The 24-Hour Quilt

Thirty-plus years ago, when I was pregnant with our first child, I made a little quilt for the new baby.  At that time, it was rare for parents to know the sex of their baby before its birth, so I used red fabrics to make a bright, gender neutral quilt.  Simple pattern, six-inch squares and a diagonal pattern, tying the layers together with yarn, nothing fancy ... made to be used.  Use it we did, for all three of our daughters.

Daughter #1.  Hard to imagine that this little cherub is all grown up, with two children of her own.

When Drew (grandson #1) was born, he used this quilt, too.  Caleb (grandson #2) has it now, and he takes it along with him everywhere he goes.  It's a bit threadbare now .... the fact that Caleb picks at it has accelerated the decline.  

This picture is about two years old.  The old quilt is a lot more worn right now.

Because the old quilt is now little more than a rag, I decided to make a new quilt for Caleb for Christmas.  Like the original, I wanted it to be simple ... shouldn't take too long to make a small quilt like I had in mind.  A quick trip to the fabric store, and this is what I decided ...

Rainbow colors, in a mix of patterns ...

Six-inch squares, with a diagonal pattern, and half squares on the border.

As with most important projects, I had help.

Dorothy holds down the layers, as I sandwich the top, batting, and backing.

Pinning the layers, with Maggie's help.

I used yarn to tie the layers together, just like I did with the original.

Alice and Maggie supervise while I mark where the yarn ties will go.

Four knots per square.

A quilt hoop helps hold the layers straight while I tie them.

With all the ties in place, I trimmed the batting and backing, then used the sewing machine to attach the binding.

It took a couple of hours to carefully fold the binding to the back and stitch it in place by hand.  Dorothy kept me company while I worked.

After a quick trip through the washer and dryer, the quilt was finished.  

24 hours, start to finish.  I even surprised myself with how well this came together and how little time it took to make it.

I know that Caleb will love it ... but I don't hold any hope that he will agree to replace his old quilt with this one.  My vote is that he will now carry both quilts wherever he goes.

Way Back Machine ... The Year 2000

In 2000, we had just moved to a new home ... 4000+ square feet of boring beige, builder-grade fixtures and finishes.  One of the first things that I tackled was designing and building bookshelves around the fireplace in the family room.

Last week, while I was sifting through photo files on my computer looking for something else, I came across this photo.  Two of our daughters appear to have been keeping themselves occupied by using a crimping iron on each other's hair ... then they took photos to document the very-crimpy results.  Look who's background ...

There I am, screwing drywall onto the frame of one of the bookshelf sections.  I finished these off by adding casing molding and corner blocks to the face of the units, and installed a three-piece crown molding above.

Those built-ins were a real booger to design, because the self-contained, ugly-ass fireplace stuck WAY out into the room and the window you see was only about six inches from the corner.  Inspiration struck one day as I was staring at the problem, and I designed pairs of bookshelf towers that started a few inches away from the side walls and stepped out into the room.  The wall above the fireplace itself was built out eight inches or so from the wall, to better blend the fireplace into the space.

This is what the built-ins looked like when we lived there.

This is how the next owners styled the shelves, as seen in a listing photo from when they were selling the house in 2013.  (more listing photos in THIS post.)

I finally did find the photos that I had originally been digging through.  It took longer than I thought, since I got distracted by my little trip down memory lane.

Restoring Our Vintage GE Refrigerator

If I remember correctly, we bought this lovely little vintage GE refrigerator in either 2008 or 2009.  I saw it on Craig's List and I knew instantly that I had to have it ... you know how that goes, don't you.

The ad read something like "Vintage GE Refrigerator, good working condition, $75."  It included this photo.

I think the thing on the side of it was a magnet decal.  It wasn't there when we picked up the fridge.

It was being sold by an older couple in a nice neighborhood in a town about an hour from here.  Turns out, this refrigerator was in continuous use since it was new.  It was the main fridge in their kitchen for many, many years.  When they needed more space, they bought a new refrigerator for the kitchen and this one was put to into the basement as a spare fridge.  They listed it for sale because they bought a new fridge to replace their kitchen one, and the old kitchen one was going down to the basement, so it was time to pass this old one on to a new home ... ours.

As we visited with the gentleman and cleared a path through his stuff to get the refrigerator out of the basement, he said, "I like you and I know that this old fridge will have a good home with you.  Just give me $50 for it."  (Mind you, we hadn't talked price at all, because I was going to give him the $75 and giggle all the way home at the deal we got.)

The fridge has lived in our detached garage since then, sometimes with bottled water in it, sometimes empty.  It has run perfectly and its only real problem was that the door gasket was hard and cracked and didn't seal well.  I tried for a while to find a replacement gasket, but was unsuccessful.

Last week, on a whim, I searched online again for a replacement gasket.  This time, I came up a big winner.  Antique Appliances in Georgia restores and sells vintage refrigerators and stoves AND they sell parts INCLUDING DOOR GASKET MATERIAL!!!  They even have a video on their site to help you decide which gasket to choose for your particular refrigerator, since the ones they sell may not be an exact match to the original.  I watched the video, weighed my choices, and placed an order for 12 feet of gasket ... a foot and a half more than I needed, but ordered the extra just to be safe.  (Running talley ... $50 for the fridge, $75 for new door gasket = still a great deal on a seriously cool refrigerator.)

As with most of my projects, I did not take nearly enough photos of this little refrigerator's sad Before condition.  It was almost all cosmetic, thank goodness ... lots of basement grime from the previous owners, and garage grime from us.

While I was waiting for the new gasket to arrive, I set the fridge outside in the sunshine so it could defrost.  I honestly don't remember when I last defrosted it, and you can tell that it had been a long, long time.  I propped the door open, put a dishpan under the icy mass to catch the water.

The next job was to figure out how to get the old gasket off of the door.  The vague instructions I found online told me to look for screws and/or clips.  Turns out, this gasket is held in place beneath the door liner panel by long L-shaped brackets and screws.  (The gasket itself came off in pieces during this process.)

I kept the pieces of old gasket ... just in case.

The best way I found to deal with the grime was to use Soft Scrub with Bleach and 0000 superfine steel wool.  I gently scrubbed and polished each part and side of the fridge until it was clean.  The bleach in the cleanser even helped lighten some of the little rust stains on the front and side of the fridge!

Lower inside door corner, Before.

Same corner, After.

Front of the fridge, Before and After.  The screw holes are for the bracket that holds the top of the door.

See the difference between the part of the door that I had cleaned and the part that I hadn't?

The worst of the mold and rust stains were on the bottom corner of the door, as shown in the photo below.  I am super excited about the way that so much of this came out!

After I finished scrubbing the outside of the fridge, I gave it a good coat of car wax to help protect the finish.

With the outside of the fridge all clean and polished, it was time to attempt that door gasket.  It took me a couple of hours to do it, because it was tricky to keep the gasket under the bracket AND cut accurate miters at each of the corners.  I kept at it, and finally was able to stand back and admire the brand new gasket.

This is the material as it arrived in the mail.  I put my baggie of screws into the box so I wouldn't lose them.

It took a while for me to figure out how to cut an accurate miter at each corner.  I used a short piece of gasket material to help me mark each side of the 90 degree cut.  The piece of newspaper is there to help keep my hands out of the fiberglass insulation.

Gasket's all installed!!

With the new gasket in place, I reinstalled the door's liner panel.

... and here it is, with the door screwed back in place.

I will do a better cleaning job on the inside part of the fridge later.

What a difference, all clean and polished and working beautifully!

I have tried to find the age of this fridge, but have been unable to so far.  Everything I find about determining the age of GE appliances references a system where the serial number begins with two letters (which represent the month and year of manufacture)  The earliest date for the two letter system appears to be 1944.  The serial number on this fridge is H3019-890 (model number AC-62-CA16).  I wonder if this may mean H=August and 3=1943?  1933?  It's just a guess.  Yesterday I used the contact form on the GE appliances web site to send them the question.  I hope I hear back from them.

Photo taken before I vacuumed the mess out from under the fridge.

It feels great to have our sweet little refrigerator looking good and in proper working order!  As of now, it will stay in the garage ... but it will not have things piled onto and beside it like it was.  Once construction gets rolling on the renovation of our Shack, whenever that will be, I plan to make a place for this little vintage beauty in there.

Once again ... the Before and the After.

Is it weird to be totally in love with a refrigerator?

What To Do With an Impulse Purchase?

Sometimes I can get out-of-control crafty.  Here is a recent example:  A few weeks ago, when I received the monthly edition of the email newsletter from 'Crazy as a Loom', I ordered a  box of twelve pounds of loopers ... completely on impulse, without any concept of how many loopers are actually IN a twelve-pound box.  What are loopers, you ask?  

Loopers are slices of socks that some of us are most familiar with as the raw material for potholders woven on a small square loom.

I made this potholder on the evening that the box of loopers arrived in the mail.

Twelve pounds of loopers are WAY too many for one person to use to make only potholders, so I had to come up with another use for them.  (Hilary, at Crazy as a Loom, chains loopers together and weaves them into rugs.)  I don't have a loom, nor do I know how to use one.  One day last week, I had a brainstorm ... I could probably chain the loopers together and use them to CROCHET a rug!  

I am using a random mix of light and dark colors as I chain the loopers together.

You won't be surprised when I tell you that I have had a LOT of help while I chain the loopers together and crochet the rug.

Alice likes to sift through the loopers in the box, or sit in my lap as I chain them together while we sit on the floor.  (I do this on the floor because the loopers shed and it's easier to vacuum a spot on the rug than it would be to clean the fluff off the sofa.)

See the colorful bits of fluff on Alice's back?

Dorothy is not so helpful ... she steals the loopers, one by one, and carries them off to play with them ... eventually either stuffing them under the edge of a rug or abandoning them in random places throughout the house.

Maggie hangs out on the rug when I'm not working on it.

I estimate that I have used about half of the box of loopers so far, and the rug is about two-and-a-half feet wide and four feet long.  My plan (if you can call it that) is to keep chaining loops and crocheting until the box is empty.  I don't know how big the rug will be when I'm finished, nor do I know where I will use it ... this depends on its ultimate size, I guess.

I'm not using a published pattern to do this.  I am working single crochet in the back loops of the previous row, using a large crochet hook (size P) spiraling around and around, increasing stitches on the curved parts of each round as necessary to keep the rug flat.  (This will make sense to you if you crochet.  If you don't, I probably just confused the crap out of you.)  The green plastic clips you see on the rug are to mark the places where I want to work my increases ... it's either eight or ten stitches per round, and I evaluate the rug after every round or two to make adjustments as I go.  The spot with two clips marks the beginning of the round.

I am so happy with how this rug is turning out so far.  The random mix of bright colors makes me smile just looking at it!  If you are interested in doing something like this yourself, I will answer any questions and help you however I can.  (Anyone with basic crochet skills can do this!)

Crazy as a Loom is the name of Hilary Cooper-Kenny's blog and her weaving studio in northeastern New York.  She uses antique looms to weave beautiful rugs and other objects.  I have followed her blog for years, and I have come to think of her as one of the family.  (Click HERE for her blog, and HERE for her online store.)

Today in the Workshop

I spent a good part of today in my workshop.  It felt good to have tools in my hands, because it has been quite a while since I had the time or the inclination to build anything. 

What was I working on, you ask?

My friend Janet (of The Empty Nest) used salvaged windows to help decorate the walls of her new shop.  She had some windows left over, and she asked me if I would use them to make a mini greenhouse for her. 

I delivered the greenhouse to Janet at her shop this afternoon, and she squealed and hugged me when she saw it.  I'm really excited to see what she does with it.  Since she's such a chalk paint magician, I have no doubt that it will be beautiful when she's finished. 

 

A Craig's List Treasure

Since the roses worked so hard on Saturday at the nursery opening and Open House, I decided to reward them on Sunday with a quick trip through the Antiques section of our local Craig's List.  Scattered in among the chairs and tables and trunks and other paraphernalia listed for sale, I found a true treasure.

You are looking at a dental cabinet manufactured by the American Cabinet Company in the 1920s.  The case is wood, and the drawer insides and slides are metal.  It originally had milk glass tray liners for most of the drawers, but these are long gone.  It does, however, still have the milk glass insides of the upper cabinets.

When it was new, it wore mahogany veneer and dark stain.  Sometime in its life, someone painted it white and used it as a tool cabinet. 

The woman I bought it from started to strip off the paint, but she didn't get very far into the job before she gave up.  It shouldn't be too hard to remove the rest of the paint on this beauty (being as I have stripped acres and acres of paint off the surfaces on the inside of this old house of ours, I have tons of experience).  It will, however, be a challenge to get rid of the sander burns and gouges in the lower left drawers.

Someone stripped the mahogany veneer off of the sides of this piece.  The secondary wood is chestnut ... a species that has been extinct for a LONG time ... but it's not NICE chestnut that I can sand and stain and leave exposed, darn it!  Part of me is saying that I should repair this piece as well as I can, and repaint it.

Notice the knobs?  They're faceted black glass!  I'm missing two of the small ones ... I wonder if I can find replacements?  The pressed 'mock leaded glass' in the upper doors is in really good condition.  The beveled mirror has just the right amount of staining and flaking to make it perfect! 

While I was searching, I found an eBay listing for a cabinet that is IDENTICAL to mine.  Trust me when I tell you that I paid a tiny fraction of the auction price for mine.

(eBay listing photo)

This thing is incredibly heavy, and the only way The Husband and I could get it out of the truck yesterday afternoon was to remove all of the drawers first.  As we did, we found little treasures that had fallen behind the drawers.  Who knows how long these pharmaceutical samples have been there?

A part of the packaging for some sort of stomach medicine.

This is an antiseptic apparently meant for stylish, well-dressed gentlemen.

This muscle relaxant is still prescribed today, without the Tylenol and Codeine in the current formulation.

With everything else going on around here, I do not know when I will find the time or energy to attack this project.  I also have no idea where it will go once it IS finished.  What I DO know is that I love this piece, and I would have kicked myself forever if I had passed it by. 

For now, this cabinet will stay in the garage with all of my other treasured diamonds-in-the-rough. 

Have you found any treasures recently?