The Quiet Room

 It's my birth month, and that means I have to register my car and get it inspected. So on Saturday I brought my car to the dealership. I prefer to wait in their "Quiet Room."

I brought the Fifty-Eight Carats quilt so I could finish sewing the hanging sleeve.

I brought my little mending kit with me. It has everything I need.

It's a chocolate tin. Pretty sure I bought it because I thought the tin was cool, not just for the chocolates inside.

Setting the quilt on the dark gray carpet really shows off the multicolor binding.

Adapt, Improvise, Overcome

There's a quote I just love:

"In Theory, theory and practice are the same. In Practice, they are different."

Last year trying to lug all my stuff around I learned that I needed to do something different. So I bought a suitcase to carry my tools around. I got a nice big one so I could carry some quilts in it too.  And it was great. I could fit ALL my stuff in it.

Problem was the sucker was REALLY HEAVY when it was full and although I could drag it around no problem, picking it up and getting it into the trunk of my car was another story altogether. I am no longer the SuperMom I used to be.

So after my class at MQX, after I got home and unloaded the car and the hot pink suitcase, I decided I needed a change.

So I drove to Macy's where I got such a terrific deal last year. This year, not so much. The smallest suitcase was $200 and I didn't want to spend that. So I drove to TJ Maxx (Marshall's) and after opening practically every 20" hard shell suitcase in the place, I took this one home. I paid $60 for it.
I decided all I needed to carry in the case was tools, no quilts.

It's a good six inches shorter than the other one and holds all my tools. There's also a little ridge at the bottom so I can grab it to get it in the car.

We'll know just how good it is the next time I teach - in early May.

The Pink Suitcase

It didn't take me long to decide to bring this suitcase home with me on Saturday. If you look in the trunk of my car, you can see the old red suitcase. I brought it - full of my travel tools - to the store with me. I wanted to be sure a NEW suitcase would hold all the stuff I wanted to lug around.

This one was so spacious everything I wanted to carry around fit in one half, allowing me to put a quilt in the other half.

And if I open the zipper that allows it to expand...

I can actually fit TWO quilts in it.

It may never actually get to travel on an airplane, but it's nice to know I can bring everything I need.




Now about the PINK thing...  My sister asked me once if pink was my favorite color. I said no. "Well why do you wear so much of it?" she asked. "Because I look good in it," was my reply.

However, she may have been on to something. Millie wrote a blog post way back in 2007 about my love of all things pink.  You can read it here.

Third Quarter

Yesterday I sewed the third quarter of the newest Slashed Squares quilt.

But that wasn't all I did.

 Macy's was having a sale, and this picture of some luggage caught my eye. I wasn't very happy with the suitcase I set up for my travel kit and had decided I would get a new one, but I would wait until there was a sale.

Well, there was a sale. So I went shopping. More on that tomorrow.

Portfolio

I knew I'd need something like a portfolio to carry the 18" x 24" cutting mat and portable design wall around in. I could find lots of things that were BIGGER, but I didn't want bigger. I wanted something just the right size. And I wanted it to seal completely and be water resistant.

I looked everywhere, at art supply websites, storage websites, and, of course, on Amazon. I bought this one. 

The price was right, it was the right size (and I couldn't resist the pink.) It has extra pockets, one for a portable easel and other pockets for all kinds of other stuff. I can carry it using the handle on the side, or...

on my back like a backpack. Since I won't be carrying anything heavy in this, it will work just great. The extra pockets mean I can use it to carry my wallet, keys, glasses and other things I might normally carry around in my purse, so I there is one less bag to cart around.  Pretty sweet.


I'll get to put a lot of this to the test this weekend when I teach the Scrap Slabs class at Quilted Threads on Saturday April 28.

The Kit and Cart

OMG!!! The cart arrived yesterday and it is totally To-Die-For! It is a Magna Cart Flat Platform Truck and I got it at Amazon (where else?)

 Here it is all opened up. It can carry 300 pounds. (The handle can go up higher.)

Here is the "top" when it is all folded up.

Here is the underside.  The darn thing is so easy to use it's positively embarrassing. And it weighs less than the portable ironing table I bought last week.

Thank you Barbara and Jackie. I ordered the 6" x 24" Karen Kay Buckley travel ruler and found the nifty 2-1/2" x 6" Creative Grids ruler from the Fat Quarter Shop. Both are on their way to my house.

Chatting with Julie later, I wondered what I would use to safely carry my collection of rulers back and forth, without breaking them. I was thinking of putting the rulers inside clear pages and storing them in a loose leaf binder, but Julie suggested a metal clipboard like contractors use.  BRILLIANT!

My friend Mary suggested keeping a Master List of everything that goes in the kit so when I pack it up I'll know instantly if anything is missing. Sounds like a good thing to laminate and keep in the kit somewhere for easy reference.

I love tins. Sometimes I'll buys something in a tin just because I want the tin, not because I want what's in it.  Although this tin of Milk Chocolate Drops was irresistible.

I converted it into a mending kit by adding a magnetic business card holder on the cover, adding some steel pins and a needle, then filling the tin with scissors, thread, a seam ripper and a thimble. A needle threader is also nice. It may not be practical for carting around every day, but something like this would be good to keep in a desk drawer at work (with maybe some extra buttons and safety pins.)

I've got to get a small spray bottle to use when I iron (a very easy thing to get)

A few more items (portfolio and cutting mat) and my kit will be complete.

The Kit Develops

Everybody wants to know what kind of iron I like. I got it on Amazon.

It's this one, a Shark Lightweight Professional Steam Iron, 1500 watts. It was less than $25 USD.

I bought some foam core at Staples, then I went to the hardware store to buy some spray adhesive and some blue painter's tape.  After dinner last night I cut the foam core down to 18 x 24" (same size as a cutting mat I will use) and then stuck a layer of quilt batting to one side. I trimmed it down, then put some flannel on top, folded the edges to the back and used the adhesive to stick them down.

 Now I have a portable design wall to show students the correct way to do something. (And note to self, make these samples BIG enough so folks across the room can clearly see what I mean.)

The tools for my kit arrived the other day. Last night I labelled all of them. The tools themselves fit nicely into my little boxed bag on the right. And notice I keep small band-aids in my toolkit.  I cut myself at the MQX class last week. I indicated the bag on the far table and calmly asked a student to get a band-aid for me. I put it on myself, because blood-borne pathogens are no laughing matter.

My favorite ruler is the 2-1/2" x 12-1/2" one on the lower left, except I'd like it better if it were 2-1/2" x 6". I broke one of these by accident, and find that, at least for the bird class, the broken pieces are the perfect size to work with. I'm worried I might have to break this one on purpose.





**The new switches are on order and should arrive at my VAR (value added reseller, for the curious amongst you) on Tuesday. They will do the initial configuration there (because switches are "smart" and really nothing more than a specialized computer) and then they'll be installed at the office next Wednesday. Lest anybody think this is trivial matter, the switches, their support fees, configuration and installation costs hover around $15k.