Happy 4th, Where Did the Week Go(?), and Here We Go Again!

Happy 4th of July!

I made these valences for my cousin's restaurant yesterday. Before mother went into the hospital he and I conferred about what colors to paint this room that he lets people reserve for birthday parties, club meetings, etc..., or for when the rest of the restaurant is full. He has had red and white striped wall paper, wallpaper with a fruit design, etc.... But, this time he decided to paint. He used yellow at the top and gray on the bottom. The rest of his restaurant has green, yellow, gray, and red. He has lots of pictures of local celebrities, UT football, UT basketball, etc... in the other rooms. Anyway, we had looked a little for fabric before Mother got sick and had trouble finding anything that would work. But, we went a couple of days ago to a fabric outlet store that is just off interstate 75 above Sweetwater, TN, and we found this. He wasn't wild about it, but it had all the colors he needed, so we got it. I was happy with it and knew that the squares would make it easy; there would be very little measuring, I could just follow the squares. I just had to make sure the colors lined up. Each row of squares is primarily a certain color. It was really simple. He has ten windows that are in pairs. I am very happy with the way they turned out. They really brighten up the room and coordinate everything together.


I found another use for the cardboard that piping and bias binding, etc... come on. I taped one to my machine to use as a guide for the stitching on the casing. Even with the straight lines of the squares I didn't want to sew crookedly. This really helped.

I made Little Man a shirt from an orange towel to wear when he hangs out at the pool. This really is orange even though in this photo it looks peachy. You might be able to see that I put his Little Man logo on the bottom left front. There was no hemming and no side seams to this shirt. I just taped the front and backs of a shirt pattern together and cut this as one whole piece. I was able to abut the fronts along the edge of the towel and the bottom along the bottom edge of the towel I simple sewed the shoulder seams together and stitched a strip of the side edge of the towel around the neckline.

I used the closed overlock stitch for seaming this shirt and the shorts below. I made the stitch narrower and shorter. I don't have a serger so this stitch did a serger like seam with the exception of trimming it as I sewed. This stitch prevented having such a mess when I trimmed the seam and it made a nice finish as well.

Here are more shorts for my grand daughters made from more towels. As you can see I used contrasting colors for each leg on each pair. I used the draw string on these rather than elastic like I did for my friend's daughter. My DD preferred the draw string. I didn't make the string long enough on those first ones I made, so I will need to fix those. I think I made them plenty long on this set. All four of the girls are getting a pair of these. I put their initials on one leg. I blurred out the last initial on the ones you could see, that's why they look a little weird.

As you can see below, I put the drawstring in before I sewed down the casing. How easy is that?!
I didn't do that on the first ones I made. It wasn't hard to put the drawstrings in after the casing was made, but this was even easier!!

When I sewed the front seam I left an opening for the strings. As you can see I just stitched the seam down on either side of the hole.

Now, for the "Here We Go Again" part of my post..... My mom is sick again. She has another UTI. We are trying to keep her out of the hospital, but I'm not sure we can. Why can't I get it through to the nurses that if she says anything confused sounding that it means she's sick? She called me at 7:00 am this morning, and I knew immediately that she was sick. I got to the nursing home to find that they had gotten a test back (that I had to insist that they do), and it showed infection, but they were going to WAIT and see how she did, until I broke into tears and insisted that they call the dr. THEN and get her started on an antibiotic THEN not LATER!!! I do not understand!! I came home to eat some lunch and decided to do this post. She just called me and hung up. First of all, why are they giving her the phone? Why don't they just call me themselves!!!???!!! I have asked and asked and asked that they understand that she has no dementia. She gets confused ONLY when she has an infection. I have also asked that THEY call me when she has a problem. I only live 5 minutes away. I know they have other residents to deal with, and that another lady and my mom kept them hopping all night. SO, CALL ME! Today they are having hotdogs and patriotic music, etc.... and my mother would have loved that, but she is sick and can't. I'm on my way back up there now. I will quit ranting!
There are probably all kinds of typos and grammatical errors in this post. I don't have time to proof it. I'll look at it again this evening.
By the way, if anyone is interested in a purse organizer just comment on this or my previous post and I'll make you one.