There's a Design Wall in My Hallway Full of Deco Blocks! But it Looks, Umm, ROUGH...

First, the good news: there's a 96" x 96" design wall in my hallway across from the entrance to my sewing room, and my Deco Quilt blocks are up on the wall.  Hooray!  This is the project-in-progress that was on the design wall in my old studio in North Carolina right before I had to pack everything up and move to Florida this past December.  It's good to see those blocks out again, especially since now I can see the progress I made working on additional blocks here and there throughout the move.  Woot woot!

My Scandi Deco Bed Quilt Blocks Are Up on My Brand-New Design Wall

Now for the bad news: this new design wall did not turn out anywhere near as nice as the old one, and it's going to require immediate revision.  For one thing, we shouldn't have put it up so high -- my fault entirely, as I thought it might be nice to be able to plug a vacuum cleaner into the bottom outlet socket.  We should move it down to completely cover the outlet so it's centered nicely from top to bottom the way it's centered from side to side.

Bernie Said "Quick, Cover It Up With Your Quilt Blocks!"

Actually, what Bernie said was "I KNEW it was going to look like crap.  Cover it up with your quilt blocks so I don't have to look at it."  

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...

The New Design Wall, Take 2 + Slogging Along With FrankenWhiggish Rosebuds

Good Morning and Happy Weekend!  We've been bustling and busy since my last post.  Bernie and I drove eleven hours back up to Charlotte, North Carolina to move our youngest son Anders into a new apartment at UNC, spent some time with my mom in South Carolina, and then drove another eleven hours to get back to our new home in Naples, Florida.  We drove him up this time because we needed to get his car up there and we had a lot of stuff we were bringing for the apartment, but we'll be flying him home for breaks.  Meanwhile, the new bump drapery interlining fabric for my design wall was delivered from Amazon (this post contains affiliate links) and Bernie and I are both SO much happier with how it looks now!

96 x 96 Design Wall Wrapped with New Bump Drapery Interlining 

When I posted about the first version of this design wall last week a lot of you thought it was fine as long as it was functional, and if it was in a dedicated studio or craft space in my home where no one had to look at it besides myself, I might have agreed with you.  But I lobbied hard to get my husband on board with putting the design wall in a very prominent, public part of our home where everyone would walk past it and have to look at it all day long, every single day, and I promised that I was going to make it look GOOD there.  

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!