New Design Wall...

Quote for the Day:
"I would rather be surrounded by smart people than have a huge budget. 

Smart people will get you there faster."

~author unknown

In the past, my quilt design wall was a large piece of beige flannel fabric taped to one of the walls in my sewing room.  It extended behind the entry door and can be seen in this picture.

However, I had to add another bookcase to my sewing room to add more storage space, so the rearranging of furniture caused the design wall to be inaccessible.  :(

I decided to make myself a new, bigger, "portable" design wall out of  two 4' X 8' foam insulating panels.  You know the kind that they attach to the outside of a house before applying siding?  

I chose the 3/4" thick ones.  ($16/each)  I hope they will be sturdy enough.  When in use, they will lean up against the cabinets in my sewing room.  When not in use, they will be stored upright between a wall and a free-standing wardrobe that is in my quilting room.  They are very light and can easily be carried from the quilting room to the sewing room.  

I started by sewing batting scraps together till I had two pieces large enough to cover the 48" X 96" panels.   Working on my dining room table, I attached the batting to the printed side of the insulating sheets with Elmers Craft Bond spray adhesive.

I then flipped the board over and pulled the batting around to the back of the board and stapled it into place.

After stapling it, I used Gorilla tape to help hold the batting to the board.  I've heard that it is stronger than duct tape, though it looks just like it.

Here is one sheet of the new, finished design board...

 When working on a large bed-sized quilt, I can put both boards side by side to get an 8' X 8' (96" X 96") work area.  :)

And here it is with some blocks on it...an action shot!  LOL

If I find that they aren't sturdy enough on their own, I can always get a long, thin board and glue it vertically down the back to keep it from swaying or bowing.   I'll see how it goes.

I have one more quilt-related-that-is-not-quilting project to do before I get on with putting the next quilt in the frame.  More on that later, though!  :)

Loretta

Cleaning the Sewing Room...

Quote for the Day:

"Don't cook.  Don't clean.  No man will ever make love to a woman 

because she waxed the linoleum.   

'My God, the floor's immaculate.  Lie down, you hot bitch.' "  

~Joan Rivers

Our kids and grandkids are coming in next week for a visit, so I figured it was time to clean the sewing room...which doubles as a guest bedroom for the grandkids when they are here!   I've been working on a lot of projects in 2010, so the place was quite a mess.  

In "theory" I clean the room well between projects, putting away everything from the last one to get ready for the next one.  Nice theory, huh?  LOL

Well...let's just say that maybe I've been in too much of a hurry to start the next project to bother straightening the sewing room and put things away.

I don't have a picture of the "before" room, but here's a hint...
When I'm in the process of making a quilt, I keep my cut pieces, blocks, leftover fabric, etc., in baskets to "corral" them...usually one basket for the pieces and blocks, and one basket for the scraps, etc.

Well...I emptied these baskets today and put the stuff in them away...

That's a lot of quilts/projects that didn't get cleaned up after as they were finished.  *hangs head in shame*  LOL

While cleaning, I found some more things to "release into the wild"...
 
A friend said she'd like the quilt blocks and fabric that I showed in yesterday's post that I was going to offer on the yard sale, so today when cleaning I found some more to add to it.  :)

I hope she can put them to good use!  :)

I also found some more vintage linens to be "released" to my niece, Kristin...

Now for a tour of the cleaned sewing room!  :)

As you enter the room, immediately to your left is the east wall which has my TV and stereo sitting on top of a shelving unit.   To the left of the bookcase/shelving unit is my "design wall" that extends completely behind the door.  

As you can see there is nothing on the design wall, because like I said, I'm getting ready for company and I'm not starting any projects before then.  I also store the "big board" for my ironing board behind the door when I'm not working on a quilt, and the ironing board beside it when not in use.  The picnic baskets hold my Christmas and other seasonal fabrics.

As you continue to your right around the room, you will see the south wall that contains my cutting table, a storage shelf, and the door to my stash closet! 

Here's a look inside my stash closet...

As you continue around the room, to the right is the west wall.  Along this wall is another bookshelf and 2 storage units with doors.  On top of the white storage units you can see my stash of batting.  The door with the stained glass window goes out to a storage room.  (I don't keep any sewing stuff in the storage room...it's full with non-sewing stuff.)

Continuing to the right is the north wall.  This is my sewing area.  

I have 2 sewing machines sitting on the table...one is an embroidery/sewing machine and the other is just a sewing machine.  Behind the embroidery machine (on the left) is my serger pushed back against the wall (covered with a blue cloth as a dust protector).  When I want to use it, I slide the embroidery machine out of the way and pull the serger forward for use.


To the right of the sewing table is the door leading out of the room back into the hallway.

Since I like to look at other people's sewing rooms to get ideas about storage, etc., I thought I'd share some of my storage ideas...

Thread storage cabinet...found at a yard sale for 25 cents! 

I store the bobbin with the spool of thread it matches by setting the bobbin on top and inserting a screw down the middle of both the bobbin and the spool to keep them together.


Ruler storage...actually a metal Christmas card holder...found at Goodwill for $2!

WIP (works in progress) storage...pizza boxes I buy from the local pizza restaurant for 50 cents each...

Scraps are cut and stored by size using Bonnie Hunter's hints.

Quilting templates are on the side of the tall storage shelf...

Finished tops are hung on hangers and stored on the back of the entry door....

Hope you enjoyed the tour!  Thanks for stopping by!  Please leave me a comment to let me know you were here and to let me know what you "released into the wild" recently!

Loretta 

Magazines on the way out...

Quote for the day:

Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday. 

~Author Unknown

Hi, Peeps...hope everyone is doing well as we head into the weekend.

Tomorrow there is an estate auction that Andy & I are planning on attending.  I'm taking one of those canvas folding chairs to sit in because my back hurts when I stand too long. 

The pictures for the auction shows a lot of sewing stuff (for Me) and some crocks (for Andy).  (A friend at my work calls Andy the "Great White Crock Hunter" because of his collection of crocks.  LOL)  He doesn't collect them to "keep"...instead, he likes "wheeling & dealing" in them.  He buys them "low" and sells them "medium"...his prices are MUCH more reasonable than at antique stores.  It's his hobby...like quilting is mine!  :)

Since I have completed Rebekah's quilt (the one I showed you in the last post) and I am waiting for the batting that I have ordered for my next quilt to come in, I've been doing some "fun" blocks...scrappy log cabin blocks.

When I finish with a quilt and am cleaning up my sewing room, I cut leftover fabric into strips and store them in clear plastic shoeboxes according to size.  Every so often I have to go in to those shoeboxes and make something with the scraps because the lids won't fit on the the boxes anymore!  LOL

The 1.5" strip box was pretty dang full, so I thought I'd "play" in them for a while and make some scrappy blocks.  Here are some of those completed blocks on my "design wall"... 

Do you remember "flannel-boards" from Sunday School?  Fabric adheres to flannel really well...so I taped a VERY LARGE piece of flannel to part of one wall in my sewing room.  Then when I am making a quilt I can put the blocks on it to rearrange them to see how I want to put the quilt together.  Because the blocks are fabric, they adhere to the wall very well...thus, a "design wall"!!  :)

Because I am using "scraps" from other quilts that have accumulated...I guess that you could say my making scrap blocks is a form of decluttering!  :D

But now for some "real" decluttering...

When I go to physical therapy I have about 20 minutes to read while I have  the muscle-stim and hot packs on my back.  I've been taking quilting magazines with me to go through.  These magazines were given to me by a friend who received them from a friend.  Each of those people took out of the magazines what they wanted for future reference....so there are few-to-no complete instructions/patterns in the magazines by now.  They are mostly just pictures at this point.  

So after I tear out what I want to keep from them (inspiration photos/ideas and any patterns that I may want in the future) I toss the magazines.

Here is the pile of 4 magazines that I went through and are now ready to be "released" via the trash:

Thanks for stopping by!  Please leave a comment to let me know you were here and to let me know what you have "released" into the wild!  

Have a great weekend!

Loretta