Today I was doing my Sunday cooking for the week. Sunday is my prep day for the week since I have some dietary needs and have to basically cook/bake anything I want to eat.
So, as I am making a zucchini quiche and double chocolate cookies, and I am dripping with sweat being that the oven was on and it is 80 degrees outside with no air conditioner! Which lead me to remember a funny story from my childhood.
My parents would take us out camping in the summer for weekend vacations as well as a week long vacation. I was about 8 years old and my grandparents would also camp periodically with us. My grandmother this particular weekend thought it would be fun to bake cookies with my sister and me. Of course, we loved spending time in the kitchen and baking or cooking anything!
This was summer and probably about the same hot weather as today is. Plus, we were camping! Who really wants to bake in a small, hot camper (this is before air conditioners in the campers) when you could run and play outside and enjoy the great outdoors! Besides that was the purpose we camped.
So my sister and I did make the cookie dough and I believe they were cut out cookies. As soon as the dough was made and the cookies were cut out, my sister and I scurried out of the camper leaving my poor grandmother to roast in that sauna of acamper!
If I remember correctly, she emerged from the camper dripping with sweat just as I am now!
I am sew embarrassed that I have two wedding gifts from 2 years ago that I have not completed. Sew, for the next few weeks, I am going to complete these gifts and give them! This is going to give me a good focus on the work I have to do now. I just started painting the fabric. I am planning on finishing this by the end of this week, and I can give it to the happy couple (my cousin). The photo in the middle is the quilt at the end of the painting stage. The original photo is on the far right. Next step is to quilt it and frame it.
The other part of this is that my work area is totally messy. I am focusing on re-organizing this space to get ready for a litany of projects I have to complete by the end of the year.
Since my teaching experience at AQS in April, I have decided to focus on teaching and competition quilts; andI will of course take any commissioned quilt work that comes along. This allows me to have a very specific focus that I could market and expand on!
Thank you for reading this post! I would love to read your comments!
A year ago today, my Dad passed from this world to heaven. So, as you can imagine, this is a very emotional time for me and my family as we reminisce about his life and just miss him terribly.
My first competition art quilt named FACE TO FACE. It captures a moment in time of my Dad and our dog Sable. They are both enjoying each other’s company now.
My Dad was an amazing man with his creativeness, ingenuity, and humbleness. He had his own upholstery business for many years. He taught me how to work hard when you have your own business. Even though I did not like it, I had the pleasure of working in his shop as a teenager, going to customers homes to deliver their furniture, experienced how Dad would talk to the customers about how he was going to recover their fabric, and got my hands dirty with ripping fabric off the furniture (not an easy job). Later on, he moved me to sewing the welt that would go on the furniture. This was my first experience with using his industrial sewing machine that had a very thick needle (size 21) and sews extremely fast. I did have domestic sewing machine experience, but this was a different animal (machine actually). He was a tough teacher… I remember thinking he was disappointed in my with my crooked stitching lines and nothing was even. At this point I was in my 20s and was helping him for experience and to help him with some jobs.
Later, when I had my own alteration business, he would help me with sewing some heavy items like replacing a zipper in a leather coat. My domestic sewing machine would not go through it. I got use to using his machine. Now, I have his machine and use it still when I have heavy sewing work to do.
Many years ago, my parents gave my husband and I two of those anti-gravity chairs that have cushions on them. Over the years of use, the fabric deteriorated, tore, faded, and went unused. Probably about 4 years ago, my dad said that he would help me re-upholster them and had fabric for them that reminded me of a bubble bee. Of course, time when by and I never made the time to do that with him.
About two weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to make the time this year to re-cover our chairs. I figured I would use the next few Sundays to accomplish this task. Dad said that it is not hard to do, so I was confident to do this. Plus, I had my husband to do some of the disassembling parts of the frame to take the cushions out. Last week I started with ripping the fabric to create the patterns, cutting the fabric, and starting to sew the pieces together.
Me using my Dad’s machine to recover my chair.
This past Sunday, I finished one chair. Through this time, I was talking to him as if he was standing over my shoulder. I was having difficulty with his machine and after about one hour discovered that it was the way the bobbin was wound. This was after I oiled the hook of the machine, brushed out the feed dogs, cursed at it a million times. My go to was saying to Dad, “How did you do this?” or “You said this was easy!!”
As I was finishing one of the chairs today, I was realizing that I was using not only all of the knowledge that he taught me as well as his sewing machine and tools. I knew he was with me still teaching me how to get through the tricky parts of doing this like shoving the fabric covered foam to stitch a securing or fold stitch. It was not easy. Mike had to hold my rolling chair so I could force the foam through the arm of the sewing machine and reach the foot pedal at the same time to make the machine sew. Dad recovered his same chair all by himself. When I finished, I had a real emotional moment.
The chair all finished!! Next week the second chair!!
Dad, I am sew blessed that you were able to be in my life and that you took the time to teach me life skills as well as your trade. Love you very much and miss you a ton.
So, as I am making a zucchini quiche and double chocolate cookies, and I am dripping with sweat being that the oven was on and it is 80 degrees outside with no air conditioner! Which lead me to remember a funny story from my childhood.
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