Quilting, Demo, and Camping all in one day

It’s Wednesday and time to check in the sewing room to see what’s really cooking. I’m super happy to report that my summer routine is holding steady after 5 days and I’ve managed to knock out a landscape and tree section of Duchess Reigns every day:

I think when I look back at this quilt this will be my favorite time to look back on because I have such a clear and easily attainable goal every day: quilt a landscape section, quilt a tree section.

This takes around 2 hours every day, which might seem like a lot of time to quilt such a small space, but it’s very detailed and very easy to stitch off into the woven lines and make a very noticeable mistake. Today was the first day I broke thread less than 3 times to fix mistakes, which is a great improvement from yesterday when it seemed like I was breaking thread every other minute!

In the kitchen, I’ve finally put my foot down. I have always hated the cabinets in this room because they’re terribly designed and don’t hold anything properly.

I had a whole plan for remodeling this space this year, but after our lengthy bathroom remodel, we’ve decided to push this improvement back another year. But how can I stand these cabinets being so unusable for another year?!

Easy. Tear them apart and make them work better! Where’s my crowbar?

I took all the doors and hardware off the cabinets and even used my handheld electric saw to cut off a few bits here and there so my bins could fit perfectly. Of course, if I was wanting to keep these cabinets I certainly wouldn’t do anything like this:

I simply sawed off the front section of the cabinet right there, and it’s definitely a bit ragged looking, but it was the only way I’d get those 5 blue bins to fit!

This situation is temporary. In another year or so and then they will be replaced with open shelving when this kitchen gets an overhaul. Until then, this will work just fine because now all my scrap fabric is up in the cabinets and easy to find and keep organized.

And last but not least, yesterday we went camping! After a long day quilting, then ripping apart the kitchen, we set up tents and camped out in the front yard.

Why the front yard? Mostly for practice. We just got a new tent and it’s always wise to break it in once at home so you know how it all works and just in case the tent is broken or missing a piece in some way. Better to find that unfortunate news out at home!

So far we haven’t had a camp night when everyone stayed out the whole night so I think we need one more night of practice before booking a real adventure in the mountains. I have absolutely no desire to drive a long distance, pitch a tent, and get comfy only to be asked “Can we go home now?”

Today I’m still packing up camp gear and airing out sleeping bags. It seems camping is an enormous amount of work, involving huge amounts of gear, mess, and complication, but in the end the happy experience is totally worth it.

Here’s to jam-packed summer days and lots of melted marshmallows on top!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah