Is That Sew

In our house in Texas, Pat had a large room to use as her sewing room-craft room. It was a large game room with a wet bar and had a lot of windows looking out onto the back yard. The counter space of the bar gave her a lot of flat space for her sewing. After moving into the house in St. Peters, Mo, she studied about what would be her sewing room. Almost all of the basement is finished and there is a room in the back corner that was finished except for its ceiling. It had good lighting but only 2 small windows. It is a much smaller space than what she had in our Texas home, but it did seem to be the best place to set up her new sewing room. She painted the concrete floor white and the walls a nice pastel yellow. She found some good (and free) cabinets and a counter top through "Free Cycle".

She made and hung new curtains appropriate for a sewing area.

She painted a quilt design on the floor.
She built a frame suspended from the ceiling so she can lay out a full quilt. It is marked out in squares to help in the quilt layout design.

She needed some sort of mat that she could put down that would be easier on her feet instead of the bare concrete floor. At a garage sale she found some kids playroom interlocking rubber mat squares. There were just the right letters for her to spell "quilter" as her mat.

She had some great cabinets for thread storage.
She designed her bulletin board appropriate for a sewing area.
Many times she takes our laptop computer down with her so she can cruise the internet via our wireless network or read her email when needed. On the screen saver of the computer are pictures that she has taken at various quilt shows she attended. She has a radio in the sewing room so she can listen to music or programs that she enjoys. The phone has an intercom feature, so it is easy to talk to others in different parts of the house.

She enjoys sewing outfits for the granddaughters. Both granddaughters have an American Girl doll and Pat made several different theme outfits for the dolls. She taught the granddaughters how to use the sewing machine. Even our grandson tried it out since he was not to be left out. Many times the sewing room served as an ER for surgery (repair) of the grandkids stuffed animals.

One good source that Pat has found for thread and fabric is a store in St. Charles called Leftovers, etc. Leftovers, etc. is a community-based educational and environmental resource and learning center that provides free/affordable traditional and non-traditional school supplies for use as learning tools to public and private school educators, home school educators, early childhood educators, and organizations working with low-income parents. Leftovers will take donations of almost anything: egg cartons, coffee cans, all kinds of glass and plastic containers, etc. They get government grants based on how many pounds of material they have recycled back to the public keeping it out of landfills. Teachers and home school educators in St. Charles can get any of the items at no cost. The general public pays $7.00 for all that they can get in a paper grocery bag.

When we lived in Rosenberg, Pat joined a group of women at Peace Lutheran Church that makes quilts that are donated to the needy. They get fabric donations from people in the area. In November of 2008 Pat received this email from them:

We presently have 123 quilts on display in our sanctuary. Most of those will be packed up for Lutheran World Relief. We didn't make quite as many as last year, but still managed to give 110 each to Helping Hands and Lutheran World Relief, 18 to each of 2 St. Vincent de Paul Charity units from Catholic churches in Needville and Rosenberg, 1 to a Habitat for Humanity family, 13 to Lutherhill Camp Ministries(12 for use by campers; 1 for their auction); 7 to Clifton Lutheran Sunset Homes for their auction; 42 to Oaks Indian Mission at Oaks, Oklahoma (1 for each of their 40 children; 2 for their first auction). We gave 3 special ones for the auction for the Helping Hands Fall Gala event . They read a short history of how many we had given them each year and then auctioned off one of ours for $750; the other 2 were put in the Silent Auction section and brought $75 and $65. We also sent 9 to Guatamala with Carmella Dean when she went with a medical team for a Faith Mercy Mission week. We have also set aside 5 for the Family Health Center's BEARS, BOOKS,and BLANKETS event for December, and 4 more for a Habitat family in a 4 bedroom home our congregation just helped build in Rosenberg. It will be dedicated at 2 p.m. Dec. 14th. That is a total of 340 quilts (if my math is correct). They are able to make so many because of all of the volunteers from the area and because they tack the quilts instead of quilting them.

That is Pat's favorite project in her sewing room. Since moving to St. Peters in late January 2007, she has made 44 quilt tops. So far she has delivered 24 of those quilt tops back to the women in Rosenberg to be finished. Pat would love to get a group of ladies together here in St. Charles County who like to quilt and start a project locally to make quilts to be given to homeless shelters or other groups for distribution.

Pat sewing a new quilt.

After she has a quilt together she needs to iron it. A regular ironing board made it difficult to iron a full quilt. Pat made a large board and covered it with padding and a cover, so she can have a large area for ironing her quilts.

Blocks on her layout table for designing her pattern.

Finished quilt hanging for review.

Stack of finished quilts.

Many times Pat has bought fabric from Leftovers to add to the fabric from Peace Lutheran. On a good day she can get over 20 yards of material for $7.

For our anniversary, Pat and the grandchildren had a secret project going on in the sewing room and that room was off limits to me for quite some time. They made a quilt that had John Deere fabric as borders for each quilt block. Each block had an Overall Bill figure in various poses. The grandchildren used crayons to color in the blocks and put their initials in the blocks that they filled in. They had a great time helping design and make the quilt. Most of the block patterns came from an Overall Bill pattern book but the grandkids named the quilt Overall Ben.

Borders for the quilt squares.

Examples of some of the squares.

Overall Bill the Chemist
Overall Bill the Flower Gardener.
Overall Bill the Vegetable Gardener.
Overall Bill the Railfan.
Overall Bill the John Deere Tractor Fan.

Overall Bill the Fisherman
Overall Bill at the computer.

Overall Bill at Church.

Our Neighborhood is Ablaze in Color

This beautiful fall afternoon begged for a walk along our neighborhood trail and capture the fall colors that are at their peak. We had a very mild summer and plenty rain in the last couple of months. This has created one of the best fall color seasons in many years. One of the things we missed while we lived in south Texas was the beautiful fall colors. The trail looks so much different than it did when I featured it in an earlier blog "Happy Trails". That entry had pictures of late spring and summer. The fall photos here are from the trail and the streets in the neighborhood on the way to the trail. We live in Carrington Place which is in St. Peters, Missouri near St. Louis.

A popular shrub that decorates many of the neighborhood yards is very green in the summer and turns fire engine red in the fall. This first photo is of the bush at the back of our house. It is not quite as red as many others in the neighborhood.

Here is a good selection of this red bush around our neighborhood.



All the beautiful fall colors could be found around the neighborhood. Yellow, orange, and bronze.

Yellow
The best yellow color was just about 4 houses south of us on our street.
Orange



Bronze

Several colors together.

Someone thought it was a great day for jogging with the baby along the trail.

In many places it is hard to see the trail for all the leaves that is covering it.

Pretty decorative grass in a lawn along the trail.

A fall-halloween banner on a fence along the trail.

Berries on a bush along the trail.

Sumac Bush along trail.

The puckered, fluorescent green fruit of the Osage Orange Tree is plentiful along parts of the trail. They've been known to be called; hedgeballs, hedgeapples, monkey balls, osage orange, mock oranges, horse apples, brainfruit, and green brain. Some say that if you place the hedge ball in your cupboards, on the floor in your basement and garage, and around the outside of your house it will keep spiders and insects away.

Crab apple berries in our back yard.

Tulip popular tree in our back yard.


We have a beautifully shaped Bradford Pear in our front yard.

It has pretty white flowers in the spring.

The small fruit is very popular with the birds.

The leaves will turn to a bright red in late fall. Ours has not changed to it's fall color.

Looking at all the great fall colors made our 2.8 mile walk a lot more enjoyable.

We hope to take a drive out in the country to see more of the pretty fall colors along the hillsides.

As a chemist, I can't skip the chemistry behind fall leaf color change. The simple answer - The pretty colors show up when leaves quit producing chlorophyll as the weather turns colder. No longer masked by abundant green chlorophyll, these less abundant pigments can now show their true colors.

Some of the pigment chemicals involved:

Several good links to websites about the science of fall leaf color change:

Chemical of the Week-The Chemistry of Autumn Colors

The Science of Leaf Change: Why do Leaves change colors?

Why There is a Fall Leaf Color Change in Autumn

A Complete Fall Color and Autumn Leaf Guide: Enhancing Your Autumn Leaf and Fall Tree Viewing.

More on trees with colorful fall foliage.

Fall Foliage of Ash Trees
Fall Foliage of Aspen Trees
Fall Foliage of Beech Trees
Fall Foliage of Birch Trees
Fall Foliage of Dogwood Trees
Fall Foliage of Japanese Maple Trees
Fall Foliage of Oak Trees
Fall Foliage of Shagbark Hickory Trees
Fall Foliage of Sweetgum Trees
Fall Foliage of Sumac Trees
Fall Foliage of Ginkgo Biloba Trees
Fall Foliage of Tulip Trees