The Name Game: Molly Flanders

 Welcome to the latest edition The Name Game. This week, Mary from the fabulous blog, Molly Flanders, is our featured guest. If you are not a regular reader of Mary's blog, I highly recommend becoming one. She loves bright colors, does beautiful hand quilting with perle cotton, and does not shy away from those really tricky blocks.

1. How did you choose the name, Molly Flanders?

I chose the name Molly Flanders for a couple of reasons. Molly is the name of my oldest daughter (I have three daughters)...and she is quite an artistic girl. She is an amazing mandolin player (plays every Saturday morning at the local Bluegrass Shoppe) and she loves embroidery. If I have embroidery work to be done, I will call on her assistance. And she contributes regularly to the blog.

Flanders is the name of my sweet dog. We adopted her from our local Humane Society when she was a puppy and we love her to pieces.

The other reason...the Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders...Moll was a woman of questionable character! I thought it was kind of cheeky and maybe cute (?)...not that anyone associated with the blog is of questionable character...or at all cheeky! Ha!

2. Were there other names you considered, and can you share any of them with us?

As you can probably tell, I don't think I gave a whole lot of thought. I did consider something with "quiltery" in it, but decided against it because I wanted to include other sewing projects.

3. Now that you are recognized by Molly Flanders, are you happy with it, or do you wish you could change it to something else?

I am happy with it! The only issues with the name are minor...I don't have my name (Mary) in the title and sometimes I get "Dear Molly" emails...not a big deal. Then I worry if something happens to my sweet pup will it make me so horribly sad...but let's not think about that! And lastly, when I look at the traffic sources for my blog, often I get some colorful searches...having to do with the Moll Flanders reference...I am sure!

Thanks so much, Mary! I'm a huge fan of your work (especially all those delicious polka dot fabrics!).

I'm excited about next week's edition. Carla from Lollyquiltz will be here. Recently we have discovered that although she lives near Kansas City and I'm here in central California, there is no doubt that we were sisters separated at birth--so many similarities. 

So stop by and say hi to Mary here, and don't forget to tune in next week to read about how Carla chose her blog name. Happy sewing!

WIP Wednesday

What? It's Wednesday already?

Last week I gave a comprehensive status report. I won't repeat it as no progress was made.
Because I spent most of the week working on this garage sale bargain.

Before:

After:

I had planned on starting my Amy Butler Weekender bag. But again, I spent most of my time working on this:

Before:

After:

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with it. Can you tell? And it even came with this nifty tray for bobbins and thread!

All for a whopping $2! So I did a tutorial in case you find yourself a bargain hanging out in someone's driveway!

But moving on to WIP Wednesday.

The AB Weekender bag is up next. Good thing we have a nice long weekend because I hear it has 50 pieces to cut. (Can you tell I haven't even opened up the pattern yet?)

I'm in a bit of a fabric dilemma. I only have one-yard cuts of each fabric, and to make the outside in the same fabric requires 1 5/8 yards, so I need to make the body and outside pockets of different fabric.

Originally I was going to use this combination, the orange for the body of the bag, the tulips on the offwhite background as the pockets, and the blue for the handles and piping. But I'm kind of feeling like the two tulip fabrics are fighting each other for dominance. I hate it when tulips fight...

So I've pretty much moved on to this combination, with the red as the body, the blue remaining as the piping and handles, and the tulips as the outside pockets.

I'd love your thoughts on the fabric combos, and then check out what everyone else is working on here. Thanks, Lee, for hosting this every week!

OOPS, Part 2: Before and after

Here is the first completed Outside Oslo Project Status (OOPS) report using Jessica Jones' newest fabric line. (A great place to purchase Outside Oslo is Marmalade Fabrics).

The "before" picture. I picked this up at a garage sale a couple of weekends ago, envisioning more fabric storage space for my sewing room. It came at a drastically reduced price because "the leg was broken." Turns out the legs screw in, and it just needed to be tightened! I thought the seller would ask about $15 and I was prepared to offer $10. However...she started the bidding at $2. Yes, you read that correctly. $2!! I felt a counter-offer on my part was not really in order...

In case you are wondering, before I get started on my little tutorial, here is a bit of information. There is an interior height of 9 inches (not including lid and also not including the legs--when you add those it stands about 18 inches from floor to top of lid), width of 19 inches and depth of 16 1/2 inches.

The second thing you need to know is that I had a wild idea that I could "do it all by myself"--that thought probably stemming from the fact that I spend a lot of time with 3- and 4 1/2-year-old grandchildren and hear that phrase repeatedly. While it probably IS possible, I highly recommend having someone willing to help you. Mark generously agreed to be that someone.

Part 1: Deconstruction.

The idea is to take it apart, and then put it back together in the opposite order. The legs came off first. Mark made this cool little painting rack by drilling some holes in a scrap piece of lumber.

We had some charcoal spray paint with a metallic finish--nothing too glitzy and just the perfect color for the fabric we were using. I did purchase some Kilz primer in a spray can. Hated it. We thought we shook it up long enough but still it came out gloppy. If I were doing it again, I would just roughly sand the legs (as we did), skip the priming stage because it's not like the legs are getting a lot of wear or anything, and then just spray several coats of the finish paint.  Because of the gloppiness, a couple of the legs didn't have a smooth finish, so we put them in the back of the stool.

Next we took off the hinges from the back and then all the little strips of wood that covered the raw edges of the fabric on the inside lid and bottom.

I can't tell you how gross this fabric was. It practically disintegrated when touched and made me feel the necessity of having hand sanitizer nearby. We removed all the staples and then used the fabric as a template.

This is what the lid and bottom looked like after we got all the fabric removed. The lid was padded with a little bit of foam; we used the original foam rather than replacing it.

Part 2: Putting it back together:

At this point, I laid my new fabric wrong side up, got out my sharpie pen and traced around the fabric we removed from the lid, cutting the same notches out of the four corners.

Next came the sewing. This is the ONLY sewing, and it involved matching the notched-out edges right sides together and sewing a 1/2-inch seam.

Each corner looked like this when it was turned right-side out again.

I did that to each corner and it fit like a glove over the top of the lid. This works great because otherwise you would have to do kind of a miter fold on the outside and staple or tack it down somehow. This eliminates all that fabric bulk. Then it just involved folding the raw edges to the inside of the lid, stapling it down, stapling the little wooden strips back on to cover the raw edges and, voila! Fabulous new lid.

Speaking of staple guns, I should mention  that I had made the suggestion to Mark that perhaps a staple gun that attached to his air compressor might be a good idea. But you know how men DETEST the thought of going to the hardware store to purchase a new tool. So after getting out of the way so he didn't knock me over on his way to get into the truck to drive to Lowe's talking him into the merits of a new staple gun that would also be useful for other projects, we were back from Lowe's in a jiff and continued on with our project.

Moving on: The bottom fabric was one long strip. I measured the length and width of the old fabric, cut two pieces of the new fabric (matching the pattern), sewed one seam. Oops. I just said there was no more sewing involved. Okay. I had to sew these two pieces together to get the length I needed to go all the way around the outside. We kind of centered the fabric from top to bottom around the outside circumference of the bottom, so there was about an equal amount of fabric to fold around to the inside at the top of the box for stapling, and the same to fold under and staple on the bottom.

Hmmm. I'm beginning to like all these power tools!

Added the hinges on the back and screwed the legs back in (even that pesky "broken" leg).

Ready to see the finished project?

In its new home: my sewing room:

Want to see the best part? I KNEW this was the project for me when I opened it up and found this little plastic tray, which meant that it was a....

SEWING CHEST!!! I would have gladly paid $10 for this little beauty. I almost feel guilty that I got it for $2.

Almost...

The Name Game: Crazy Mom Quilts

In the early days of my quilt blog reading, I kept coming across the name "crazy mom quilts" in blogrolls. And for good reason, it turns out. Amanda Jean, the writer behind the name crazy mom quilts has given quilters a wealth of information, from block tutorials and quilt-alongs to a video on freemotion quilting, all written with honesty and lots of humor. As I've gotten to know Amanda Jean better (and yippee!! I'm actually meeting her this summer in Minnesota), she was the first person I sought an opinion from about the Name Game series.
She thought it would be a fun series, so I'm completely honored that she agreed to be one of the first interviewees:

1.  How did you choose the name crazy mom quilts?

OK, I'll tell you...and you can laugh if you want. Some of my retreat peeps did. I was about to use a different name. A friend at the time told me flat out not to, basically saying it was lame-o. At the time it stung a bit. My husband was in agreement with my friend, which stung even more. But holy  moly, were they right!!! Truthfully, when I was picking my blog name with the blogger screen open, I didn't have a good idea what to name it. I had to have a google account, so in yahoo I was typing in address names that might work...then I checked it in blogger to see if it was available. Crazy Mom Quilts was available in both, so I went with it.

2.  Were there other names you considered, and can you share any of them with us?

Yes, but I'd rather not divulge the specifics. :) As I mentioned, when my friend actually laughed at my first name idea, and my husband was in agreement with her, I knew it was NOT a keeper!

3. Now that you are recognized by crazy mom quilts, are you happy with it, or do you wish you could change it to something else? 

The name choice was quite an accident, but it fits. I'm totally growing into my name. And I really like it. As if you couldn't tell. :)

Thanks, Amanda Jean!

I hope you will all head on over to crazy mom quilts and say hi. Check out her FAQ, which contains a wealth of valuable information.

Did you know that Mary is the real person behind the fabulous blog, Molly Flanders? Aren't you curious to find out who Molly Flanders is? Come back next week and find out!

OOPS: Part 1

This will be the first installment of OOPS, aka Outside Oslo Project Status.

Thanks to the fabulous Marmalade Fabrics,  I have one yard each of Jessica Jones' (aka How About Orange) equally fabulous new line of fabric, Outside Oslo.

I love everything about this line: the clean graphics, the colors, the nice weight of home dec fabric. The first sewing project will be Amy Butler's Weekender Travel Bag.

One of my best friends has been working on this project all week so I've gotten lots of valuable advice from her. Have any of you made it? I'll take any hints I can get. I'm so excited that my father has a heavy-duty sewing machine from his former days as a reupholsterer, so I'll be taking advantage of his piping foot and might actually sew the whole thing on his machine.

And here's a sneak peek at another OOPS project I'll be working on. I'll tantalize you with the "before" version for now.

The winner of the Name Game giveaway is Elisa Black, who said:

"I love your little name game/selvage pincushion and I am very excited for the upcoming series on bloggers names-- great idea!"

Thanks for playing along, Elisa.It will be on its way to you shortly.

Do you have a lot of projects lined up for the weekend? Do tell...

WIP Wednesday: Does the noise in my head bother you?

1. I really like Steven Tyler as an American Idol judge.
2. Although it is highly doubtful that I will read it, the title of his new book is genius.

3. I can guarantee that the noise in Steven's head has nothing whatsoever to do with quilting.
4. I can also guarantee that the noise in my head is all about quilting, i.e., fabric, design, quilts I'm working on, quilts I want to be working on, why do I not have enough TIME??, etc.

Current Works in Progress:
1.  Single Girl quiltalong: actual progress made this week. Did anyone sew these arcs together without a gazillion pins? It.takes.so.long.to.pin.

2.  Flea Market Fancy Popbeads: waiting to be basted so hand quilting can get started.

3.  3x6 Mini Block Exchange: pattern chosen; fabrics not chosen yet--but it's a start, right?
4.  Birdie Stitches. No progress this week.
5.  Hexagon Charm quiltalong. Sporadic progress being made.
6.  Bottled Rainbows quiltalong. All base blocks completed. This has led to a corresponding idea for my     next donation quilt that I'm really excited about--details to follow.
7.  Supernova--fabric chosen.
8.  Outside Oslo sewing marathon. I can hardly wait to show you what I'm working on!

Works Screaming to be Completed:
1.  Amy's Creative Side quiltalong (um, making two separate quilts because the fabrics in the first were screaming at each other).
2.  Hexagon quiltalong by Jaybird Quilts.
3.  The "white quilt", started over ten years ago. (Shhh. Don't remind Aaron and Christa. They think I've forgotten about this one--sixteen 18" blocks, each different, all hand quilted--just need to be assembled together.)

4.  Baby Geniuses quilt--needs to be quilted and then sent to a friend in Massachusetts I've never actually met but who I know will love the quilt because she is a scientist.

5. Cherry Baby. Lots of HSTs. Back waiting to be completed so I can move on...

Works in My Head (being extremely noisy):
1.  Tokyo Subway Map quilt (although my plan is to change it to the Portland MAX lightrail map).
2.  The Proverbial Quilt (making all the words out of fabric that has words printed on it).

3.  Block-a-Palooza quiltalong using Sunkissed by Sweetwater. Not started.
4. That Girl, That Quilt quiltalong using Sherbet Pips--Not started.
5.  Carla's awesome quilt pattern. Fabric chosen.
6.  Spool Play quiltalong development.
7.  Pattern development for Moda Bake Shop.
8. Other ideas, too numerous to mention, all clammering for some attention.

So tell me. Do you have a lot of noise in your head too?

Don't forget to head over to freshly pieced to see what everyone else is up to today.

And you still have a few hours to read about the Name Game, say hi to Julia of little girl quilts, and enter the giveaway.