Welcome to My Studio!

My Studio Today

Amy of Free Motion Quilting Adventures has been reorganizing her sewing workspace lately, and today she is hosting a linky party for everyone to show off their quilting studios.  I realized that although I had been posting bits and pieces about my studio remodel throughout the process, I didn't have one post that showed off the whole room.  I apologize in advance, because I did not clean up for you before I started taking pictures.  This is my studio in action, the way it looks when I am actually working in here.  It used to be much, MUCH worse.

About three years ago, before I bought my Bernina 750 QE, my sewing room looked like this:

My Former Sewing Dungeon

Yikes, right?  It's a wonder I ever finished ANYTHING in that dump!  The new sewing machine inspired me to revamp my studio, making it more attractive and more functional.  My biggest issues were:

• Insufficient Lighting.  My workspace is a bonus room above our garage, and I have a vaulted ceiling that had NO lights except for four dinky light bulbs on a ceiling fan. 
• Insufficient Power Supply.  I did not have enough outlets, and when my iron cycled on and off, all of the lights dimmed.
• Serious Fabric Hoarding.  I'm an interior designer, and over the years I had amassed way too many remnants of beautiful fabrics that I was never going to use, but couldn't bear to throw away.  These bolts of fabric were leaning against every wall and threatening to crowd me out of my own room.
• No Design Wall.  I couldn't tell whether I liked a quilt until AFTER I had sewn all of the blocks together because I had nowhere to lay them out.
• Inadequate, Barely Functional HV/AC.  My studio is in a second-story bonus room above our garage, which is great because it's out of the way, but it was freezing cold in the winter and too hot to use the iron in the summer.
• No Storage for Quilting Stash, Embroidery Threads, Rulers, Embroidery Hoops, and Other Tools.

It's actually a decent sized room:

My Studio

...And here's what it looked like when I emptied it of most of the clutter so it could be painted:

Ready for Remodel!

Our sons were a lot younger when we bought this house, and I was originally thinking that this room would be their playroom.  The previous owners had a pool table in here.  I love my husband for insisting that the kids take the other bonus room on the third floor so that I could have this space for my sewing room!

When we remodeled the room, the first thing I did was to have an HV/AC company redo the duct work of the entire second floor of our home, splitting it into two zones, and moving the thermostat from our master bedroom at the back of the house to the hallway adjacent to my studio.  Now the heat or air conditioning, as the season dictates, cuts on more frequently and there is adequate airflow coming into the studio to actually heat and cool the room.

Next, my talented husband addressed my lighting and electrical issues for me.  We ditched the ceiling fan (which just blew my fabric all over the place anyway) in favor of a customized Goth 6-light chandelier that was left over from remodeling my dining room.  I spray painted it, changed out the amber crystals for smooth clear ones, and put on new white candle sleeves.  Bernie installed four new can lights, a dedicated outlet for my iron, and in-ceiling speakers so I can rock out to whatever music tickles my fancy while I sew.  All of the light bulbs in my studio are LEDs, by the way, for truer color, savings on electricity, and best of all, they don't create any additional heat when I'm working in here during the hot summer months.  We painted the walls and ceiling a neutral ivory, a subtle but significant improvement over the builder's flat pinkish-ivory paint, and I had custom arched plantation shutters installed. 

I donated most of my hoarded interior design fabric remnants to the costume department of our local community theatre, which freed up a lot of space in the room.

Then I started working on how to organize the tools and fabrics that I kept:

Cutting and Planning Worktable with Maple Butcher Block Top

I LOVE my cutting table.  Because I am an interior designer when I'm not busy quilting, and mine is an occupation that corrupts common sense when it comes to home improvement projects, I ordered a custom maple butcher block counter top for my cutting table.  If I recall correctly, the surface of my cutting table weighs 700 pounds.  Only through a feat of engineering rivaling the pyramids did we manage to get the countertop up to the second floor of the house.  Seriously, though -- it's not a slick surface, so my cutting mat and fabrics don't slide around.  I can cut and pin against this surface without worrying about marring it.  Any little dings can just be sanded out, because it's basically a giant cutting board.  It's a light colored surface that reflects light, easy on the eyes especially when sewing at night.  It will last forever, and it's gorgeous.  We installed a barn light pendant over my cutting table to ensure adequate lighting for cutting precision (and to reduce the possibility of slicing off fingers in the dark).

Room for Multi-Tasking

What I really love about this table is its size, 42" x 97."  So I have room to cut on one side of the table, and plenty of room for staging and organizing on the rest of the table.  It's great for multitasking.  I have my quilting stash fabrics folded more or less neatly in wire bins below the cutting table, and the red drawer base you see is a KraftMaid kitchen cabinet drawer base that I ordered for use in my sewing room in our last home.  I painted it red and added the bronze drawer pulls accented with Swarovski crystals.  A girl's gotta have some bling. 
I keep my scissors, rotary cutters, applique templates and marking supplies in those drawers. 

Rubber Drawer Liner Keeps Scissors, Rotary Cutters from Sliding Around

As with good kitchen design, my goal is to store tools as close as possible to where I use them.  That's just cheap rubber padding that goes under area rugs that I've used as drawer liners.  It keeps my scissors and rotary cutting tools from sliding around, crashing together and getting nicked blades when I pull the drawers open and closed.  The drawer base is several inches shorter than my cutting table, which gives me a handy place to store my smaller rotary cutting mat and my sewing machine's slide-on extension bed.

Pegboard Storage for Rulers and Pattern Weights

We used ordinary peg board from Home Depot for my rulers and embroidery hoops, on the walls at either side of my cutting table.  The peg board was painted with the same color paint as the walls, which helps reduce the visual clutter and keeps my studio feeling spacious and open despite the astronomical amount of stuff in the room.

As you can see, I have additional wire bins at the back of my cutting table.  On this side of the table, the bottom bin is full of embroidery stabilizers, bobbin thread, and other items I use for machine embroidery.

Design Wall (Outlined in Blue)

Again, maximizing efficiency while reducing visual clutter, my design wall is almost exactly the same color as my wall paint, so I've outlined it in blue in the photo above.  We used two sheets of insulating foam from Home Depot and wrapped them in English Bump drapery interlining, because I had some left over from a design job.  As you can see, we had to cut away the corner of one of the sheets of insulating foam in order to fit against the sloped ceiling, but this is the only possible wall I could have used.  The opposite wall is full of windows and the two side walls are too short due to the sloped ceiling.  English Bump is basically a very thick, napped cotton flannel, and I specify it for high end silk drapery panels, but you could just as easily use regular drapery interlining or quilt batting for a design wall. 

Another Shot of the Design Wall

Let's see -- what haven't I shown you yet?  This is my current custom sewing cabinet, soon (hopefully!) to be rebuilt:



Current Sewing Machine Cabinet, 28 1/2" x 73"

I like the size, but I don't like the surface and it would be more comfortable for me for free-motion quilting if the surface was a bit higher.  It's actually the upside-down top of the kids' old Thomas the Train table, believe it or not, and it's not really strong enough or stable enough for this purpose.  It's starting to bow in the middle, it's not perfectly level for machine embroidery.  It's made of a particle board that has a bit of drag, which is also not the best for FMQ because I have to work that much harder to move the quilt around beneath the needle.  I haven't decided what the new top should be -- I'm thinking either a sealed maple butcher block so that it matches the cutting table but is slippery for quilting, or else a pretty polished granite remnant if I can find one that isn't too dark.  Carrera marble would be gorgeous, but it's probably not going to happen! 

The most important thing about the sewing cabinet, for me, is the large surface to support heavy quilts, and the ability to sink the machine into the cabinet:

Machine Recessed into Sewing Cabinet

My sewing machine is almost always in this recessed position, unless I need to use the free arm or I'm doing machine embroidery.

I have another KraftMaid kitchen drawer base unit on the right side of my sewing machine cabinet that matches the one beneath my cutting table, and it houses my collection of needles, presser feet, and machine attachments:

Presser Feet, Needles, Bobbins etc. Stored Within Easy Reach of the Sewing Machine

I keep my presser feet in numerical order as well.  On the left side of my sewing machine cabinet I have open shelving to accommodate my most often used sewing threads in ArtBin containers.  That's my spiral bound sewing machine manual on top of the top thread bin, so I can grab it whenever I have a question or I want to try a technique I haven't done in awhile.

Sewing Thread Stored in the Sewing Machine Cabinet

 Borrowing from kitchen design concepts again, I have a nice little work triangle (or work rectangle, really) between my sewing machine, cutting table, ironing board and design wall that no one needs to walk through:

My Primary Work Triangle: Sewing, Cutting, and Pressing

I have another desk pushed up against the back side of my sewing cabinet.  I clear that off to use the entire surface of both units when I'm quilting a big, heavy quilt.  Other times I use the desk as a secondary sewing station for projects I might be sewing on one of my Featherweights or with my serger.  I can't decide whether my redesigned sewing cabinet should be designed like a partners' desk, one mammoth surface with sewing workstations on either side.  Having them separate is definitely more versatile in case I ever want to rearrange things, but one large cabinet with a single surface would look cleaner and less of a hodge-podge.  And yes, it does bug me that I have one red sewing chair and one teal one.  ;-)

Then on the other side of the room I have a TV (front corner of the room, wall mounted, not pictured), my computer, and other supplies that I use only occasionally:

Anders at Mom's Computer Workstation

The bean bag chair is for kiddos who like to hang out in my sewing room with me and watch Tom and Jerry reruns. 

I'm a pretty infrequent machine embroiderer, so I keep my embroidery threads stored in a shelving unit against the far wall, in clear plastic storage bins to keep the dust off, all in numerical order so I can quickly locate the exact shade I'm looking for:

Isacord Machine Embroidery Thread, Organized in Numerical Order

Here's the rest of that shelving unit, which was also painted to blend into the walls for a less cluttered look:



The binders on the top shelf are collections of magazine articles, patterns, and class notes on different topics: Quilting Projects and Techniques, Free-Motion Quilting, Machine Embroidery, etc.  I also keep my machine and software mastery workbooks in binders on that shelf, back issues of magazines in the cardboard magazine holders, and supplies for hand embroidery and beadwork.  WIPs (Works In Progress) occupy the remaining shelves.

Featherweights, Hand Quilting Supplies, and Reference Books

Last but not least, my vintage Singer Featherweights live on this bookshelf, directly opposite the entrance to the room, so they are the first things I see when I come down the hallway.  This shelving unit also contains my sewing box full of hand quilting thread, needles, and my quilting thimble, my Featherweight manuals and attachments, and all of my sewing and quilting reference books.  Since my ironing board is just to the left of this unit, I keep my spray starch and sizing here as well.

Well, I didn't mean to go on and on like this forever, but I think I did a decent job of showing you my studio setup.  I still consider it a work in progress rather than a done deal, but I kind of got bored of it and wanted to start sewing again!  I know that I am very fortunate to have a large studio dedicated to my sewing and quilting projects.  It's wonderful to be able to leave everything out and know that even if I only have ten minutes to spare, I can come in here and pick up right where I left off and sew for ten minutes. 

I'm linking up with Amy's studio linky party.  Have a great weekend, everyone!

2014 New Year's Greetings: Odds and Ends

Hello, everyone, and Happy New Year 2014!  I just finished reading The Hobbit with Lars, and have a few moments to spare before the dryer finishes up and the clothes need folding, so I thought I'd share a few photos briefly.

iPods and Kindles as Pattern Weights

I've been plodding along on the center applique medallion for my Jingle BOM quilt, and discovered that my family's assorted iPhones and iPods make fantastic pattern weights in a pinch, holding my fabric in place over the paper pattern while I position and glue baste my applique shapes.  I'd be able to see the pattern through the background fabric better if I went upstairs to the studio and used my light box, but I'm only gluing a few leaves at a time and it's more convenient to just squint and fudge it on the kitchen counter.

 

Sewing all those stems down was tedious work, but now that I have the center poinsettia stitched in place and my branches are sprouting leaves, it's fun to see the whole thing coming together.  I'm really enjoying the mix of emerald green fabrics with those crimson reds.  However, now that I'm nearing the end of the project and looking at all of my blocks up on the design wall, I'm not sure that I want to finish the quilt exactly according to Erin's directions:



Erin Russek's Jingle BOM Layout, patterns found here

I have auditioned so many green fabrics with my blocks, and I just don't like any of them well enough to use that MUCH of it in my quilt.  I also feel like too much time and effort went into the individual blocks to just add plain setting triangles and borders and call it a day. 

 

I really love how another quilter, Pam of Hip to Be a Square Podcast, a.k.a. Pantsfreesia in the Jingle Belles Flickr group, substituted pieced setting triangles for the large green setting triangles around the center applique medallion.  (Much thanks to Janet L for helping me find her blog so I could credit her and link back to her blog.)  I think Pam's Jingle quilt is just gorgeous and I HAD to share it with you:

 

Completed Jingle Quilt made by Pam of Hip to Be a Square Podcast; read her post here

 Isn't that gorgeous?  You can see more photos of Pam's quilt, including detail shots of the machine quilting, in her blog post here.  This quilt got me thinking about ways I could personalize my own Jingle quilt, maybe adding pieced setting triangles around the center medallion similar to what Pam did, or perhaps adding some pieced borders to the quilt if I can figure out the math so everything still fits together at the end.  I also have a couple of pieced blocks that I really don't love, and I'm considering replacing them with different star blocks instead.  Adding borders might end up enlarging the quilt and requiring two more blocks, anyway, so we'll see.  There's a lot of stitching still to be done on that center medallion.

Kings of Nintendo Playing 3DS Games

Meanwhile, Lars and Anders have been enjoying their Christmas break from school immensely.  Lars got his Science Fair data analysis and conclusion completed, as well as an independent novel project for Language Arts class, and Anders has been working with his dad to get his Dragon Naturally Speaking software to play nice with his little laptop for school.  There has been much practicing of violin, piano, and trombone, and much more playing of video games, as seen in the blurry photo at left.  Here's a better shot of them at Best Buy, scrutinizing the secrets of the LEGO Marvel PS3 Cheat Book as they wait in line to exchange duplicate video games:

Anders and Lars at Best Buy

To my great appreciation and delight, Bernie finished and installed the doors for the built-ins in the living room a few days before Christmas, hiding much of the clutter that has been on my nerves for YEARS:

Living Room Built-Ins Today

Doesn't that look great, just like it has always been that way?  He built the doors from scratch, perfectly matching the paneled cabinetry in the kitchen and throughout the house.  The bookshelves on the sides were original to the home, but the whole center section was missing except for two weird boxes at the top.  Here's what this wall looked like before we bought the house, with the old carpeting and the previous owners' furnishings:

Same Living Room, Before We Bought the House

Bizarre, right?  So I had Bernie subdivide those two oddly proportioned boxes by adding shelves immediately, and he built the base cabinetry at the same time so the built-ins would frame his gigantic television.  There were always supposed to be doors on the bottom, but there are so many things to do when you move into a new home and you get sidetracked with other projects.  After awhile, you get used to the way an almost-finished project looks, and you don't notice it anymore.  So, here's what the wall of built-ins looked like for the last SEVEN years, waiting for those doors:




Unfinished Built-Ins with Lars, Bernie, and Puppies

Scroll back up to see the way it looks with the doors installed again.  HUGE improvement, don't you agree?  It's one of those things that makes you think, "Why didn't we do this a LONG time ago?"  Thanks, Lover!  :-)

Another fantastic gift I received were the completed puppy portraits that my mother finally agreed to paint after much badgering, whining, begging, and insinuation that dog portraits equal love.  Do you remember when I posted about this idea here back in April?  I asked my mom to copy a couple of Renaissance portraits I had seen in the Louvre on one of my trips to Paris, but with my Rottweiler pups' faces instead of the somber humans in the original portraits. 


The Originals in the Louvre



Lulu and Otto, Painted by Mom

 Didn't she do a great job?  I LOVE it!  My puppies will celebrate their 3rd birthday in four days.  It seems like we just brought them home a few months ago, doesn't it?

Says Lulu, a.k.a. Princess Puppy, "Rub my belly, slaves!"

Says Otto, my Sweet Baboo, "PLEASE throw my ball!!"

Oh, and I had one other fun surprise.  My sister Susan sent me this coffee mug that she bought at a Starbucks on or near the Great Wall of China when she was there running a marathon last year.  Doesn't it look great with my granite?  Best of all, I love that it is stamped MADE IN CHINA.  The Starbucks mugs sold at the Louvre say PARIS on the front of the mug and MADE IN CHINA on the bottom, so they are not nearly such authentic souvenirs as this one from Beijing.

Ah, well -- the clothes dryer has been peeping at me mercilessly, demanding my attention.

Happy New Year, 2014!

Weekend Recap: Getting Our Thanksgiving Groove On

Does Martha look smug to you in this picture?  If so, it's probably because SHE was organized enough to order her fresh heritage turkey for Thanksgiving on November 1st instead of waiting until a week before the holiday.  Also probably because one of her underlings cooked this turkey, and she just gets to glide in after being professionally styled and made up, slip on an apron, and pose with the beautifully cooked golden bird. 

I'm not yet recovered from Halloween (and no, I do NOT remember where I hid your candy, boys, so stop asking!), but the show must go on and Thanksgiving Dinner will open to an expectant, hungry crowd in just a few days.  When I called to order my fresh turkey a few days ago, Whole Foods informed me that they had already pre-sold their entire fresh turkey inventory for both their heritage and their organic birds.  Then I called Earth Fare and managed to snag their very last available fresh organic turkey.  Whew! 

The Victor With His Vegetable Prize

Yesterday morning Bernie and Lars went on the 15th Annual Buttercup Squash Scavenger Hunt.  They go from one grocery store to the next in their search for this delicious but elusive squash, overcoming obstacles like crowded parking lots and trolls disguised as produce specialists who insist that butterCUP squash is the same thing as butterNUT squash (no, it isn't).  Midway through their squash odyssey, Bernie called and requested that I send photographic proof of this squash variety's existence to his iPhone so he could battle the scorn and ignorance of the grocery clerks with the weapons of Truth and Technology.  Ultimately, as usual, he arrived home triumphantly with twice as much buttercup squash as we need for his Buttercup Squash and Leek Soup.  Every year, I ask him whether he really wants to go to all the trouble of tracking down the squash and hacking them up to make his peppery soup with them again, and every year he replies that he looks forward to the Squash Hunt and it would not be Thanksgiving without it.  He cooked and pureed his soup Saturday afternoon, while I made the Cranberry Citrus Compote. 

Cooked Whole Cranberry-Citrus Compote, cooling on the stove top

It feels good to have some of the menu items crossed off the list already.  Tomorrow or the next day, I'll need to bake spiced pecans for the stuffing and make the roux for the gravy.  I also have to throw one of those green bean casseroles together for the annual school feast, which happens on Tuesday. 

A lot of cleaning happened this weekend as well, with even Lars pitching in to dust and polish furniture in the dining room, living room, and in my office.  We always put up our Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving, and I told my family that every room has to get a thorough cleaning before any decorations can come out.  Now that everything is spic and span and gleaming again, and my house is smelling like holiday food, I'm starting to feel more enthusiastic about the approaching holiday season.

Meanwhile, Bernie has been working hard on the built-ins that I designed for Lars's bedroom to accommodate his staggering collection of LEGO sets (which he refuses to disassemble, and which had previously occupied nearly every square inch of his bedroom FLOOR).  We repainted the walls in Sherwin Williams 6523 Denim, which really makes the white trim paint pop and looks much more "big kid" than the sky blue wall color that he had previously. 

Lars's Built-In LEGO Display Shelving Nearing Completion

Lars started putting LEGO sets away on the new adjustable shelving (deeper than book shelves, so they can accommodate even the largest assembled sets), but he stalled out and left piles all over the place.  I think a Mommy Intervention will happen while he's at school tomorrow -- organization is not his strong suit, and right now Bernie can't even get past the toy piles to measure for the doors that go on the bottom cabinets and the drawer fronts that go on the two drawers beneath the window seat.  At some point I'm going to make a cornice to go above the window and a boxed cushion and throw pillows for the window seat itself.  The main objective is to create order out of chaos before Christmas morning and Lars's birthday the very next day.

Although I helped Anders work on his quilt this afternoon, I have not had a chance to work on any of my own sewing projects in several days, which is making me irritable.  My applique blocks for Jingle are all finished and what with all the cleaning, holiday planning, homework assistance/supervision, and back-to-back 504 Plan meetings at the kids' school last week, I haven't gotten up to the sewing room at all.  It's really a bummer not having a hand sewing project to carry around with me.  I've promised myself to knock out the last four pieced blocks for my Jingle quilt first, and then I can start in on the large center medallion applique piece.

Where did this weekend go?

The Creme de la Cutting Table, Finished At Last!

My Finished Cutting Table: 97" x 42" top, 38 3/4" height

My cutting table is finally finished!  Well, mostly, anyway -- I still haven't gotten around to ordering the other two cabinet knobs for those red drawers, and Bernie hasn't finished the little shelf that goes on top of the red drawer base unit, either. 

The red drawers are a Kraftmaid kitchen cabinet that we ordered from Home Depot in white and then painted red ourselves.  All of the white units were built by my husband from scratch out of MDF, sized to perfectly fit the 17" x 21" double-depth (7" deep) wire baskets from ClosetMaid.  The surface is a John Boos 1 1/2" thick solid maple butcher block counter top, unfinished so it "grips" my cutting mat and won't let it slide around.  We ordered that from Butcher Block Co. online.

New Base in Place, Old Dark Brown Table Top

In the photo above, the new cutting table base is in place but the countertop hadn't been delivered yet so we just had the old top from my previous temporary cutting table in place.  See how much smaller it was?  The surface of my new cutting table is 42" x 97", and the height of the table is 38 3/4".  I'm about 5'8" tall and this puts the cutting surface about 4 or 5 inches below my elbow when I'm standing -- perfect for rotary cutting as well as for cutting with scissors.  I need lots of space in this area, because I don't just cut on my cutting table -- I pile all the fabrics and supplies I'm using around the perimeter.  I also discovered that, now that I have that fabulous 200 watt Ivanhoe Sky Chief pendant fixture from Barn Light Electric, I really like sitting at the cutting table for things like hand hemming, cutting and tracing applique templates, etc., so we incorporated an open space in the center for a stool. 

Another change from my previous cutting table designs is that this one is up against the wall rather than floating and accessible from all sides.  It won't work as well for basting quilts, but I only have to do that a couple of times each year and I think I can come up with a temporary setup for that when the need arises.  Meanwhile, I gained back a lot of floor space by putting the table against the wall.

I really love the built-in storage in this table.  I keep my scissors, rotary cutters, cutting templates, and tailor's ham in the red drawers.  I have plenty of room for my fabric stash in those breathable wire bins, and I have ClosetMaid metal base units with more wire bins at the back of the table, on both sides.  No wasted space!  I really love how this turned out.  The lighter color of the maple surface (compared to the dark brown finish on the old tabletop I had before) reflects light without any glare whatsoever, and it will last forever. 

As you can see, a lot of thought went into planning this table.  The size, location, lighting, materials and finishes were selected with great deliberation and care.  A lot of thought was NOT given to the weight of a 97" x 2" solid maple countertop, or to how we would get this behemoth up the stairs to the studio once it arrived.  According to the Bill of Lading from the commercial freight carrier, this countertop weighs 364 lbs!  Yet somehow, Bernie and I managed to get it up the stairs, around the corner to the studio, and then heaved up onto the base without damaging the butcher block, the walls, or either of our backs.  I think this must be one of those phenomenon where women acquire a burst of superhuman strength in an emergency situation, like when a car must be lifted from a child, or when a long-awaited countertop must be lifted onto the cutting table base. 

So, next?  Well, the little shelf surface for the unfinished top of the red base cabinet needs to be made, painted, and installed.  That will be a great place to store the extension bed for my big, bad Bernina sewing machine.  I'd like to find a more comfortable stool.  Also, once I have emptied the shelving unit on the adjacent wall and moved it to the other side of the room, we can install some white pegboard on the walls adjacent to the cutting table for storage of my acrylic rulers and machine embroidery hoops.  No wasted space!  I also have another piece of furniture in this room that I want to repaint and repurpose for storage.  But meanwhile, I've been working on the design for a new, improved sewing cabinet with back-to-back work stations.  Stay tuned...

No Painted Brick Houses for Rebecca

Yesterday my husband innocently queried, "What color should I paint our shutters?"  Ah, thinks me, what color, indeed?  So I went outside, across the cul-de-sac, and gazed thoughtfully at the family abode for awhile.  I had been asked for input.  My creative vision had been called to action!  Yes, loves -- Bernie started it.  For it's no fun at all to choose a paint color for shutters when one is constricted by a sea of reddish-orange brick: the only attractive(?) options are going to be black, blackish-brown, or a very dark green.  But who says the bricks have to STAY reddish-orange?  And, if we (and by that I mean HE) were to paint them, what impact would that have on our curb appeal, hmmm?


What My Brick Might Look Like Painted

The Boring Red Brick Persists...

But alas -- my husband does not WANT to paint our house.  He choked out something like, "Do you know how much that would cost in paint alone?  Do you have any idea how LONG that would take?  I was only going to paint the SHUTTERS!!"

 

And so, friends, another design dream dies and fades away, and I find myself looking aghast at the time and wondering where my afternoon went.  Hopefully your day was more productive than mine was!

 

Updated July 18th, 2013: I no longer want to paint my house.  I don't like how the painted brick looks with my peaked roofline.  So the hours spent on that rendering weren't wasted, after all -- I saved myself the expense and heartache of having the house painted and THEN realizing I didn't like it after all. 

I Have a Design Wall!

Design Wall Installed!

Yay -- I finally have a design wall in my sewing studio!  See my lonely little block up there?  I'm hoping to get more of those done next week, after the madness of the school theatre production wraps up this weekend.

My design board is a 4' x 8' sheet of foam insulation board from Lowe's Home Improvement, and I decided to wrap it with English Bump drapery interlining because I had a partial bolt of it sitting around.  English bump is 100% cotton, thick like table felt, but with more of a "bumpy" texture to it, so I knew it would be perfect for sticking blocks and fabric pieces even without pins.  I like to use English Bump for all of my silk draperies because it creates a gorgeous drapery with substantial body and luxurious thickness, the interlining provides excellent UV protection for silk, and it's also a great insulator and sound muffler.  I think it runs somewhere between $12-16 per yard, but like I said, I have a bolt of it on hand that I don't need for anything in the immediate future so it's free-to-me!  For my design wall, I also love that the bump is so similar in color to my walls so it doesn't jump out at me.  It's also so soft and smooth, like an expensive blanket, so you might catch me rubbing my face against the design wall like a kitty cat if I'm having a rough day...  ;-)



Close-Up of Fuzzy English Bump on Design Wall

We used a permanent spray adhesive (outside!) to adhere the bump fabric to the foam insulation board.  Then we wrapped the raw fabric edges to the back side, secured them with duct tape, and my husband used industrial-strength Velcro hook and loop tape to secure it to my wall.  I wish it was wider but this is my only full height wall in the room that isn't broken up by windows, and as you can see, I can't go any wider because of the ceiling slope.  I'm going to use a step stool to position things on the upper portion of the design wall when I need that space.  Oh, and one more thing -- the design wall is opposite several windows, but I have ceramic UV film on all of them to protect my fabrics and furnishings from the sun without blocking out my natural daylight. 

Several people have asked me about the UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) that I use for my computerized sewing machine, and I'm planning to put together a post about that soon.  I just need to do a little research and fact-checking first to make sure I'm not contributing to the abundant misinformation already out there on the Internet.

What's next for my studio remodel?  Well, now that I've got my design wall, we need to enlarge the cutting area, build in additional storage beneath, and find the perfect surface for the cutting table.  One step at a time...

New Sewing Goodies & Studio Remodeling Update

I'm not usually one for broadcasting personal information about myself via car decals.  In fact, I only put the kids' school magnet on my car because they give these out when you contribute to the capital fundraising campaign, and I wanted to show support for the school and encourage other parents to contribute as well.  The little star on the other side of my license plate is from the police benevolent fund, another cause that I support.  However, you will never see stick figure families, monogram decals, or magnets advertising where we go on vacation, which sports teams we support, or which activities the kids participate in emblazoned all over the back of my car.  I was firmly anti-decal...  Until I saw this at a quilt shop yesterday:

Decorated: Quilt or Die!

Look what I got for my car!! Isn't that hysterical?  Skull and crossbones from a distance, but when you get closer you see that it's a skull-shaped pin cushion with button eyes, a bow on its head, and an open scissors instead of bones.  I love it!  My boys got a kick out of it, too.  My mother is the only one who doesn't like it; she thinks it's "weird."  Bernie put it on for me, and assured me that he can get it off later if I ever get tired of it.

I found this at the 2nd closest Bernina dealer to me, Sew Much Fun in Lowell, NC.  I bought my machine from the Bernina dealer 5 minutes from where I live, but he's more of a sew-and-vac shop, whereas Sew Much Fun is a full-on quilt shop with lots and lots of beautiful fabric, specialty notions and threads, embroidery stabilizers, etc.  Sew Much Fun is only about 30 minutes away from me as long as I time the trip to avoid rush hour, and I went there yesterday armed with a list of fabrics and hand applique supplies for Erin Russek's Jingle Block of the Month quilt. 

I was disappointed that Sew Much Fun didn't have many Christmas fabrics left to choose from for my Jingle project, but I did find most of the applique supplies I needed as well as several different interfacing and stabilizing options for my silk machine embroidery project.  To my delight, they did have the Bernina Deco 330 Adapter in stock that I needed for attaching my Multiple Spool Holder to my new 750 QE sewing machine.  She also had the little rubber gripper part to retrofit my #18 Button Sew On presser foot (this part comes standard on the new #18 feet as shown at left, and it prevents the button from sliding out of position while you're sewing it on by machine).  I have saved my favorite purchase of the day for last: a lovely new sewing throne:

It's the Bernina sewing chair, and honestly, I had to have it because it's red.  Even if it wasn't extremely comfortable and more fully adjustable than any other sewing chair I've tried, its redness alone would have ensured that one of these chairs eventually made it home to my studio.  The teal one I had previously looked terrible with my red cabinet, and I had considered reupholstering or slipcovering it.  A slipcover might slide around and annoy me on a sewing chair and really, reupholstering would cost more than a new chair.  Bernie had been complaining about sitting on a hard plastic folding chair in my studio, so I moved the teal chair over to the workstation shared by my serger and laptop, where my husband camps out with his iPad while I'm sewing.  Perfect solution!

While we're on that topic, here's what my studio looks like today:

Stalled Studio Remodeling Project  :-(

...And here's what still needs to happen before I can stop nagging my husband about it:

As you can see, I have already attached the Multiple Spool Holder with the adapter bracket.  Yippee!  The next thing that needs to happen is the building of the permanent cutting table.  Right now I have a temporary setup with a kitchen drawer base between metal wire mesh drawer units, with an old Pottery Barn dining table top for the surface.  The surface is too small, and although I like the wire mesh bins for fabric storage, I don't like the way they slide off the rails to the back and front and land on the floor.  I'd rather have them in sturdy wood or MDF cubbies, sized to fit, with additional storage built in all the way around the new, larger cutting table surface.  I've decided on masonite for the cutting table surface, which is what the existing sewing cabinet surface is made of, and I think it needs to be about 48" x 76".  I find the masontie not quite slippery enough for free-motion quilting, but it would be perfect on the cutting table to prevent my cutting mats from slipping.

Once the permanent cutting table has been built, I'll be able to determine whether my sewing cabinet can move any closer to the cutting table without it getting too cramped.  Bernie can install a floor outlet for cords beneath the sewing cabinet once we're sure that's where it's going to stay.  I hate that plastic folding table behind my cabinet, but I need the extra surface area to support large quilts and for staging and planning purposes.  What I dislike about the plastic table is its ugliness and wasted space beneath, where I pile all sorts of supplies and equipment that has no other home -- creating a lot of visual clutter.  So the sewing cabinet will be expanded to the back with additional built in storage for my embroidery module and other items built in.  The new sewing cabinet surface will NOT be masonite as I indicated on my rendering; that was a typo.  I think it will be MDF with some kind of Formica laminate top, and I want it to have breadboard-style pullouts on the front, to the left and right of the sewing machine, that can be used as mini cut and press stations for paper piecing projects.  I also want to go back to the airlift I was using before with my Artista 200/730E.  With the old machine, I had to lean on top of the machine in order to get the lift to move from one position to another, but I think it will work better with the heavier, 30 pound 750 QE machine.  In any case, the new electric lift we installed is driving me nuts because it doesn't have the capability to program stop positions.  So it lifts the machine shelf too high, then too low, then too high... 

We'll try to get as much storage as we can beneath the sewing cabinet and cutting table, and then address any leftover storage needs that remain.  The wooden unit that you see to the left of the cutting table now needs to go.  The shelves are not useful sizes for storing the items that I need to find homes for, and the length of this bookshelf extends too far to the left, getting in the way of the large design wall that I want on that wall.  It's the only wall where I can do a design wall because of the steeply sloped ceiling and the window on the opposite wall.  Pegboard will go on the wall to the right and/or to the left of the cutting table for ruler storage, and hooks will go on one side of my sewing cabinet for hanging my embroidery hoops.

Scalamandre Stravagante in Color 01, a 24-screen print, $399 per yard

I'm kidding about the Scalamandre drapery valance. Probably. Well, we'll see. I do love that fabric -- the colors and details are so gloriously vivid, and look at that vase! -- but the price point is way out of whack, even for me, considering this is the sewing room...  If I did use this fabric in my sewing room, I'd do a different kind of window treatment so the fabric could be applied flat instead of gathered into swags.  That way I would need just a yard or two, and the gorgeous print would be much better appreciated on a flat fabric treatment as opposed to gathering it up in swags.  In any event, we're a LONG way from window treatments for this room -- I just couldn't bear to leave the window naked in my little design picture.

We're off to church for Good Friday soon.  Lars is the acolyte, so we can't be late -- and that means I'd better figure out what I'M going to be wearing, as opposed to what my windows will be wearing! 

Happy Easter, Happy Passover, and Happy Spring, everyone!