In the studio -- Thrifted, etc.

Treasures from a birthday jaunt to my favorite antique and resale shops in Lancaster, PA -- a mason jar, some tapestry wool, a painted wastebasket.

From The Lancaster Yarn Shop, because I was there:  four skeins of New England Highland Wool, #67 Marigold, and one skein of Kettle Dyed Wool & Mohair Yarn, Heirloom Tomatoes colorway.  Totally irresistible.

The current state of my cream-and-gray blanket -- behold, The Princess and the Pea.  I hope to get back to this ASAP, but I am currently so engrossed in my knitting that everything else is on hold.

 

 

And there's knitting class this morning!  TGIF, and Spring Break for K as well -- the Aunties are coming to visit and she is hoping to have some Girls' Only Craft Time.  I have an idea brewing; look for it soon!

created

Focusing on the good things created during the week...


This week:  Lots of freshly organized space in the studio, and one happy cat!

 

Fresh

I've been spring cleaning my studio! The first thing to do was have K tidy up the message on the little board that sits under my calendar:

I sorted through all my books and reorganized them according to size and how much I love them. I got rid of a few and made room for some big jars to hold my pretty laces and fringes. Talk about eye candy!

It was warm enough to open the window and let the balmy breezes air out the room. I love my eyelet curtains!

I pulled Every. Piece. Of. Fabric. off the shelves, sorted by color, re-folded, tucked away in plastic bins (I love you IKEA!) and found enough beautiful material to make a gorgeous quilt from Alex Anderson and Liz Aneloski's Super Simple Quilts #3.

So in my fresh, bright, clean studio I got to work. Hope you find some freshness in your life now that the dreary days of winter are coming to an end!

On my wall

My favorite quilt, which D finally hung up in my studio last night.

I made it well over a year ago and it's far from perfect, but I love it! The picture does not do it justice -- come visit me and see it in person! You'll have to wade through piles of vintage bedsheet scraps, but it's totally worth it. Trust me.

At the moment

Behold, my studio. I have just finished a major creative project, one for which I should have logged hours and expenses as I may decide to sell it. (If I can convince myself to part with the item, similar ones are selling for big bucks on Etsy.) I would show you what I made, but it's currently tumbling through the dryer. (I hope it's okay...) So watch this space; I have so much to tell you about but in time, in time.

Working glimpse

Here are a few more peeks into my studio. I'm hard at work in here, really!

My computer workstation needs a bit of work to become functional -- I have to face the fact that my studio will also be a small home office for dealing with financial matters and general paperwork, and I'll have to allocate some space for that. Hopefully the cabinet in my secretary desk will hold most of that, with maybe a file cabinet to replace the plastic crates we've been using to file papers in since we were in college. Not my favorite part of sprucing up the place, but a definite necessity.


Over by the window, my comfy chair, which I very rarely sit in as it's usually covered in whatever projects I'm working on at the moment. Now that I'm right next door to the washer and dryer, I can be felting sweaters and pre-washing fabric while I'm ironing, cutting out quilting squares and sewing patchwork pieces together. It's a dream come true! And I do love to se eall of my favorite books on the shelves behind the chair -- they are so decorative as well as functional.

Here's the picture I promised of the finished Felted Wool Baby Blanket on the back of the comfy chair. I like it better as I look at it more, and I think I can learn to live with imperfection. When I get frustrated I need to remind myself that I haven't taken lessons, I've only been sewing for a short while, and I will get the hang of it in time. I feel like it's important for me to continue to be fearless and keep trying new things, because that's how I will learn -- and I am learning, and how exciting it is!

Welcome to my studio

Here's a shot of my newly-realigned shelves, with my quilting fabric arranged on them just so.  I'm amazed that the cats have not attempted to nest in there, but they seem content to laze on the woolen carpet or loll on the shelves I haven't quite finished filling.  More photos to come as the moving-in and decorating progress.

Short entry

Alas, I am having to start my sweater over because of some careless unraveling.

In better news, I am almost entirely moved into my studio and it is a dream come true.  Pictures as soon as I relocate my camera.

Mishmash: Topsy Turvy House Edition

The house has been turned upside-down for a week and a half now, as we did the painting, put up the shelves (which have a definite list to them and need to be re-leveled) and shampooed the rug in the studio.  I learned how to use a roller and a socket wrench and the carpet steamer.  I discovered how incredibly grimy the rest of the house is.  I bought a carpet and thought about lighting and tried not to make any new messes.

In the process I have been working on my sweater.  I bought the Addi Turbo knitting needles and fell in love.  They are just as good as Aunt Mary's teflon needles, if not better.  I finished the body and started work on the armholes.  Found that knitting back and forth on circular needles is not an intuitively obvious process.  Ripped out stitches, started again, figured it out.  This will very clearly be a "learning" sweater (to say nothing of the stretchiness of the alpaca, which is going to render the thing virtually shapeless) but that's okay.  It's designed to be a "Saturday" sweater anyway, and it will be well loved.  I can't wait to wear it.  (But I'll have to, because it's going to be a mighty cold day before it'll be chilly enough to be comfortable in all that wooly warmth.)

I love knitting!  I love painting!  I love socket wrenches!

We painted the studio!

This week my mother-in-law very generously donated her time to help me move everything out of my studio and paint it a beautiful bright clean white. I'm so pleased with it! Now I have my work cut out for me. I need to:

• Consider putting in a carpet remnant to protect the beige carpeting that's already in there
• Wash the windows
• Purchase and put together shelving for the closet
• Determine which furniture I want to put back in the room and where I want to put it
• Do a final clearing out of craft supplies I don't want to use.

On top of which, K needs a superhero costume for camp TOMORROW and I haven't even started on it. I'm using this tutorial to make her a cape, which I think is adorable and I hope she will too. I need to go pick her up soon and take her to the fabric store so she can pick out the stuff she wants it made from. Should be a fun, if somewhat rushed, job to do.

Spring cleaned!

Photos from my newly spring-cleaned sewing room! (Still, alas, the dining room.)

I did a major overhaul of my fabric stash and kept only the fabrics I loved or thought would be really useful. "I might use it someday" is no excuse for hoarding items that could be used right now by somebody else. Now I can see what I have and I'm not bothered by the nagging thought that I should be working 24/7 to use up my stash, and using boring or ugly fabric to boot. See how nice it looks in my cabinet?

Then I went in and organized my ribbons, rick rack, pins, needles, elastic, thread, bobbins and other notions. It's easy to find what I need now, and it's easy to clean up, too, because everything has a place to go. I also un-teetered the piles of books that surrounded my sewing table, and organized them roughly according to category. I can't wait to get them upstairs to the new studio where there are real bookcases!

So what to do with the boxes and bags and tubs and baskets of fabric left over? I sent seven (yes, 7) boxes, mostly flannel but some terrycloth and an amount of quilt batting, to TLC for Angels -- they make blankets and clothing for "needy babies" and were happy to accept my donation. I have another seven bags of quilting cotton to give to my church's Prayer Quilting group. But there were still boxes and bags and tubs and baskets full of fabric -- fat quarters (kind of small for the prayer quilters), holiday and novelty prints, home decor weights -- plus a gazillion skeins of yarn and several more boxes of crafting odds and ends. What to do, what to do?

Obviously, this was the perfect time for D's parents' church to hold their annual flea market! We sold all of the fabric and nearly all the yarn, a few of the doodads and even a few handmade-by-me items: 3 small tied quilts, 2 patchwork-covered Moleskine notebooks, and a number of rice-and-lavender heat therapy bags. (We also sold: some clothes, a tv, vcr, dvd player and stand, and presumably some other things since our total intake was over $90, which is pretty darn good for a yard sale. We're still debating over what else we might have sold; it's kind of a mystery.)

And now -- onward and upward! Look for posts about my current projects, some new furniture, painting, thrifting, and more...

Behind but still busy

I still have not gotten the desk moved into K's room, but at least it's empty now and ready to go. I have been clutter-busting all over the house, which is good for my overall disposition but less good for my concrete goals. Still, clean is clean. I'm not complaining.

I also got the main fabrics chosen for dawni's quilt. The number of fabric pieces I had to pull out from my stash in order to find them was staggering, and reminded me once again that I need to build up my collection of reds. Hopefully I can start pressing and cutting those mountains of fabric today.

Plus, it's Menu Planning Monday, which means it's grocery shopping day. And I need a bazillion things from Target. Does anybody have an extra hour or two they can spare? I really need to get my spring cleaning done!


Monday: Quiche Lorraine (let's try this again) and black bean soup (left over from last week)

Tuesday: Spaghetti w/jarred sauce, turkey meatballs, applesauce

Wednesday: Marinated chicken breasts, rice pilaf, green beans

Thursday: Manicotti, salad

Friday: Rice and beans (left over from last week), baby carrots

Saturday: Clean out refrigerator night

Sunday: Pizza night

Repurposed

Remember the chococolate-and-vanilla blanket that I felted? The one where the binding got all puckered? I got tired of seeing it sitting on the floor of my closet, where it stayed because it was too sloppy-looking to put on the bed, so I butchered it. In my new favorite sewing book, Heather Ross's Weekend Sewing, there is a marvelous felted-wool baby blanket project, and I happen to know a relatively new baby, so I thought I'd give it a try. It has a gloriously colorful patchwork binding that was too much fun to make.

So much fun that I ended up making two blankets! Heather's project called for an appliquéd monogram, but a) I am afraid of appliqué and b) I liked the simplicity of the blankets as they were, so I left the monograms off. Not bad for a day's work.

As far as Studio Saturday goes, I did not meet my goal of moving my old desk into K's room -- though there is still hope that that might happen today. I did manage to get all of D's books downstairs, and even had him sort through them and choose some to give away, which left enough room to move the travel books and atlases downstairs, too. That leaves me with most of the second Billy bookcase empty; I'm keeping two shelves full of photographs, negatives and cameras because they qualify as "art," and because they occupy K's attention when she's in here and I'm busy with other things.

Because I got carried away with the sewing yesterday, I may not work on any sewing projects today, but we'll see. The bug has bitten and I am eager to get to dawni's quilt.

Mishmash: The long haul edition

Since I didn't get to it yesterday, this is my unofficial report from "Stay-with-it Sunday," my afternoon dedicated to making progress on ongoing projects. Naturally I worked on my nameless quilt, tying and tying and tying till my fingers were sore. I am nearly finished with it and, if I work hard, may have the whole thing complete by this time tomorrow. I also put some small effort into moving books out of the studio; my medium-term goal is to have this finished by next Saturday.

Today is Mix-it-up Monday, which for the time being will be dedicated to a cooking or baking project. Today I'm making Corn Scones from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home -- a recipe I've tackled before with some success. I'll also be making black bean soup and quiche lorraine for supper, assuming all goes well; I'm just feeling a need to branch out creatively and enjoy the fruits of my labor with my family tonight.

I've also decided to join with Laura's I'm an Organizing Junkie blog Menu Plan Monday followers and post my weekly menu plan here. More than 400 women share their menus on Laura's blog every week and find that doing so is a great way to stay motivated and inspired, so I'm going to give it a try. Here goes:


Monday: Quiche Lorraine, Black Bean Soup, Corn Scones

Tuesday: Chicken with BBQ sauce, Mashed Potatoes, Broccoli

Wednesday: Crock Pot Red Beans and Rice, Salad

Thursday: Chicken and Noodles with Pesto Sauce (Stouffer's,) Baby Carrots

Friday: Crock Pot Tuna Casserole, Peas

Saturday: Pizza night

Sunday: Clean Out Refrigerator Night


Simple, right? Now I need to haul myself to the grocery store so I can follow through. If this works it will save me time, effort and money and keep my family fed and happy, so wish me luck!

Studio Saturday -- Dinosaur Dig and Book Blitz

Welcome to the first of a series of themed posts designed to keep me on my creative track. The idea behind Studio Saturdays is that I will set a goal each week towards the completion of my crafting studio, and spend an hour or more working toward that specific goal. This week, I actually had two goals: 1) To have D remove his obsolete, dust-gathering computer equipment to the recycling center, and 2) To empty as much as possible the two tall white Billy bookcases from Ikea, to make room for crafting books and supplies.

D came through with flying colors! I had an appointment to keep this morning, and when I returned home at 11:00am he had not only purged the office of cyber-junk, but had also relieved the choir room at church of a useless wooly mammoth of a PC. I was less successful in completing my task, which metastasized as I realized I was going to have to clear out bookcases in our bedroom and in the Great Room downstairs in order to accommodate the exodus of printed material from the office. I did manage to get the space cleared, but only moved out half a Billy bookcase worth of materials from the office. And now my cookbooks are in the bedroom, which just seems wrong. Give it time, I keep telling myself. It'll all come right.

So tomomrrow I'll put a little more effort into getting the house (let alone the office) under control, and I'll work hard at tying my quilt -- the closer I get to the finish line there, the safer and cozier I feel. It's totally worth all the hard work.

What projects have you been tackling this weekend?

My new digs

It's been a long time coming, but at last I have taken residence in D's former office! I'm still referring to it as my "office" for the time being, since it is clearly set up for paperwork and not for sewing, but some very important things have happened in this room over the past day or two:

1. I have located the floor. (The beige carpet is in excellent condition. This is most likely because, during D's work-from-home years, it was covered in a sea of paper which protected it from all the cat puke and baby vomit. I think, then, that I will keep the carpet and put the money saved toward something more important like maybe a decent quilting machine?)
2. I have pinpointed the problem areas, i.e. the things D still needs to get rid of, and I have made a plan for him to follow through on these that he can actually carry out in a reasonable amount of time. This requires supervision and patience, but it will be well worth it.
3. I have gotten a handle on getting my own things under control. The piles of craft clutter that accumulate after a winter of making gifts and then undertaking a major quilting project were outrageous, and my "temporary studio" still needs attention, but at least things are neatly piled and arranged instead of flung about willy-nilly.
   

I love my French bulletin boards but I think I'll re-cover them; I'm definitely leaning toward reds, pinks and yellows for my color scheme. The Fred Small poster (from a concert in Great Hall my senior year at Carleton! Autographed!) will probably have to go, but I hate to give up Fred entirely -- will have to think about that. And may or may not relocate the diplomas -- maybe keep mine and give D's the boot?

Possibly the best part is the part you can't see because that's where I'm sitting -- my comfy leather armchair (that one in the picture is D's and it's slated to LEAVE because it is NOT comfy) with the fluffy yellow "Lemonade" afghan draped over the back. In front of it my laptop just fits on the top of a thrifted wooden side table that has been loved by some child or children, who left their mark in dabs of brightly colored paint all over the legs. Nothing like furniture with character.

Next on the agenda: Move D's mathematics/computer science book collection to a bookcase downstairs and reclaim one Ikea Billy Bookcase for quilting/crafting books.

Mishmash: Lost weekend edition

February went by in a flash! Crazy things happened, the likes of which I will not delve into here. The most important thing is, I was happily reunited with my sewing machine and we immediately began with that all-important project of re-covering the ironing board -- without which no other project could proceed. I've had the prissy yellow oh-so-utilitarian print in my stash for over a year now, and the ironing board seemed like the perfect place to put it to use, with a big floppy white bow to hold it in place.



My major project for the month was a scrappy four-patch quilt which is sloppily spilling over into March. I ransacked my "large scrap" bin for pieces I could cut into 3 1/2" selvage to selvage strips, then rummaged through the "small scrap" bin and found shamefully many more such strips, cut and pressed them, and sewed them together in pairs. I'm currently cutting up the paired strips and sewing them into four-patch units. I haven't decided exactly where I'm going to go from there, but I want to make a tied quilt large enough to go on our new queen-sized bed, preferably not too ugly, so stay tuned.

I tried to set myself a "No New Fabric" resolution for the month of February. You can see below how that went for me. I only really had three remnant-shopping trips to Jo Ann's, two of which are represented below, but they were fruitful ones. And I bought some vintage bedsheets and pillowcases which, for all intents and purposes, could not be considered new, could they? And see how lovely? I'm going to make matching pajama pants for K and me out of that blue flowery stripe with the wide trim at the end -- for $3.99 at the Goodwill, who could fault me?



No work at all was done on the craft room during February -- it makes me want to crawl into a closet and shut the door to write that publicly. But I've acquired several new inspirational books to leaf through, that have made me want to continue to take my time gathering thoughts and furnishings for the new room and really make it both my own and truly as functional as it can be. This, however, is no excuse for the sacks of paperwork needing to be taken out and shredded or the bin of photographs to be waded through. I must get on the ball, I must.

Idea notebook

New studio ideas:

• Install shelves in the big closet with the sliding doors to hold my vast fabric collection, allowing open storage of all fabrics with room for growth. Keep sliding doors on but leave open so fabric stash is partially visible for decorative effect.
  
• Throw caution to the wind and move the dining room table (which I'm currently using as a cutting table/sewing desk) upstairs to the new studio; use as a cutting table and secondary sewing desk (possibly for a serger in the future?); use money saved to buy a nicer dining room table and take better care of it this time!
  
• Use D's old desk as a sewing desk; rotate 90 deg. so it faces the door and to maximize benefits of natural light.
• Perhaps don't replace beige carpet with blue -- beige would camouflage light-colored threads much better. Opt for scatter rugs instead? (All decorating books/magazines say to go with wood/tile/vinyl floors but I really prefer carpet.)
• Wall decor: large bulletin board; smaller memo boards covered in custom fabrics; "inspiration wire" to be changed frequently; "Friendship Flowers" quilt (photo to come); vintage brochure covers; art by K.
• See if kitchen cabinets or tall wicker drawer units can be purchased for underneath cutting table (dining table) to maximize storage space. Utilize vertical space by hanging wire baskets from ceiling to receive scraps, hold tools out of reach of K, etc.

Right. Time to get on the ball. Scale drawings and paint chips and budgets and agendas! I feel like I should put a sticker on my virtual forehead saying, "Ask me how my work on the studio is going!" so you-all can keep me in line.

Studio daydreaming

I've been working in the office today, clearing out the big double closet and imagining what might go inside. I have so many ideas for how I want the room to be, I thought I might write about some of them here.

I have a vision of yellow walls with a blue carpet, and maybe some blue echoed in a border around the tops of the walls, or some stenciling. Red accents, too. Primary colors really work for me, keep me content and keep me focused.

The main fabric collection will be stored on open white shelving that we already have -- cotton calicos sorted by color. I'll have to check where and when the sun comes in to be sure they don't fade; otherwise some sort of curtain will be in order, or else I'll store the fabric behind the closed closet doors. The various other fabric collections can be stored in labeled, stacked bins. I saw an idea in a magazine for organizing larger scraps by color in shoeboxes, and using the fabric scraps on the outside of the shoeboxes to indicate the color of the scraps inside -- that could be fun. I think I will stop keeping the tinier scraps, or keep them in a special wastebasket for a while in case K wants to play with them.

This is really getting far out now, but I'm thinking that we might want to put a loft bed in the room for two reasons: 1) for extra sleeping space, i.e. guest quarters, and 2) to give K a place to play where she can be out of my way. I could put the sewing desk underneath the bed (maybe a double?) and use full-spectrum lighting with it. There would also be room for storage and maybe an extra seat.

The cutting table is really important to me. It needs to be really big and high enough to use comfortably. The height will not be a problem if we go with an Ikea table; they have easily adjustable legs; but I'm not sure if they make a table top big enough for my cutting mat. It might be possible to put two table tops together to make one big enough, but that would be using a lot of space. A custom cutting table might be a better choice.

I'm thinking that to save space we'll hang the ironing board on the back of the door. I can always take it out and set it up when I need to work with it. Alternatively, if we used an extra-large surface for a cutting table, the excess could be turned into an ironing surface without much trouble.

This is getting exciting; the more I write about it the more motivated I'm becoming to excavate the remains of the office and start moving in.

Studio update

D and I have been putting in some time on the studio, making slow but steady progress. He broke down the boxes from his new computer and moved them out, and cleared the rubble from his desk and the surrounding area. I've mostly been providing support up until now but I've got a box of papers to file and a number of containers of "keepsake" items that need to be weeded ruthlessly. Tasks to be accomplished in the coming days:

1. Move printer downstairs to D's new office
2. Move my desk to the great room
3. Relocate books from office bookshelves
4. Relocate clothes from office closet
5. Remove old computer equipment
6. Move filing system downstairs and cull outdated files

It looks like a lot, but an hour a day gets a lot done, so I think it's manageable. After we finish those jobs we can look at painting, possibly getting a new rug (I can dream) and moving materials and furniture upstairs.