moving up upgrades

i've been rearranging and organizing in my sewing room. it's still a complete hodge podge of a space, with a lot of mismatched furnishings, but it's getting cleaner and more functional.

by the look of the two shelves nearly full and the stack on the floor i still have to refold and shelve, i'd say heather bailey wins around here. soooo many good prints in these collections! it just makes me happy to sit with them, admire the colors and patterns, and dream.

in the in-process photo above you can see that i also made a place for a full design wall behind my machine. of course it's already full with wips, but i'm really happy it's there and not falling off of something else anymore.

what brought on the big rearrange and resulting cleanse (because i actually have been culling!), was a few more bookcases becoming available from other rooms in the house. there used to be 6 assorted white bookcases in my master bedroom, which we recently remodeled. we put a few in here a while ago, and after installing more built-ins in other parts of the house, there were 2 more available for the sewing room. only i didn't have the wall or floorspace for them.

i decided to look up instead! after measuring, i found out the shelves were exactly tall enough to stack to the ceiling as long as we gave them a few inches away from the wall to clear the moldings. i got my sons and an almost-son to help me out - they heaved and i directed.

it was a bit scary, but it worked! and i'm pretty chuffed about having fabric to the ceiling. i've been able to get almost everything out of boxes and on a shelf. yes, i have to climb a ladder to access what's at the top, but i don't mind that a bit. it's much better to have everything out and visible.

i've come across all sorts of things since i began shuffling the room around. for instance, this stack of fabric and some already cut pieces that i clearly had a plan for. but i can't remember what it was going to be! darn it.

i should always, always make notes for myself!

i was just going to throw everything up on a shelf, but that wasn't working too well, so i began folding things so they fit nicely. it's taking time, but i like this much better. i'm also sorting and culling as i go, and rediscovering lost items. i've come to the conclusion that a large fabric hoard is a lot of work and was a bad idea. but i'm doing my best to work with it and find a new home or a plan for everything. i've already given a suitcase full to a pair of little girls who were thrilled to get their own stash, and i have several more boxes of items i'm donating to the local guild.

i just remind myself that all this purchasing at least taught me some things. it was an expensive lesson but no use beating myself up about that now. i love mari kondo's thought that everything we've acquired has a purpose, and sometimes that purpose was to fulfill a need at the time or to teach us something. we don't necessarily have to use it as it was intended for it to have been useful to us, and now we can let it go.

moving forward from here.
and up.
up to the ceiling!

making room

so, the sewing won out. no surprise there! this room is officially becoming a sewing room, no longer a split-personality dining/sewing room. it doesn't look too different yet and there is a lot of work to go, but i've begun the process of transitioning this room into a full-fledged, dedicated sewing room. and begun bringing everything down here from my bawthroom sewing space. if i'm going to have a sewing room, all my stash is going to be in it. so far, i've shortened the dining table (which will be leaving eventually) and turned it around. i moved my low shelves to create a cutting space (on the right). i want to build a new pressing table that's better proportioned to the room and will allow me to store boxes under it, but for now the ironing board is still holding it up. the design walls have been propped up on the actual walls where they will go but still need attaching and some extending. there is still so much to do. this weekend my dad is supposed to put together some more shelves for me to go under that back design wall. this is the tip of the iceberg, but it already feels good to have it started and to know where i'm heading.

something i realized while moving everything around: i have way too much fabric. it's helped curb my buying appetite tremendously to once again rifle through what i already own.

there is another new addition to the room, too: a sewing space for d4, my bestest little sewing buddy.

 last week, we finally got back my old Little (Pink) Brother machine, which i'm giving to her (but still retaining rights to). poor little (pink) brother fell out of the back window of the suburban last fall and has needed repair ever since. frankly, i was surprised and relived it could be salvaged after a four foot fall onto the driveway. but it's all better now and ready for her to sew on. i put a small table and chair in one corner of the room and this is her spot.

she's been enthusiastically trying out lots of different stitches and supposedly practicing sewing a straight line. i have to say that i didn't realize how much i love and value the auto thread cutter and knee lift bar on my juki until i was helping her get set up on this machine. goodness, what a lot of time is spent in those simple functions when you don't have the auto option!

 she picked out a mini charm pack to make into a doll quilt and had so much fun laying it out on the design wall.

i love watching her work and listening to all her humming or funny comments to herself while she plays with fabric.

sharing this space with her makes it that much more enjoyable.

at the moment and a serious dilemma

 it's been a while since i've had a finish. i'm right in the middle of a couple of projects, some which are approaching the finish of phase 1 - piecing the top/making a flimsy.

 "dreaming easy" is getting it's rows pieced together. unfortunately, i sewed one of them on backwards last week so i'm at a standstill until i unpick the whole darn row.

 my triangle quilt, which really needs an official name, is developing a split personality. i find i have two types of rows: bold, bright colored ones (top and bottom) and gentler, softer rows with less contrast between the triangles used, like all the golden bits in between. i am either heading towards 2 separate quilts or two sides with slightly different colors because the bright ones are not blending too well, especially the one at the bottom of this photo. this fabric pull was a branch out for me and i'm learning about it as i go. i'm curious to see where i end up when all the experimenting and play is done.

poor old penny patch 2.0 is begging to come out of the corner of shame. after i failed to realize i was sewing the directional prints all the wrong way, i stuck the design half wall containing the laid out blocks in my formal parlor, facing toward the wall to help preserve it from child-induced disasters or simple curiosity. this also greatly enhance the appearance of this "nice" room of the house, can't you tell? three months in the corner is long enough, so the other day i pulled it out to consider what needs to be done.

 it wasn't looking too good on the other side of that design wall! i opted to remove all the blocks and just start over with the layout once i get all the new pieces cut. in the meantime, i put "dreaming easy" up on the wall since there wasn't any spare room for it anywhere else.

that's all that's in the works at the moment.

 now here's my dilemma.

 my dining sewing space is hardly recognizable as a dining room anymore and is not easily converted for use in it's original mode. in fact, it's overrun with sewing and looks terrible. this is one of the first spaces of our home you see when you enter the front door. it's simply not attractive. even when i clean it up, which i do regularly, after an hour or two of me working in here, it looks a mess again. not to mention that fabric and boxes "hiding" all over the place even when cleaned up doesn't look nice.

my poor husband has been pretty patient with the whole scenario, as much as he dislikes it. the other day he said to me, "we need to enclose this and fully convert it to a sewing room for you." on the one hand, i love that idea. the location in the house is just where i would like it to be if only i could close it off from view when wanted. being able to make this a more functional sewing space would be dreamy, too.

but then i loose my formal dining room, which i haven't really had for over a year anyway. i'm not using it as the dining room but the idea of forever giving up that option is hard to formalize. before the sewing came in i had this space almost exactly where i wanted it for a nice dining room. i like to use it for sunday dinners for our family, large family gatherings at holidays, and the occasional, rare entertaining spree. i've collected lots of white ceramic wares which are housed in this room. the genealogy wall, with our family tree fan chart and heirloom photos is also really special to me. i don't know where i would move these two collections. the 12 seat dining set is a whole other matter entirely.

in reality, this became a sewing space a long time ago and i should probably just give in. a set of sliding barn doors across the front will give me a space i can open or close as needed. then i can get to work making it a truly functional sewing space, which will also open up room in my bawthroom if i can bring all my stash down here.

i don't think i need to ask any sewing enthusiasts what they would do because that's pretty obvious.
oh, decisions, decisions!

harp space

i recently saw someone post a photo on instagram of how she could fit a coffee in the huge harp space of her sewing machine. it made me look at my harp space and see what was there. juki definitely has a lot of room to spare. in fact, i have a regular assortment of helpful bits that pretty much live in the harp space so i can access them quickly and easily.

• a change of thread and matching bobbin
• pins, usually cast off during the sewing of one piece, waiting to be used in another
• my dush brush, for cleaning the interior whenever i change the bobbin
• mini ruler, for checking seam allowances or other small measuring needs
• snips

you can see that when i'm working on piecing and small projects these items easily stay out of the way of the working needle area. quilting, of course, is another story. that's when everything moves to the side for a while.

so what's in your harp space?
or what do you keep right closest at hand? and how?

indian summer bliss

while i was plugging away at horrid straightline quilting on "bandwidth" all through october and into november, i kept eyeing this tempting pile of loveliness so fetchingly stacked in front of my AMH rose print atop a shelf in my sewing room. as much as i liked my colors in "bandwidth," orange and navy were getting old and quite boring. i longed for fresh, pretty colors the way one longs for spring in the dead of winter.

i kept telling this pile, "soon, soon!"

but i also really, really desperately want my kids to each have their mama-made quilt done and wrapped around them. so i kept at those not-so-straight lines. endlessly.

then one day the lines were done.

did i rush straight to this pile? that was my plan. but on the morning of my freedom i passed by my penny patch 2.0 pile, which was stuffed in a bag and set in my bawthroom sewing area months ago. sure enough, i cut into the penny patch pile that night instead of the triangle quilt stack.

but the next day, a blissful friday of nothing much but sewing, i alternated back and forth between the two projects. if i felt like triangles, i did triangles. if i wanted squares, penny patch it was. that afternoon i decided i didn't have enough room on my design half-wall, so i just up and made another one.

 my current half-wall simply leans up against the room wall, so i figured it was easy enough to slide one behind the other when not in use. the excess batting on the first wall wasn't quite enough to cover the second wall fully, but it's functional for now and i am considering sewing together batting scraps to make up the difference. and someday, when i get my dedicated sewing room, i'll have one whole wall when i attach these two, one above the other.

i got to sew most of saturday, not just that friday, which was a welcome treat after very little sewing time for most of the fall months. i managed to get two more rows of triangles together. the top row had me holding my breath a bit because the ditsy floral is a silky, somewhat slippery cotton lawn rather than a quilting weight. add the slippery lawn to a bias cut and there's plenty of potential for trouble. but so far so good!

there are now three rows done and they are looking a bit clashy as is. i hope when i get the other rows in between them all will play nice together. if not, there's room for rejects on the back, right? this quilt will have such a different feel than rachel's original, but i am liking it thus far. she called her quilt "indian blanket." with the golden and rosey colors in this one and the warm, extended summer we've had around here, i think mine feels more like an "indian-summer blanket."

all this bliss sewing has been so refreshing. soon i'll have to get that "bandwidth" trimmed and bound. then the wonky stacked coins will need to be finished for s1. in the meantime, i'm going to keep my indian summer sewing of triangles and penny patch 2.0 inching forward whenever i need a break from orange and navy in boy prints.

linking up with lee's wip wednesday at freshly pieced.

around the sewing room

 for whatever reason, as i was walking past my dining/sewing room the other day, i decided to pause a moment and take photos of the various bits and pieces of the room. sometimes i like to just look at different parts of my sewing process or set up, and consider the individual components of my hobby. as one who likes to capture moments and pieces in pixels, i just decided to photograph it all, too.

"bandwidth" has occupied my sewing time for more than a month, and, happily, is finally quilted and awaiting binding. yay! time to move on to something besides orange and navy. also captured here: the way the afternoon sun moves across my sewing area and has to be blocked if i want to work (hence the sewing machine cover in front of the machine); the endless supply of soccer balls that my kids always kick into (and leave) in my sewing space.

 all the little tools and necessities i keep close at hand by the machine: pin cushions for various pins and needles, a tray for tidiness, indispensable snips, ott light, my tool caddy. and a bracelet i shed while sewing. i always seem to do that.

 my recipe stand-turned-pattern-and-ruler-holder, currently sporting the gypsy wife pattern, photos of various wips that i use for reference, and my quilting sketch book/idea journal where i work out my ideas and maths.

 design wall where s1's wonky coins quilt awaits (so there is lots more navy and orange in my near future after all), a msih-mash of scraps where d4 was playing at making a quilt top for "a sick little child", and the beginnings of my indian blanket quilt taunt me.

 the pressing board area: gypsy wife blocks all gathered in a pile to make room on the design wall (how they landed here, i'm not sure?); d4's pile of scraps and pins for that "sick child" quilt she's designing nearby; rulers that were flattening blocks; a little chicken costume shed late on halloween and still hanging around; something super precious in that white bag on the floor - how did that get here?; and some bins of scraps and charity quilt yardage waiting their turn.

lastly, just above the cutting mat: some dishes that hold my cutting scraps (hsts in the green dish and little strips in the white); marking and cutting tools i want at hand but out of reach of little fingers;  and the rulers presently in use at the cutting mat. oh, and something special hiding behind there, to be highlighted another day.

what are the little stories your space tells?

still lifes

 this little still life accumulated all on it's own in my sewing area. something about the colors and everyday objects makes me smile. it tells a bit of a story, doesn't it? there are some recent notion and thread purchases, removed basting pins set down when i couldn't find the jar, and a tube of my favorite lip gloss, all hurriedly set down in passing on separate occasions. i like to keep clutter to a minimum in the sewing/dining area, but bits and bobs do tend to collect periodically.

this is another little gathering that happened, which is not as pretty, but tells two stories.

the flower was presented to me by my son, s2, after he and his dad took a bike ride last weekend. "oh, mom! we picked you a flower." the mr pulls something out of his rear pocket (really). "uh, well, it looked a lot better before dad sat on it!" it was sweet and very funny.

the lightbulb was a replacement bulb for my bistro lights in the courtyard. it came in a two pack, which the baby discovered. she somehow managed to open the packaging and get both bulbs out. then she gleefully clinked them together. her brother saw what she was doing and tried to stop her, but didn't make it to her in time. he was able to catch her hands after she had smashed the delicate glass of the first bulb. i ran to answer his yells for help and was able to further immobilize her hands as she was trying to pick up the shiny pieces of glass, but we couldn't hold her and get the end of the bulb out of her hand, too. dad had to join the effort. it took all three of us to remove the bulb end from her hand and get her out of the area unharmed. then she burst into sobs because she didn't understand why we'd ruined her fun and were frantically yelling to "let go!" since she wasn't hurt, it was rather comical, too. in the end. the unbroken bulb was hastily set down on the cakestand while i cleaned up the shards.

so what's laying around your sewing area and what story does it tell?

wet weekend ready

 yesterday was just plain weird around here. i was sick, but i wasn't. honest to goodness, as long as i was sewing i didn't feel queasy and didn't notice my headache. the mr though i might have the flu, though, so ordered me not to touch anyone. that totally worked in my quilting progress favor while making kid control difficult. there were lots of air hugs and kisses thrown back and forth, but the little toads just ignored my verbal instructions when they felt like it.

my oldest daughter has been given notice that if her dog isn't properly potty (yard) trained to poo in the right spot by the end of the year, she (the dog) is leaving. the training involves the dog being tied to her poop spot until she goes. but we have the stubbornest dog on the planet, who wouldn't clear her bowels until around dinner time. hence we had a daughter stuck by her dog and a dog barking incessantly all day long, and well into the night. poor neighbors.

the toddler decided that now she is two, she's no longer staying in her crib. she climbed right out several times for hours after bedtime. the evening ended with her being put in a portacrib she can't escape, in the middle of the family room. decisions for adjustment need to be made now.

and it rained all evening and night.

with all this upheaval going on, i couldn't get to sleep. so about 12:45, i gave up and started messing with fabric and the quilting blogosphere for a few hours. i feel completely turned upside down and disoriented.

this morning has dawned gloriously cloudy and wet. the younger half of the family is snail hunting in the impromptu ponds created by the rain.

there are snails and light-catching water droplets everywhere. the liquid gems look especially lovely in the ripening citrus, making the fruit look fresh and juicy. only a few more weeks and it will be ready!

 
as for the inside of the house, i may not have been touching my children yesterday, but i did lay a hand on my sewing area. just look how clean i got it! that end of the table hasn't been clear since before Halloween. i've got my cutting mat hiding under the table cloth. there is still a bit of flotsam to put away, but it's looking respectable in comparison to the recent norm.

i made sure not to include penny patch in the photo too much becaue i'm sure everyone is as sick of looking at that as i am. yes, sad to say, but like all torrid love affairs, my obsession with this quilt is quickly turning to . . . ick. or maybe impatience. how else do i say it? having conquered the layout of the quilt, i'm heartily sick of sewing it together. about 2/5ths of the top are done. i just want to move on and see something besides the penny patch. although i suspect learning to dogwood quilt it will help revive the joy before we settle into a cozy but less passionate relationship.

my goal for this weekend is to get twirly back under the fmq foot and finished off.
the penny patch fully pieced, too.
i also want to dive into this box, my late-night puzzle when i couldn't sleep.

see, i had a simple pattern sketched out so i could quickly put together a quilt for my second son. it was made from a jellyroll and a few large cuts of yardage. he's not really that into quilts and would like anything i threw at him, so fast and simple (just to get it done and in his hands) was my plan.

however, when i looked at it last night and broke open the jellyroll, i realized i have changed as a quilter in the months since i designed this and bought the fabric. just this month i decided i don't prefer working with a single fabric line as much as i like mixing it up. and simple was good, but i wanted to take it up a notch creatively with this quilt. i didn't want the quilt coming out looking like one large pieced line of fabric that i threw together just so i could make my son a quilt. this is going to be his mamma made and i want it to be a bit more special now. i'm not going to let the Christmas deadline cheat him or me.

i toyed with a few ideas and fell asleep thinking maybe i could make a boxy, male-ish version of lolly lolly. that would be cool. this morning i pulled a few more fabrics to mix in with the jellyroll for some added depth. but i'm kind of nixing the lolly lolly boy idea. i think it's back to my original design with some modifications and a trip to the store for some solids to use as a field for the strips. only time will tell! it's back to the experimentation/infatuation stage.

with this wet, cozy weekend before me, i think i'll get some of this knocked out!

my making Christmas update:

d1 - "plus a diamond" needs handbinding

s1 - wonky stacked coins not started

d2 - "taite" needs handbinding

s2 - "bandwidth" not started

d3 - "twirly" is in process of quilting

d4 - flowered pillow sham not started

d5 - "paris daydreams" flimsy

penny patch qal - laid out and piecing top 

what a junkie

this photo is to taunt liz and encourage her in our naughty purchase habits

so i've been acting like a total fabric/quilting junkie for the last few days. my mr. accompanied our eldest son on a scout campout (what an awesome dad!) and i took full advantage of his absence to do my thing as much as i pleased.

day one, i congratulated myself on taking the kids to swim lessons clear across town (normally his job) and feeding them two wonderful meals (they got breakfast themselves). this completely justified putting the little ones in front of the tv on a not-tv day so i could sew and staying up too late exploring quilty blogland. all-in-all, i felt pretty balanced. but i also woke-up with a sewing/computer hangover.

day two, i fed myself spiritually as i tried to overcome the hangover. i think i was dehydrated. and my poor hands and arms were leaning toward tendinitis. so i made my mom give me an in-depth arm/hand massage when she came over. then i proceeded with my plans to do nothing but sew and sew some more.

however, when i approached my nice, concealed dining room crafting spot, i realized it wasn't so . . . nice . . . or concealed. my, that happens fast!

 yes, it was a room full of rubbish. i knew something needed to be done before i could sew in it. there were several projects lounging around in store bags and other miscellaneous, non-sewing items on the table. i decided to head to joann, etc to fetch some more project bins and the floss i needed to finish off my nephew's 4sq blanket. and return some decor items that didn't work out at marshall's next door while i was at it. this was very ambitious of me.

however, i was not ambitious enough to change clothes to do it. that was above and beyond what was required. so i went in my pjs: a nice white t-shirt and grey yoga pants. it didn't totally scream "she's in her pajamas!", thus it was acceptable to me. i slipped on my sporty comfy mom shoes to complete the outfit. i considered quickly tying a scarf around my neck but figured that would totally give me away as trying to look like i'd made some efforts at grooming when i hadn't. i'd share a picture, but it was still too scary a sight to post on a blog dedicated to pretty sewing stuff. just imagine, if you will.

i was so good at both stores. no purchases beyond those i went for. i think i was blessed to not be attracted to any items i didn't need because i can't explain it otherwise. i was drawn to a few new craft books, but refrained, knowing i could get them cheaper online. to be perfectly honest, i did also snag this:

i have a sometimes crush on mollie makes, a british crafting mag. sometimes it's too kitschy for me. this issue was perfect. i knew daughter #1 would love the doggie finger puppets. so it went in the basket, too. other than that, i stuck to the plan: returns (money back?!), project bins, floss. period.

okay, quick sidetrack here: while i was looking up the link to the mag, look what i spied on their site.

 aren't these ladies adorable? they are a new betty doll to be featured in the next issue. i guess i better keep my eyes open for it. too cute.

so i went to the store in my pjs and was a conservative shopper.

and when i got home, a neat little square package from fabric.com was sitting on my doorstep.

repeat of opening photo for reference

last week, for some really good reason i can't remember at all now, i went on fabric.com and saw a holiday weekend coupon. and i made a selection of (stacks, l to r) amy butler, some botanical and handscript prints, valori wells's "caravan", and some of anna maria horner's "loulouthi" and "field study" lines. i also got that mod orange print just for the heck of it. my favorite print, i think is the amy butler butterfly from the "alchemy" collection (on top). i think the idea i had for most of this was to make something similar to rachel (stitched in color) 's colorbrick quilt, with some modifications of my own, of course. i want to do a combo of bricks and strips. it's sketched out already in my notebook.

it was completely naughty, i know. admittedly, i'm a total junkie. my main problem, as i see it, is that my mind creates far faster than my poor little hands can. it's years ahead of the digits. if i could just make the quilts as quickly as i could design them and purchase the goods, all would be well.

back to my good deeds for the day.
i sorted that new box of fabric and got to work on the "hidden" dining room craft elements.

 i made a new basket for my fmq items. when i tried to photograph it, my bestest little sewing helper stepped in to offer her assistance. i look forward to the day she learns the skill of "putting back" in addition to "taking out." i threw my lens cap out of reach, pointing it out to her. that did the trick. she can't stand it to be off the camera.

 with her out of the way just long enough, i could properly photograph the contents of the basket: scratch paper for doodling practice, books, supreme slider, quilting needles, fm foot, some aurafil thread i've been meaning to try. everything in one spot for my next adventure.

 i put those new project bins to use and cleaned up the old ones. this stack more or less represents all the projects i've got going or plan to start soon. there are also a few that are just sorting of various kinds.

after slaving away for hours (or maybe just one), i got the room back into acceptable order. it still doesn't look like someones nice dining room, but neither does it resemble a crafting heap, either. much better.