A Prairie Home Quilts

You are probably thinking that I’ve gotten lost in my newly arranged creative space and that’s why I haven’t posted.  Well, I do have my space rearranged and I LOVE IT, but I’m doing some temp work with the 2010 Census so I haven’t had time to enjoy my new space.  A drawback?  Not really. It does mean some extra money that I can use for shelving and storage and perhaps even a little extra for FABRIC.  So all in all, I’m okay with it.

Phase One of the redo of my creative space involves rearranging the existing furniture.  I removed a lot of the little  items that were cluttering up the space to another room for now.  As I find a new home for them, I’ll move them back in.  In Creating Your Perfect Quilting Space, Lois suggests making a scale drawing of your room and using index cards to make scale representations of your furniture pieces.  She then suggests playing with different configurations and taking pictures.  I think I have a dozen pictures…  (Yes, this is the kind of thing I love to completely waste time doing…  Sort of like coloring the same quilt design 50 different ways in EQ6 — which I’ve also been known to get caught up in.) I decided on this configuration for the first of the three phases.

The overhead lighting is a ceiling fan in the center of the room.  I have already replaced the bulbs with daylight spectrum bulbs.  I wanted my work areas centered under this overhead lighting a much as possible.

Start of the rearranging…  I emptied the corner near the closet by moving the corner cabinet to [basically] unusable space at the entrance to the room.  The upper cabinet shelves will hold decorative items and antique sewing notions.  There is some storage at the bottom of the cabinet on two shelves but they don’t hold much because of the “V” shape of the cabinet.

Ludo decided the now empty corner looked like a great place for a bath and a nap.  I disagreed. He left to find a hiding place soon after the vacuum arrived.  The small desk got moved into this corner where the first green cabinet was.  The second green cabinet stayed in place.

This is how the room looked when I got done.  The small desk on the left isn’t used for anything.  Basically it’s just being “stored” in my creative space.  I’ve since moved it out and put the rolling cart from the closet there.  I put my wooden ruler rack on top of the cart because it’s right next to the small cutting area set up on my “L” shaped sewing workspace.

I have a small clip-on lamp on the top right corner of the table where my sewing machine sits.  When it’s on, the shadow that you see on my sewing machine bed disappears.  I’ve added a divided basket on the table near the small cutting area to hold scissors, rotary cutters & miscellaneous notions.  It sort of hides the cables from the back of my computer…  I want to paint the basket so I’ll show you a picture when it’s done.

My new desk area.  Yippee! Lots of space on the left to spread out because I’m a LEFTIE. I’ve been in here several nights during the past week working on census stuff at my desk.  It’s been heavenly. See the new-to-me monitor?  It belonged to my youngest son — he gave it to me.  Everyone should have kids as great as mine. Seriously.

The dry sink is still obscuring my design wall which I don’t like/want.  If I put it on the other wall though, there’s not a lot of room to fit between it and the file cabinet when I’m trying to get to my desk.  I’m not sure what the solution is going to be.  This may be the one problem area of the redo…

And finally, the quilt rack.  This wasn’t in the room originally but I wanted to put it in here.  It holds quilts in progress and ones that need to be quilted.  It’s not the right shade of green so I’m going to paint it purple. Yep, purple is going to be my main accent color in here.  (I love color!) At the thrift store, I found the divided basket, a small saucer to hold my bobbins and a green inkwell-looking glass thingy for $1 each.

Total spent to date: $3

Tags: inspired

After discovering all the things I didn’t like about my creative space, it was time to figure out if I could do anything about those things. While I was house sitting, I had a chance to read through this book.  It was helpful. The before and after pictures were inspiring. (Yes I know, not much of a review.  My recommendation?  Check the book out of the library to see if it is worth the purchase price to you.)  Working in other quilter’s work spaces while I’m house sitting has given me some idea of things that will work for me  and what things I want to avoid.

There are space and money limitations for my redo. My room is about 11 ft x 10 ft. and there is a non-existent budget. I want to use what is already in the room if I can, but I had forgotten how much I loved my old “L” shaped desk and realize that it would be good to have that sort of set up with my sewing area.  I will need to bring in something to create the “L” shape though.  One of the reasons I want to use what is in the room is that I have personal possessions that have been packed away since 1999 and more items that haven’t seen the light of day since 2004.  (And I wonder why my life feels strangely like it’s in limbo?) I don’t want more of my life stuffed into boxes in a closet or worse yet, put out in the garage.

These are some of the other things I want to do:

1. Move the mini ironing board.
2. Set up some direct lighting on my sewing and cutting areas.
3. Create more work space on my desk.
4. Create more work space on my sewing table.
5. Be able to see the design wall from the desk and sewing table.
6. Get to the design wall easily while sewing.
7. Move my fabric into the room.
8. Organize my tools to be within easy reach of where they are most used.
9. Fix up my design wall.
10. Add some more color to the room (it’s awfully GREEN right now).
11. Organize the closet and come up with some good storage solutions.

Let’s see what I can get done on my list in the next month. Hahaha. Another list of things to do!

Thank you all for your wonderful and encouraging comments on my last post.  I have made some decisions about what to do and how I’ll accomplish my goals.  I’m going to try to get everything done in three phases.  Since I don’t have any  money right now, Phase One will start with rearranging what is already in the room.

Tags: inspired

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about my sewing space.  It’s suppose to be a creative place but most of the time when I’m in the room, it doesn’t inspire creativity.  For my birthday last year, my sweet DIL got me this wall decal.

The problem is that my soul doesn’t feel very “mended” when I’m in there sewing.  The room is not bringing me much joy…  most of the time I don’t even feel like going in there.

Hmm.  Could this be part of the problem?

I think it’s time to start asking the tough questions.  Why & What questions.  Why don’t I feel like going in there?  What is bugging me about it?  What can I do to change it so that I feel creative when I walk in to that space?  I’m even avoiding the computer in here and I used to spend a lot of time on that computer.

Hmm.  Could this be part of the problem?

While I was away, I spent some time thinking about why and what…  mostly what I don’t like about my space and what I want to do about it.

One last shot of the room in its current state.

Oh my goodness!  Look at that disgusting ironing board cover!  I know that’s what you’re thinking.  It’s okay.  I’m thinking the same thing…   Here is some more of what I want to change:

When I’m sewing,  my main light source is behind me and I have my back to my design wall.  I don’t like all the furniture around the edges of the room.  It gives me lots of floor space but I don’t need it.  I need more table space for cutting and sewing.  I want to be able to machine quilt and I can’t very well with the sewing table I’m using now.  I don’t like using my grandmother’s dry sink for the mini ironing board.  I don’t like how I have my computer desk set up and want more space to work and spread papers out.  I don’t like the curtains.  There’s a mess in the closet that has little to do with sewing and/or quilting.  My fabric stash (what little there is of it) is in another room.  My rulers, scissors and other tools are a jumble in drawers in a rolling cart in the closet.  I think that about covers it.  Oh, and I think I need some more stuff on the walls.  They are pretty bare.

I have my work cut out for me.

Tags: inspired

I’m off to house sit for about 12 days without internet access again.  Will post photos of my latest finishes when I return!

Most spam comments I get are deleted by the two programs I have installed to protect against such things. Every once in a while a spam comment sneaks through and ends up in the spam folder. Usually they are from a non-quilter trying to promote their website by commenting on one of my posts. This morning I found these two gems in the spam folder.

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Hmmm. These are from the supposed “distinguished essay writing/good custom writing service.”  I do hope that “honest students” all over America aren’t paying for essays with similar English grammar.

Okay, on to the finishes! The first three are just to the finished top stage.  I don’t have a picture of the Orange Peel topper [Improved 9 Patch] and I’m house sitting so I’ll try to get a shot of that some time next week.

This little LeMoyne Star wall hanging, Polka Dot & Paisley, I made with the scraps from the table topper.  I watched the free Jinny Beyer episode on The Quilt Show and she demonstrated a better way [than what I was doing] to put together 8 pointed stars.  So, you know, I had to try it out.  I think I’m going to hang this on the wall near the sewing machine when I get it quilted.   This next one is a class sample.  I’m going to teach a Winding Ways class at the LQS at the end of February/first part of March.

I also finished putting the binding on three scrappy quilts.  I made a Scrappy Irish Chain quilt and two matching table toppers as leader/ender projects.  My friend, Stacy at Mimi’s Quilting Cottage, quilted them for me.  I’ve already sold one of the table toppers. Here is the quilt in all it’s scrappy, crinkled goodness…

Now I’m hoping for a repeat performance of finishes for February!

Tags: 8 pointed star

I have internet access here.  Yay!  Finally a Friday update. This is an EQ6 drawing of Streak of Lightning.  I’m using scraps of plaids from a few FQ collections from long ago and some men’s shirts from the thrift store. I plan to add some applique — funky stars or flowers or something.  I haven’t quite figured that out yet.

Here it is starting to come together.  But wait…  It’s not really coming together.  It looks kind of wonky.  Those large setting triangles aren’t fitting in so well.  UGH.  I did something wrong here, I’m sure…

This is The Setting Triangle ruler.  I really like this ruler.  I don’t have one yet, but I used one at the last place I was house sitting. (There are great advantages to house sitting for fellow quilters…)  When my setting triangles weren’t fitting just so, I suspected the ruler…  but no, it was the person wielding the rotary cutter that was in error.  Yup, four yards of fabric all miscut because I didn’t read closely enough where it says UNFINISHED SIZE on the ruler.  I used the markings based on the FINISHED SIZE of my square not the unfinished size.  DOUBLE UGH.  This one project will now become two.  [I certainly need more projects in my Parade of Projects lineup, don't I?] I’ll continue making the scrappy triangles and get some more fabric (maybe I can find a black I like this time) and I’ll make smaller HSTs to put together to go with the setting triangles I have cut from the brown fabric.  [sheesh]

On a somewhat related but different quilt topic, the EQ6 design above morphed into another idea while I was playing around with the orientation of the HST.  Here’s a glimpse of the progress of that project.  I’m calling it Bold Streak.  And, yes, the setting triangles for this project are cut correctly.

While I’m sewing together these two tops, I’m working on the blocks for a third top made with Variable Stars. These work perfectly as leader/enders as I only have to pin the last two seams.  The picture shows the first 16 blocks. I’m making this Variable Star and several other quilt tops with the same scraps as Streak of Lightning above. I actually have 25 or 26 done now…  more than half of what I need.  Soon I’ll have another project to the point of putting the top together.  I have three others in my Parade of Projects (listed in the post below) to that point.  I am making progress!

I purchased one of the latest Inklingo collections shortly after it became available — The Deluxe Orange Peel.  The blocks that can be made — Improved 9 Patch, Alabama Beauty & Orange Blossom – were just too tempting.  I printed some shapes and am hand piecing a small project.  [Still adding to that Parade of Projects!]  This is the start of the first Improved 9 Patch block.

And because I like when Cathi shows them, the back:

Tags: my patterns, scrap quilt

Because I know that I’m more productive in the long run if I work on multiple projects at the same time and taking into account my current need to be more productive, I’m finding it necessary to work round-robin-style on the following projects:

1. Leftovers Again
2. Plaid Bargello
3. Striped Shirt Boxes
4. Crooked Path Table Topper
5. Scrappy Patchwork of the Crosses
6. Nevada
7. Baby Girl Bug
8. Variable Star
9. Plaid 9 Patch
10. Rocky Glen
11. Streak of Lightning
12. Bold Streak
13. Field of Flowers
14. Rose Basket
15. Layer Cake

Beginning this week, here’s to being more productive.  Stay tuned for updates. . .  assuming, of course, that I’ll have internet access during my next two house sitting jobs.  Have I mentioned how frustrating it is not to have internet access while I’m house sitting? Otherwise it’ll just be an update. Singular.

Tags: inspired, my patterns