Crazy

The 10-minutes of quilting a day is working out pretty well. I only have 8 or 9 more motifs to finish quilting and then I can bind & label the baby quilt and be done. Well I do have to make the binding, too.

A friend of ours has a little one turning 3 in May and I was thinking of making her a special nap quilt but then I remembered that a) I'm crazy if I think I can complete it, and b) I haven't worked on The Girl's or The Boy's quilt in ages. Also I have 10 pillowcases still to be sewn for the guild service project by May.

And for the record, I am a little crazy whether or not I think I can complete a nap quilt in time.

To illustrate this craziness: I made homemade laundry soap. Yup, that's right. Soap for washing clothes. Here is the recipe, which I saw easily at least a dozen places so I'm not going to credit anyone for it. Do a google search on "homemade laundry soap" to get a variety.

1 cup of Fels Naptha laundry bar soap, grated
1/2 cup of Oxy-clean or Washing Soda (not baking soda)
1/2 cup of Borax

After the bar soap is grated, you run it through a food processor to chop it into little teeny pieces, almost like a powder. Or if your food processor has a grating attachement or blade just use that. Then you mix it with the other two. That's it! Use a tablespoon per load.

I found the Fels Naptha to have a pretty strong scent. But I did wash a few loads with my new soap and not only did the stuff come out feeling and looking clean, but the overpowering scent was pretty much gone and it just smelled...well, clean. Hurray! It only cost me $2.24 to make enough for 32 loads of laundry...that's only 7 cents a load! Wow!

What's really awesome about it is supposedly it is way better for the environment than traditional laundry soap. I was using Seventh Generation liquid soap and I think last time I bought it I spent 10 or 11 dollars for 32 loads...so I could wash roughly four loads for the cost of the commercial stuff or make it myself. hmm. The agony of the decision.

Oh, and I also read some places that you could use Ivory soap or Zote (? never heard of it) soap instead of the Fels Naptha.

I am also still working on the purse. The main construction is finished. I have to sew up the turning hole in the inner lining and add an embellishment. The pattern suggests an oversized button but I think I will do a little pocket instead. I wasn't planning for it to be lined or anything but I made one that I was going to sew on and when I pinned it to the purse I could see the lines on the bag fabric showing through. Well now, we can't be happy with that! So I'm going to try one more time. Why not? I still have plenty of fabric. It's nice to make a functional fabric object with such a small investment in fabric. Even a little dress or something for The Girl takes more than this.

Next time I post I hope to have pictures!