Garden Plans

After lots of dropped hints I got some tractor work done in my garden.  Not by my H, but by his fantastic mother and father who are sublime at rescuing me from garden frustration!

I had a shrub I wanted gone.  I'd attacked it with my hand-held clippers but it was far too big to disappear that way.  Our telehandler had it gone in less than 5 minutes, then the 'Little Suzue' Tractor came along and tidied up the leftover area in record time!

This...

Sorry - not a great photo!

It was all done in such a rush I had to use my cell phone camera

Became this...

Can you see which trees and shrubs I would like pulled out next time? - I'm happy to wait though!

Then yesterday my dear H remembered I was owed a birthday present (from six months ago) and he made me three raised garden beds from some macrocarpa timber.  They're all 2" x 8" pieces of wood.  The faraway bed is 4 foot x 6.5 foot and the other two are 4 foot by 8.5 foot.  We didn't need to make the beds very high as the soil underneath is quite good.

Today K and I have been busy layering newspaper, pea vine straw and chicken poo into the beds and hopefully H will bring in some telehandler bucket loads of soil from a worked up paddock to put on top.  I'm very lucky to have access to so many wonderful resources and a fantastic family!

 K helping me plant more rhubarb.

A Shelf for Thread

After my success making a set of shelves for my fabrics a couple of months ago I decided to have another go earlier this week.  This time I purchased some pine lengths (mostly 10 x 80mm) and cut them up to make myself a snazzy little shelf to store my larger reels of thread.

 

Dressed pine was so much easier to work with than the fibreboard I had used previously - I found that the screws just went in without grief and the whole project had less gaps!  I can't wait to have another go at this, but first I have some bed heads I made many years ago that need sanding and staining - a big job.

The top row of my shelf has my collection of wooden cotton reels.  Below that I have perle cotton, overlock thread and at the bottom right my aurifil thread.

Excuse the wallpaper - my sewing room used to be the room my husband had when he lived at home.  We have plans to change the colour scheme.

I have been busy and have a new, finished quilt to share.  Hopefully tomorrow.  :-)

Sewing Shelves

My patchwork fabric collection had been housed in a two old suitcases and were somewhat organised - or so I thought.  After looking at some beautiful shelving systems on various sewing blogs I decided I needed something similar to those.  Unfortunately I'd rather spend my budget on fabric and notions so I came up with an alternative shelving unit.

 I spent a grand total of $4.50 on my shelves - and that was for screws.  The offcuts of wood were left by my in-laws in our garage and no piece was wider than 15cm.  After some fiddling with various lengths my H cut them for me and I was left to sand, drill, screw and paint.

Part way it looked like this:

 And by that time I was doing ok but realised that I should have:

• drilled each hole longer, so that the screws had plenty of room and there was less chance of the wood splitting - it did only a little.
• assemble it on a hard surface - not carpet!
• find clamps to hold it - if at all possible.

But despite each piece being a slightly different width than the others, (the two sides are the same) it has come up very well and is a great place to store fabric.  The paint was 'Colonial White' and was last used for a ladder project ten years ago. 

It was also a great project to show K what you can make with wood.  She loves the carpentry table at Playcentre but this was a chance to show her that even mum could make something!

So I have spent the last week ironing, folding, sorting and trimming through my collection of pieces for patchwork.  Anything too small to be folded went back in a suitcase.  It also helped me to realise what I did have plenty of and yes - there were some gaps.

The top shelf is sorted by colour.
The second shelf is by style (L to R):  Christmas; 30s reproduction; checks; stripes & spots; florals (have heaps of these); and then large eye-spy prints.
The third shelf is by designer:  Sweetwater; French General; a mix; Anni Downs & Bonnie and Camille; Amy Butler etc; and lots of Debbie Mumm (that shows you how old my collection is!)
The fourth by colour again.
Then the final layers have larger cuts of assorted fabrics - including more French General, 3 Sisters, Oliver + S, and a little of Heather Ross.

My larger cuts of yardage - for sewing clothes and quilt backings are stored in other boxes.