Made to measure

How did you spend your New Year's Day?

We spent it measuring.

Measuring our bathroom for an upcoming remodel.
Measuring our box room for an upcoming nursery.
Measuring our kitchen for a new shelf.
And finally, eyeballing some fabric for an almost finished project.

I just don't learn, do I? Measuring was in the air, the rattle of a retracting tape was the soundtrack of the day, yet I still 'winged it' when it came to my sewing project that afternoon.  Old habits and all that...

After a little fiddling, I decided to turn those remnants into a quilted table runner.  Or maybe a cushion for a shelf or a wall hanging.  Whatever it will end up, it is currently a long run of triangles.  In the quilting world this is called Flying Geese I believe.  Funny, when I was first laying it out I thought it looked like fish scales, but that could be my psuedo-maritime heritage coming through.

So New Year's afternoon found my husband putting up a shelf in the kitchen and myself sewing at the dining room table.  Each mumbling and grumbling to ourselves and at our tools.  He broke a wall anchor, I broke a needle.  He was temporarily stumped by the wall, I was baffled by my inability to sew a straight line.  

The beauty of a Victorian terrace house is in its charming (read: period) features, however this also means no wall is perfectly straight or square after 200 years of 'renovation.'  The *gorgeous* 70s vinyl on the wall in our kitchen hides a multitude of bumpy sins while doing a little sinning of its own.  The beauty of remnants is also in its charm and history and wonkiness.  Who else chose this fabric? What is it currently adorning across this borough? Why is it seemingly impossible for me to manage a straight or square cut with these pieces?

So while my husband cursed the hidden menace of wonky walls, I tried to make him feel better by explaining that I had done a bit of miscalculation of my own.  Somehow I had managed to make six out of the seven sections uneven.

It didn't really work. As he said, you can't un-stitch a wall.


But we both persevered and the shelf is up and holding and my fish scales came along nicely, if I do say so myself.

Here's to a year of measuring up and making it work.