the set brand new for $264.95 or used for $164.25. Ouch! The set I ordered on Amazon is new, and I paid around $25 for it, including shipping. Obviously not everything on eBay is a good deal. Comparatively, even the $50.03 in the link above is a very good price.
Finally, just to let you know, Craftsy not only offers some free full courses (both of my Block of the month courses are free), but they also offer some free mini-courses. They're just enough to get your feet wet and see if you like this type of learning. Currently, in my Craftsy course list, I have Sewing Machine 911, one of these mini-courses. Since I've been using my machine a lot, I figure it's a good thing to have more information on using and caring for it. I've also enrolled in Perfect Pizza at Home, which sounds delicious. Vegans can still eat pizza, even though I will not be using dairy cheese on mine, and learning how to make great crust and sauce can only make it better.
If you're interested in my previous post on Cake Decorating (Cat's Crossing: Cake Decorating), Craftsy has a mini-course on Modern Buttercream. Buttercream, to the uninitiated, is the primary type of icing used in cake decorating, so if you're interested in seeing if you'd like decorating cakes, this would be a good place to start.
Check out all of the other free Craftsy mini-courses by clicking here. Scroll down to get to the free courses.

Cake Decorating

I was just doing some exploring in a scrapbook I started. The title of this scrapbook is "Creative Expressions" and it was meant to showcase my creative side. I have never been "artistic" in the traditional sense - i.e. oil painting, drawing or sculpture. That kind of art is too much like work for me, but I have manifested my artistic bent in other ways. 
In the late 80s/early 90s (don't really remember when), I took a Wilton cake decorating course, by correspondence, which seems like a rather weird way to take cake decorating. I don't think I ever finished the course either, probably something to do with having a brand new baby in the house... But I still had a lot of fun with it and accumulated quite a supply of cake decorating paraphernalia. I quit mainly because all of that sugar and trans fats in icing really isn't good for you. However, I did find it a great creative outlet, and looking back at some of the pictures, I relived how much fun I had. Here are some samples (sorry about the quality of the pictures - they were not taken with a digital camera and I had to scan them in, which made them kind of hazy):

This was made for a baby shower for my brother-in-law's first child.

 I was really quite pleased with this one, for another baby shower, this time for a friend of my youngest sister.

 I wanted to try a wedding cake, even though I wasn't doing it for a wedding. I actually did this for a bridal shower for my sister-in-law.

The man I was married to really loved pie, so I made his birthday cake to look like a piece of pie on a plate. Amazing what you can do with icing, eh?

 This is another cake I made for the man I was married to, along with his brother-in-law. Both worked in construction and both their birthdays are in June.

 This was my first cake for the Wilton course. I made it for a young man that attended our church. 
I really had a lot of fun with this, and kind of miss it. But it could be really messy and too much of the icing ended up in my mouth. If I could figure out a way to make icing really healthy, I might consider doing it again. Meanwhile, I have many other creative outlets, so I'm not lacking for ways to express myself. 

Now, this is just an aside: you'll notice I refer to my ex-husband as "the man I was married to." I still haven't figured out what terms to use when speaking of him in our past relationship. I don't want to call him my husband, because he's not that any more. Calling him my ex is not really correct either, because he wasn't my ex at the time I was decorating these cakes. That's why I opted for "the man I was married to," as it seems the most correct way of expressing it. There have been times in the past when I just referred to him as my daughter's father, but that might imply we were never married, and we were. If you come up with any brilliant suggestions, let me know. :-)