::Slice of Life::

Catchup on OPAM's

I realize I didn't post the April or May OPAM's.

April - Paint Bedroom - It took all month to finish it but I got the room painted and I love the color.

May - White woven table cloth.  This one is actually not finished yet.  I have it 3/4 done.  I am trudging along doing one strip at a time every week or so.  I hope to have it finished by the end of the year.  lol 
I took some pictures of it in various stages but I can't find them now. 

OPAM for June

It's almost the end but I am getting this one in before the months over.

This months project is finding some of my favorite pictures, blowing them up and hanging on my bedroom wall.  I want them in a square so I decided to do 3x3.  I am going to have them professionally printed on foam core but since that is not in the budget any time soon, I printed them out at home to see how they look.  I edited and printed during Elisa's party today. 

Here's what it looks like on the wall. (blurry cuz bad light)

and here is the layout design I created when I was trying to figure out the placement.

March OPAM

So my quicky table cloth project that was my second March project is still not done.  I have two more sides to weave and sew then I need to hem it.  I will definitely not finish in March but since technically the curtains was my official March OPAM I did finish a project for March. 

I have also started on my April OPAM.  I am going to paint my room.  I bought 2 sample paints at Lowe's and painted some patches on the walls to see which I like.  I definitley like the Cliveden Sandstone better than the Lovely Buff.   With the light dim I can't even tell the patch with Lovely buff is painted at all.

I start working 2-11pm this Wednesday and I was thinking I could do the painting this week while the girls are in school.  Then it will be done I won't have to look at white walls anymore, finally.

(on my monitor these colors look way to pinkish.  They are more beige/tan than shown here)

Lovely Buff

Cliveden Sandstone

March OPAM #2

So I decide to start another project for March since it is only the 2nd.  I decided to do something easy to have some instant gratification.  I am making a table cloth to put over my sewing table so I can use it as a table next to my comfy reading chair (that needs to be recovered).  I will keep the sewing machine under it so it is easy to just put on the table and use but it will look nice and be hidden the rest of the time. 

Well my "easy" project turned out to be not so easy.  I wanted to make a white table cloth.  I was sure I had some plain white cloth in the closet but it turns out I used it all up when making my blue & white quilt.  I had a bunch of scraps left from the quilt and from making my dress for the wedding in Sept so I thought I could piece those together to make the quilt.  I thought about how to piece it to make it look good and I came up with the idea to weave strips together and then sew across all the strips so it would hold together.  I thought it would very cool.  Well it turned out to be a lot more complicated than I thought. 

First I measured the table and the 4 sides.  I then outlined the pattern would look like on the floor with masking tape.  Then I cut up all the strips into 4 1/2 wide pieces and laid them out on the floor to fill in the pattern.  I had almost enough but still needed 3 more strips to finish and all I had were some very oddly shaped pieces.  So I had to sew a bunch of small pieces together to get the last few strips.  Now I need to iron all of them and figure out how to weave them on the floor maybe using weights our something and then pin the whole thing so it will stay together while I sew it.  It will look really cool but is definitely not a one day project.  I will post pictures once it is finished.  =)

And working on it took my whole day Sunday and I didn't get anything on my to do list done.

To do list for the weekend - that did not get done

• Clean Closet and organize clothes (half done)
• Inventory Goodwill items and take them down to Goodwill
• Get a disk of pictures ready for the yearbook folks that they wanted 2 weeks ago.
• Go through and organize the girls sock/undies drawer.
• Fix the wireless network so the computers can talk to each other again.

Things not on my to do list that did get done

• Mow the lawns
• Weed most of the back yard (my legs are killing me)
• Clean off and move desk.
• Start on table cloth.

So I was productive but on the wrong stuff.  lol

March OPAM almost done =)

So I got motivated to finish my next project that I had planned for my March OPAM.  The bedroom curtains.

I absolutely love the way the light looks when it comes through the closed curtains in the morning.  It casts this blue glow around the room that is so cool.

I replaced the wooden rods and brackets with tarnished silver colored ones.  And used the rings with clips to hang the curtains.  I still need to hem the bottom but they are otherwise done.  Much better than before.

You can see the old ones in the pictures for the Paper Lanterns.

February OPAM

So I decided to go ahead and do something quick for February.  I painted and hung up the Paper Lanterns.

These are some of the lanterns that we used at our wedding in September.  I used blue (aquamarine) watercolors to paint some white ones the right shade.  It took 3 coats and drying between each one. 

Ignore the mis-matched curtains in the background.  Those are probably going next.  I just need to figure out what I style I want to replace them with.  I already have the blue fabric.  You can see the roll in the bottom of the right picture.  I'm not sure if I want long curtains with sheers or roman shades.  I have enough fabric for either.  Or I might work on the pictures over my bed.  I am going to put 4 large square black and white pictures on canvas over might bed.  I saw it done other places and its cool.  Doing it on canvas means you don't have to frame them. 

I also moved furniture around yesterday - switched the dresser and the bookshelves and I like it much better.  It opens up the room quite a bit actually.  I'll post before and after pictures later when I get more done.

quilt

So I haven't forgotten about my OPAM goal for this year and I finished my project for January I just needed to get the picture taken and post it.  Here is the quilt I worked on.  Just a basic quilt with blue and white scraps and I really like it.  It makes my room look so much brighter.   It will also look alot nicer when I get new white sheet/pillow cases and buy a bed frame so the mattresses are off the floor.  =)

 

I am trying to decide what my next project is.  Options are

1. Paint and hang paper lantern (I am painting white ones left over from the wedding to somewhat match the blue in the quilt)
2. Make curtains
3. Print Large Black and white photos to go over the bed
4. Make a screen to block off the desk/sewing area so it doesn't look so cluttered in there.

I'm trying to decide if I want to do something that will be faster/simpler or something that will have a bigger impact.  Maybe I will do something fast to get my February project done and then pick something with a bigger impact for March but then start it early.  I am really excited about getting the room looking nice.  It's been so long with an ugly room.  =)

Projects

Has anyone ever heard of OPAM (one project a month).  This is for when you have a whole bunch of things you want to get done but don’t know where to start.  You pick one project and commit to getting it done by the end of the month then pick another project for the next month. 

I really want to finally decorate the master bedroom in our house (after 6 years of living here).  My first project is to make a new Quilt for the Bed.  I am doing the room in Blue, White & Tan and the Quilt will be Blue & White.  Nothing Fancy just 12x12 square and the quilting will go diagonal across the squares.  Here are the squares all cut out ready to piece together for the front.

Another quilting project I am working on is a very old quilt that Kari’s Great Grandmother made.  Actually she made the front piece but never finished it. It is all hand stitched and the cloth is from old clothes from people in the family including Kari’s mother.  It was given to Kari’s sister to be finished and the person who did it machine stitched part of it and then just did yarn ties scattered around in the middle instead of actually quilting it.  To machine quilt when the piecing was done by hand is just so wrong.  I am taken out all of the machine quilting and am hand quilting it instead.  I am working my way from the outside in and removing all the yarn ties as I get to them also.  This is a family treasure and I just couldn’t stand to see it finished in such a bad way. 

And I haven't had the urge to scrap one bit.  I'm not sure if or when the urge will come back.  But I'm not worried about it.  I'm enjoying sewing again.