A Prairie Home Quilts

Phase Two is complete. The fabric was moved from my closet onto the shelves I bought and put in the closet in this room.  You can see a few of the plastic bins holding WIPs up on the top shelf.

I moved the dry sink onto the wall away from my design wall.  On paper it looked like it would be a tight squeeze between it and the file cabinet near the desk — like I’d have to turn sideways to fit — but I can fit through there just fine.  I’ve decided to make a pressing board that will cover the top of the dry sink using Sharon Schamber’s video instructions. That will be a Phase Three project.

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I bought two 4′ x 8′ sheets of styrofoam to use as a design wall surface.  The wall slopes down to 7′ 6″ though so I need to cut them down and mark and cut out the spot for the electrical outlet.  I’ve purchased gray fleece to cover them.  Another Phase Three project.

I needed more table space if I plan to do more machine quilting.  Mom had this table she got at a yard sale for $5 in the garage.  Her plan was to refinish it but she said I could have it.  It measures 48″ long x 30″ wide.

I moved the Singer treadle tables — one on the left to use as a small cutting surface while I’m piecing.  The other on the right which, as you can see, is sort of a catch-all space.  [You thought I was so neat, right?] You can see more plastic bins holding WIPs on the right behind the rulers in the picture.  I use these so that I can just take whatever I want to work on with me while I’m house sitting.  Makes it easy to just grab a few projects and go.  The white cart under the table is not working for me as I had hoped.  I need to find a home for it in another room.

Ludo [AKA Freckle Lips or Mr. Pink Ears] is allowed to sleep on the treadle tables…

When I move the sewing machine off to the left, I have a nice space for cutting fabric on the table.  Unfortunately Ludo loves to sleep right where I’m working and I have to keep moving him back to the treadle table.

Total spent to date: Basket $1, Inkwell $1, Saucer $1, Shelf Unit $20, Love Plaque $4, Colored Bottles $20, 2 Sheets Styrofoam $20, Fleece $25, Duct Tape $4, Double Sided Tape $5 = $101

Need to Buy: 2 new cutting mats, goose neck lamp, wall rack for rulers, purple paint, quilt rack for wall over dry sink.

Phase Three projects: Pressing surface, design wall, move out white cart, find permanent place to keep Singer 401 and overhead projector, hang ruler rack and quilt rack, more wall decorations.

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

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.

This is the pattern I laid out in EQ5 after joining the Great Hexagon Quilt Along. Some of the quilters there are doing a diamond hexagon mosaic quilt based on this antique one. [Click on the picture there to see the larger view of this quilt!] The pattern name for this mosaic hexagon quilt is Martha Washington’s Flower Garden according The Quilt Index.

I like to name my projects so I’ve decided to name this one I’m Not Martha. The most obvious reason is that — I’m no Martha Stewart. [shocking, I know.]  My children can attest to that. My mother would probably chime in there too.  Do my kids care that I’m not more like Martha? Nah.  Do I want to be more like Martha?  Nope.  [There is the whole biblical Mary vs. Martha analogy working into the naming of the quilt, but I'll save that for another time. . .]

In the spirit of not being like Martha Stewart and also as a reminder for me of times that we currently find ourselves living in, I decided to see how frugally I could make this quilt.  I want it to have an antique look  as a  reminder or link to the past also [definitely not as 1930-ish looking as the EQ5 drawing!] so I’m trying to go with as many vintage-looking and reproduction fabrics as I can.  And since my Field of Flowers hexagon quilt is .75″ hexagons and pretty much from scraps, I decided to make this one with 1.25″ hexagons which requires bigger pieces of fabric.  There will be no looking in the scrap bins for suitable fabrics for this one.  I’m sure for some of you this wouldn’t be much of a challenge because you could just go shop your stash, but my frugal ways and being a single parent of 4 has not allowed for large stash building.  What will probably trip me up is needing a certain color of fabric and not having the money at the moment to be able buy any, but I will persevere.  *smile*

The challenge then for this quilt is to spend as little money as possible, give it an antique look, have it be a controlled scrappy quilt by making 7 diamonds each of color — red, blue, yellow, green, orange, and purple, use gray around all the diamonds, use black fabric for the center of each diamond, use 1 red fabric as a connector in the center of each of the 6 diamonds and find a special fabric to use as the flower in the very center.  I have my work cut out for me!

I have pulled the fabrics from my meager [and I do mean, m-e-a-g-e-r] stash that will be suitable to use and started printing hexagons for the diamonds.  I will definitely need to purchase or swap for fabrics to coordinate with what I have.  I plan to purchase only fabric that is on sale though.  I have yardage of a gray muslin-like fabric that I bought several years ago to use on my original GFG quilt design that I’m not using anymore because that design morphed into  my Field of Flowers quilt.  I’ve got that fabric cut and have printed some of the 550 hexagons that go around all the diamonds.  Oh, and did I mention that I want to do 1 hexagon diamond a week with the goal to have this top together a year from now??  So far I’ve spent $12.  I purchased 6 FQs for $1 each and spent $6 on 3 FQs for $1 each plus shipping.  I have 1 yellow diamond hexagon done.