What’s Going on In My Sewing Room

Sewing room you ask?  It used to be what we called the office, but since both Charlie and I have had laptops and no desktop computer in the house that room hasn’t been used for much.  Since I have had so much free time I have been filling my time with sewing projects.   As you may have read in my previous post I purchased a new sewing machine and needed someplace to put it.

View of sewing station from door

We decided to position the sewing machine in the corner of the desk. This allows for a cutting station to my left and a quick pressing station to my right. The window allows for a great view of the back yard and beautiful natural light to work with during the day.  There is also plenty of room for a large project on the desktop.  This is a great set up that allows for an easy work flow.

In addition to the desk I have turned a glass bookcase into my fabric storage cabinet.  I have acquired quite a lot of fabric in just a short time.  I like it arranged by color although I have separated the batiks into their own color piles. The doors help keep the fabric dust free and I love looking at all the colors.

Sewing Room Facing Towards Door

Charlie has been busy improving my room for me.  The only ironing board that I have is the one that is hanging on the door.  It is very flimsy and it’s difficult to get the door wedged so it doesn’t swing while you are ironing.  It is also a small ironing board that is okay when you are just pressing some small pieces, but when you get to a larger quilt top it is really limiting.  Charlie re-purposed a table top that he was going to make into a work bench for himself into a cabinet that I could use as a cutting table and ironing table.  He built and finished the cabinet and shelves so now in addition to having a nice large surface to iron on I also have more storage space.  It is great for things like batting and boxes for usable scraps.

Ironing Storage Cabinet

I made the fabric cover with two layers of cotton batting in between two layers of fabric. There is a half inch thick piece of high density foam underneath and an elastic draw string secures it to the top.  The cabinet is also on casters so it can be rolled around the room if I need it to support a large project that I am working on.  Above the ironing table is my project board that Charlie made for me too.  It is just a few foam insulation boards glued together and held up with a simple cleat. This allows me to take it off the wall easily if necessary.

Big Leaf Quilt Top

Right now I have my completed “Big Leaf” quilt top pinned to the design wall for display and so I don’t have to fold it up for storage.  I am so happy with how it turned out and I just love the colors in it.  The next step is to baste it with the batting and backing and quilt it.  Since I haven’t done any free-motion quilting before and that is what I want to do for this project I am practicing first.  The Big Leaf quilt is too beautiful to mess up with bad quilting.

Free Motion Quilting Sampler in Progress

Last weekend I took a class in free motion quilting at Sew Creative in Fairport where I purchased my sewing machine. The most important thing the instructor, Diane told us to improve our work was to practice, practice, practice and that is just what I am doing.  The above piece I am working on is just a simple fabric sandwich that I divided into squares and rectangles.  In some of the blocks I traced some continuous line designs and other blocks are blank to fill in later with more improvisational type of quilting.

My plan is to fill the blank blocks with designs from the Day Style Designs blog – 365 Days of Free Motion Quilting Filler Designs Project.  This site has great tutorials on how to do over 100 designs so far and her goal is to do a total of 365!  She has them labeled by level of difficulty so I will start with the beginner level first and work my way up.  If you click on the image above it will biggify and you can see some of the designs I have done so far. My plan is to fill all the blocks so I better stop writing and continue quilting.

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