Sewing Room Shelves

Here are what the selves look like with some sewing stuff on them.

1. Supporting materials such as a quilt batting and interfacing.  These were too tall to put on the regular shelves so I put them on the top shelf of the shelf that didn't have a top.

2. Large bolt fabrics.  There was too much of these fabrics to put on the smaller bots so they also ended up on the only shelf they would fit on.

3. This is a project in process - right on top and easy to get to.

4. This is an organizer for smaller, notion type things.  It doesn't have much in it right now but in mine I have thread, pins, elastic, safety pins, etc.

5. Patterns.  My mom has a lot of patterns.  The large, clear box (provided by Mom) has non-adult girls patterns, the larger purple box (provided by me) has adult women patterns and the other, smaller purple box has adult men/unisex patterns.

6. Flannel. JoAnn had a sale on flannel earlier this year and this is what Mom got.  There is some really cute stuff here.

7. Felt scraps.  The container (provided by Mom) is about the size of a piece of felt so all her single pieces of felt plus all her scrap felt is in there.

8. Felt by the yard.

9. Heirloom scraps.  Mom is going to make an heirloom quilt using memorable fabrics so, if I recognized a fabric from my childhood or as something special, it went in this box (provided by Mom).

10. Other fabrics such as lace and tulle.

11. Patterned fabrics.

12. Patterns.  The box on the left is costumes while the box on the right is craft patterns.

13. The fabrics on the bottom shelves are solid colored or mostly one color.

14. Other scraps.

Recipe: Salsa

CJ and I (well, mostly CJ) really like chips and salsa.  However, neither of us likes chunky salsa.  We used to buy Pace at Costco and blend it up so it wouldn't be chunky.  After doing that several times, and after not having a job for a while, and after having my cousin's homemade salsa, and after finding this salsa recipe on Pinterest (do I mention Pinterest in every post now?), I decided to try my hand at making my own.

I don't remember my cousin's recipe.  She told me but I might have forgotten a thing or two.  What I do remember is canned tomatoes, cilantro, and canned green chilies.  The Pinterest recipe I found calls for:

• 1- 14 oz can diced tomatoes
• 1- 10 oz can orginal Rotel
• 1/2 small onion, roughly chopped
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and smashed
• 1/2-1 jalapeno, seeded or not (depends on how spicy you like it)
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
• small to medium size handful of cilantro, washed
• juice of 1 lime

So I kind of followed the Pinterest recipe since it was still pretty close to my cousin's recipe.  The first time I made my own salsa I used 1 can diced tomatoes, 1 can Rotel, some onion, some cilantro, and some lime juice.  It was just ok.

Now, after some experience, for a mild salsa I use:

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can rotel

some onion

a good chunk of cilantro

some garlic powder (maybe 1 Tbsp or so)

some vinegar (no more than 1 Tbsp - wow, what a difference some vinegar makes!)

some salt (a tsp or two)

some lime juice (1 - 2 Tbsp)

and for CJ's hot salsa we add:

some extra onion

some extra garlic powder

a few pickled jalapenos

some crushed red peppers

some sriracha sauce

Steps:

1. Put the mild ingredients in a blender and blend until well blended.

2. Set half aside.

3. Add hot ingredients to blender and blend until well blended.

4. Let sit over night so the flavors meld together.

CJ and I use old Pace bottles for our salsa and we label them because I definitely don't want to accidentally get his hot salsa.  We did have one batch that was a little too garlicky and oniony for me but for the most part we've gotten some really good salsa.

Painting Laminate Shelves

For Mother's Day I made my mom a Birthday Board.  Because I wanted the birthday board to look good in the room where she would put the birthday board I went through her craft/sewing room looking for leftover materials from which her curtains were made.  I never found them.

That was when I began my plan for Mom's birthday gift: a sewing room redo.  For my mom's birthday I am going to organize her sewing room.  While on Pinterest I found this blog where the blog writer cut up diaper boxes to make mini bolts for all of her scrap fabric - which I found absolutely brilliant.  I decided that step 1 would be that mom was going to need some shelving so we had somewhere to put those mini bolts.

Step One: Buy Shelves

Now is September but I decided on the project in July.  I wasn't working then and needed a cheap way to find some shelving.  I turned to Craigslist.  I occasionally found some shelves that would work but July wasn't going to be a good month for dipping into the budget.  Then August came around and I got a job.  While perusing Craigslist I came across two "garage shelves" for $5 each.  Win.

By the way, this was my first ever Craigslist purchase.  When I went to pick up the shelves, I immediately realized why they had been listed as "garage shelves" - they were disgusting.  But they were the right price so I loaded them up into my car (well, I helped the seller load them up - they are heavy!)

Step Two: Clean Shelves

Because of the (very, very) dirty nature of the shelves, I left them in the garage.  The following Saturday I set out to clean them which turned out to be about a 4 - 5 hour project.  I equipped myself with hot soapy water, a rag, gloves (omg I am so glad I had gloves so I would have to get my hands anywhere near that nasty water), and Lysol wipes.

I started with the hot soapy water and the rag.  Well, these shelves didn't smell great to begin with but when i got them wet they smelled horrific.  If you look really close in the Before picture above, you can see some streaky stuff on the back near the corner.  I think that is some kind of animal urine.  Gross.  (Again, totally grateful for gloves!)  I scrubbed and scrubbed (the middle picture is where the shelf above the one in the Before and After pictures is clean but the shelf below it has not been cleaned yet) and scrubbed some more until it was clean.

Unfortunately, after all this scrubbing, the shelves still stunk to high heaven and I still wasn't convinced that they weren't going to give me some kind of disease.  This is where the Lysol wipes come in.  I think I used about 1 wipe per shelf on the first shelf (pictured) and probably 2-3 wipes per shelf on the second (by the time I got to the second shelf my rag and water were dirty, so the scrubbing probably wasn't as effective - I should have gotten new water and a new rag for the second, oh well).

I let the shelves sit and air out for several days then I cleaned them with Lysol wipes again.  They still had a odor but that will be taken care of in step three.

Step Three: Primer

Long before taking on this project I found a few blogs that discussed painting laminate shelving.  I had painted these kinds of shelves in the past but the paint didn't go on well and it didn't stay on well.  All of these blogs (including this one) basically said the same thing: use Zissner oil based primer.  After doing some research on Lowes.com I decided to go with Zissner's B-I-N primer in the red can because it not only would stick to laminate but it would also stick to other surfaces (the back of the shelves isn't laminate and the black part on the front is plastic), cover up stains (which my clean shelves had some of), cover up water damage (which there was some of on the shelves), but it would also cover up odor (win!)  Unfortunately this is also the most expensive of Zissner's primers at about $42 a gallon.  Luckily I didn't use the whole gallon (not quiet half even) so now I have some left over for another laminate painting project I have in the works.

This time I equipped myself with 2 paintbrushes, a face mask (oil based primers and paints can really stink), gloves (oil based paints and primers don't come off the skin as easily as latex based), mineral spirits (for my attempt to clean my brushes), and primer.

Each self got two coats of primer in four sittings:
Sitting 1 = prime the first coat on the front/inside/top/bottom of both shelves (about 2 hours) while laying on their backs.
Sitting 2 = prime the second coat on the front/inside/top/bottom of both shelves (about 2 hours) while laying on their backs.
Wait about 4 - 5 days for the primer to cure then flip over.
Sitting 3 = prime the first coat on the back of both shelves (about 30 minutes).
Sitting 4 = prime the second coat on the back of both shelves (about 30 minutes).

Once the primer was on and the garage no longer smelled like primer, the shelves started looking and smelling like something I would allow someone to put in their home.

Note about oil based primer: it is a beast to clean up.  A beast.  I read a blog (sorry, I didn't copy down the URL for this one) that said cleaning oil based primer and paint off of paintbrushes was easy with mineral spirits and dish soap.  But it was not easy.  I let my paintbrushes sit in mineral spirits for about 32 hours and with a bunch of hand work I still couldn't get those sucker clean.  Next time I'm going to buy cheap $1 brushes and just chuck them instead of trying to clean them.  Also, between sittings 1 & 2 and between sittings 3 & 4, I didn't worry about cleaning my brushes, I just put the brush in a Ziploc sandwich bag over night to keep it moist for the next sitting; works like a charm.

Step Four: Paint

Finally I was ready to paint these shelves.  I chose a white with blue undertones for the outside and back of the shelves and a sky/robin's egg/watery blue for the inside. I wanted these shelves to be bright, happy, and relaxing in their color.  I chose latex based paints for the ease of cleaning and just equipped myself with 1 paintbrush and the two paint colors.

I did the painting in six sittings:
Sitting 1 = paint the first coat of white on the back of both shelves (about 30 minutes).
Sitting 2 = paint the second coat of white on the back of both shelves (about 30 minutes).
Wait 4 - 5 days for the paint to cure then flip over on their backs.
Sitting 3 = paint the first coat of white on the front (the black plastic part), top, bottom, and sides of both shelves (about 1.5 hours).
Sitting 4 = paint the second coat of white on the front, top, bottom, and sides of both shelves (about 1.5 hours).
Wait 1 - 2 days for the white paint to begin to cure.
Sitting 5 = paint the first coat of blue paint on the insides of both shelves (about 1.5 hours).
Sitting 6 = paint the second coat of blue paint on the insides of both shelves (about 1.5 hours).

Now, after the shelves have time to sit and cure (the paint can says to wait 14 days to clean them or put anything on them) they will be ready for Mom's sewing room.  I'll blog later about the other ways I'm going to organize that room.

Latest Quilt

I finished my fourth quilt yesterday.  This one is for c.b.'s second birthday in December, which is why it is winter themed.

Over here on the left are some closer images of the fabric so you can see that the one side has snowflakes and snowmen on it (it is pretty clear that the other side is just snowflakes) and that both sides have a fun glittery touch (harder to see on just the snowflake side, sorry).  I don't know if you can tell from these pictures but the binding is a white on white holly leaf pattern.  The leaves themselves have a different texture than the background which I think gives it a nice touch.

The other fabric I was considereing was a gingerbread fabric that was super cute with a candy can binding but I couldn't find a third fabric that I liked for the other side of the quilt.  I guess I could have used the same main fabric on both sides or used the same fabric for one side plus the binding but I just wasn't feeling either of those options at the time I bought the fabric.

As you can see, unlike the other quilts I've made, this quilt didn't have any peicing.  I wanted to try the quilting free hand with my embroidery foot so I didn't want to also complicate things by needing to peice the quilt as well.

By the way, I loved using the embroidery foot and I think I'm going to have to find other ways to use it in the future; maybe figure out how to do some embroidery - shocking, I know.

Anyway, there was a bit of a learning curve for this kind of quilting and I knew there would be which is why I tested on some scrap fabric and batting first.  The actual movements were easy to get down and that took about a minute and a half but the thread tension, speed of the foot (how fast the needle moves), and speed of my movements was a lot more difficult.

In the third picture down on the left I've highlighted in yellow some ugly spots.  If you look real close you can see that my tension appears to be off around the edges but not so much on the straighter parts of the stiching.  In places like this either my tension was off, I was moving the fabric too fast for the speed of the needle, or I wasn't moving the needle fast enough for the speed of the fabric movement.  Or a combination I suppose.

However, with some practice I was able to get into a groove for most of the quilt and it generally looks more like the bottom picture, with even stitches.

On a side note, I also noticed that the more I quilted, the closer my curved lines got to each other.  You probably can't tell in these pictures but the corner where I started is quilted much wider than the corner where I finished.  I figure that was a confidance issue with the quilting method.

Anyway, I love this quilt and I loved this quilting method so plan on seeing more of it in the future.

Recipe: Shredded Chicken Grilled Cheese

I've been on a grilled cheese bender.  When there is leftover meat or something in the house we sometimes put it on grilled cheese.  One of my favorites has been with shredded chicken.  This particular shredded chicken was cooked with salsa and taco seasoning, its pretty good.  Once I grilled the sandwich (tip: put cheese on both sides so as it melts it holds everything in the middle together), I pulled it apart and added some tomatoes (I like my tomatoes cold).  It was yummy.

Lastest Quilt

I made another quilt.  As I'm sure you can clearly see, this one is 4th of July themed.  It is a Christmas gift for my newest nephew, born in early July.  If you look at the first image just right (or just wrong) the stripes look like they taper off on the ends but they are really all the same width everywhere.

My favorite part of the quilt is the star applique on the back.  I ironed the stars on to the back then, after all three layers of the quilt were put together, I started the quilting process by appliqueing the star with a close zig-zag stick.  That way you can (kindof) see the star shapes on the front of the quilt (middle image).  CJ later pointed out that the applique would have looked better in a different color, maybe gold, and I totally agree.  Instead of using matching red thread while doing the all the quilting, I could have used a goldy-yellow color for a fun contrasting look.  Oh well, maybe next time.

New Job (For Real This Time)

I have a job!

I've been working since August 2nd (wow, two full weeks now) as a Jr. Project Manager at Amirsys, Inc.  Yeah, I'd never heard of them before applying either.  They do medical software and I've learned a lot more about pathology than I ever thought I'd need to know.

It was an interesting, and very quick, process to get the job.  I applied on a Tuesday morning and received a phone call from the recruiting HR guy by Tuesday afternoon.  We set up a phone interview for Wednesday morning.  The interview went well enough I guess because by Wednesday afternoon I had a face-to-face interview set up for Friday.

On Friday I went into the office and met with 6 people.  It was a little intimidating at first being there with so many people but it got really comfortable really quick.  I guess they liked me as much as I liked them because later Friday afternoon we'd set up a lunch appointment to talk further for Monday.

Less than an hour after lunch on Monday I received another phone call from the recruiting HR guy to let me know that they were going to send me an offer.  I accepted the offer Tuesday afternoon and started working the following Thursday.

So it took 10 days from application to first day.  Pretty quick and pretty awesome if you ask me.

Even though the software is used by mostly doctors or medical students, I've found it to be very interesting.  Luckily I don't have to know a lot about medicine to understand how the software itself works.  At the base of it, all software is the same - databases and code.

They started me off getting into managing just one project and, from what I've heard, it was their plan to have me up to speed on only that one project for when my boss went out of town (he'll be out for two weeks, starting only 7 business days after I started the job - which is why my first day was so soon after receiving an offer).  But I guess I caught onto that project quick enough that now they have me doing a lot of work on another, much bigger and more complicated, project as well.

I didn't realize how difficult it would be getting back into work mode.  For the first 7 months of the year I had gotten used to being pretty lazy.  Now I have to get back into the mode of getting up early (I'm even using the treadmill before work a few days a week!), running errands on my way home, and being really good at creating and following my personal to do list.

Overall, I'm really happy about working again, I am really happy about the work environment, and I'm really looking forward to staying at Amirsys long-term.