Over the holidays, the studio got an update!
First change - removing the wallpaper, which can be seen peeking out from between the quilts on the walls.
Dating from the early 90's, it was time for it to go. Fortunately, with only 3 half walls to do, it only required a day to remove/clean, another day for paint primer, and one more day for the final paint. After much debate, we chose Behr's Minimalistic, a cool white, for the top portion of the wall and left the green on the bottom.
I also gave a new home to our old torchiere light, which helps increase the light on the quilt frame. Notice that none of the quilts have returned to the wall?
At the moment, I plan to keep it that way, because the room has an uncluttered feel, like a blank slate for new creative ideas.
Continuing around the room, the next area up for reorganization was the storage in the corner.
This area drove me nuts, with makeshift shelving of 2x4's and flat boards, plus a lot of stuff piled on the top and on the floor. In the circled area in front of the drawer unit, you can just barely see the home of my collection of Glide thread in various sized bins.
Not only did it take of precious floor space, but it made for an awful view down the hall from the living room. In my eagerness to get to work on the redo, I forgot to take a picture of that scene! Anyway, that corner was just ugly.
After spending a few weeks shopping for storage, I decided on Ikea's Stuva system, which is part of their kid's collection of furniture but perfect for what I want. I decided on one tall unit, around 75", which has a cabinet on top, and next to it, the shorter, 50" unit, all full of drawers.
These are both bolted to the wall, because with this height, tipping over would be disastrous. Having the shorter unit doesn't overwhelm the space, and it could serve as a counter, though I've made a pledge not to dump stuff there. And the view from the door/hall/living room? Awesome and uncluttered!
The best part about these units? The thread storage bins fit side by side in the cabinet.
With the purchase of a few more bins, my thread is now organized by color family, and behind closed doors free of dust and sunlight. Having the thread up there makes me incredibly happy, even more so than all the awesome fabric storage!
The last area and the most challenging, is the cutting table, which sits perpendicular to my sewing table. Here's the old,
and the new.
Yup, all that's changed is the wallpaper to paint, and only the cork board comes back to the wall.
Why no big change? Well, there's a few issues. The cutting table is a 6' folding table, with plastic storage units underneath. There's at least 8" of unusable space underneath because of the brackets of the table, which I'd love to take better advantage of, along with the space on the right that's hidden by the sewing table.
Hubby's idea was a kitchen cabinet of drawers on the left, and a shelf unit on the right. But I'm not too happy about that because the permanency of low cabinets bolted to the wall, and the difficulty of getting to the storage on the right because of the sewing table legs. Plus, we'd have to manufacture a top, as my search for a pre-made one that's 30" x 72" has come up blank. Ikea, why can't you make one that size???
So, for now I'm going to leave the area as it is, with changes of what's stored there. That's the 'don't use often' spot that everyone has somewhere in their house. And it's still somewhat accessible, even though I have to contort myself to get back there.
Overall, I'm very happy with the changes, especially those Ikea Stuva cabinets which make everything nice and neat. Thank you for coming on my studio update tour - now I need to get to creating!
Happy Quilting!
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It's been a while for a new Book of the Month, but I'm starting the year off right with another featuring quilting designs. Thanks to C&T Publishing, the honor goes to Straight Line Quilting Designs (affiliate link),
with contributions from numerous well known quilters - Natalia Bonner, Charlotte Warr Andersen, and Angela Walters, just to name a few.
A couple reasons why I chose the Straight Line Quilting Designs (affiliate link) book:
1) Everyone should have as many quilting resources available to them as possible, and Straight Line Quilting Designs (affiliate link) book is another tool to add to the library. I really think that the quilting part of this fabulous hobby of ours is probably the most frustrating, not only in trying to figure out what to quilt, but how to quilt a design that doesn't require major wrestling. And this book helps with both of those.
2) I love straight lines, and find them the easiest to stitch, either with a walking foot, or freemotion by following a guide (tape, ruler, water soluble mark, etc). There are unlimited possibilities in designs - check out a sampling from the book.
Some look pretty complex, but upon close inspection, the design is made by repeating the same line horizontally and vertically - sneaky!
Other designs require backtracking, or stops and starts, but they are so worth it for the texture they give to the quilt.
Besides all the 75+ designs to choose from, the Straight Line Quilting Designs (affiliate link) book features the design on two pages, and is spiral bound so the book lays flat. That way, the design is represented in a more-to-scale version, making it easier to both envision the design on a quilt, and to track the quilting direction.
One note about the quilting direction: the Straight Line Quilting Designs (affiliate link) book does not provide any instruction on stitching the design. No 1-t0-2-t0-3 dots, no color highlighted lines, no 'start here'. It's completely up to the quilter to figure out the stitching sequence, which is pretty easy for a majority of the designs. As a seasoned quilter, I don't have a problem with that, though a beginner might. But once a quilter plays with straight lines, the possibilities are endless!
As for me, I'm looking to do some straight line quilting this month, and happy to add the Straight Lines Quilting Designs (affiliate link) book to my growing list of quilting design book titles!
Happy Quilting!
Thanks for following!
