Busy in the sewing room

I have been busy in my sewing room, as you can see below...the room is a mess!

My cutting table is loaded with stuff....fabric and rotary cutters, fabric paints and even a glue gun! I've had a strange variety of projects lately.

You may have noticed that my sewing room has been rearranged again.
yep.

I was going nuts.
Remember?  I bought a longarm quilting machine that was delivered in late July.  While I love this machine, I was NOT in love with the way it looked in my sewing room.

The end of the machine was my view each time I entered the room....all the knobs and pipes and straps, oh my!  I was trying really hard to get used to this (and LIKE it!) but it was not fitting well with my sense of order and aesthetics.  But I was trying to get past these feelings, telling myself that it was just something new...I'd get used to it.

However, the lighting was very poor in this area of my room, so DH and I bought and installed some narrow black fluorescent lights over the quilting machine.

Well, I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back!

I HATED the look of the room once the lighting went in!  See for yourself...my view:

I was filled with dread and anxiety every time I looked in there!  And it wasn't about the money.  Yes, this was an expensive machine, but I did want it.  But I also wanted (and needed) my sewing room to be conducive to creativity!

This was not doing it for me.

So I measured my stuff and DD created a few alternate arrangements for me to consider and try.  Yes, it was a lot of work,, but the new arrangement is SO much more pleasing to me now!  I don't have quite as much usable floor space in the new arrangement, which meant the striped chair had to go (boo hoo) but other than that, the new arrangement is far superior!

I ditched those black fluorescent lights.  I HATED those!  in the beginning, DH was not willing to rewire a fixture that was intended to be hardwired to the ceiling, which limited my choices to those I could plug in with a cord.  Well, those dangling cords from these lights and the extension cords that went with them are gone.  (yes, I had planned to tack them to the wall, to control the 'dangle factor', but there was still excess cord length bundled on TOP of each light...ugly!)

In this new arrangement, you can barely see a fluorescent fixture that hugs the ceiling over the quilting machine, because the ceiling fan is in front of it....PLUS, it is white, so it blends in with the ceiling.  Yes, you can see the one that hangs over my sewing machine, but that one doesn't bother me...it wasn't right in front of my face each time I looked in the door!

There are cords from both these lights that travel down the wall but I put them in channels that I painted the wall color, so they don't bother me at all.

Finally, with the room arrangement determined and the lighting improved, I was once again able to work on the quilt that I had long-ago loaded on the quilting machine!

This is the first quilt I have tried to do since purchasing this machine.  I did a couple of throw-away practice pieces then went straight to a real quilt.

Almost immediately, I realized I had jumped the gun.  I had NOT worked out the tension issues as I thought I had.  When I advanced the quilt to a new area, I could see that the part I had already done was NOT good...there were loops on the back where the top thread was coming through.

I had had trouble with the tension balance right from the start.  To make a long story short, the problem ended up being the height of the needle bar: it was set too low.  Here, you can see a picture of the needle at its lowest position...notice the relationship of the eye of the needle to the hook arm above it.  You can see part of the needle above its eye.

Now, after resetting the needle bar height to raise it, you can see that there is almost no needle showing above the eye...this is how it should be.  Sorry the exposure is so different...hopefully you can still see.

Once I got the machine to sew as desired, I was ready to go.  I ripped out the bad quilting...that took about a day and a half.  By this time, the new quilting threads I had ordered had arrived, so I was all ready to go!

The actual quilting went pretty fast and was fun!  I was making it up as I went along.

Here are a couple of sneak peaks:

Although I am finished with the quilting, this piece isn't 'done' yet. I might paint on it...and I might add beads! We'll see...

Changes in the Sewing Room

Recently I have been doing some rearranging in my sewing room. I pushed my large cutting table off-center, toward the back wall.

I cleared out the pile of junk that had accumulated in the corner, and brought in a chair from another room.

The front wall, between the dormers, is completely void of furniture...the treadmill has been relocated as has the press.

The table that was under the window, which held the coverstitch machine, has been eliminated...it was just a card table and was always intended to be 'temporary', but at my house, 'temporary' sometimes is a long time! Now the coverstitch machine is sitting right beside my serger.

The whole wall is 'open' now...like a dance floor!

I removed all my fabric from these green cabinets and sorted through it... what I kept was rearranged/grouped and placed inside purchased bins for a neater appearance. The 'isle' between the cabinets and the cutting table is much narrower now, but I can still get the bins in and out, as well as open the doors on the island/cutting table and pull out the bins kept within.

I used to keep my ironing board right in front of the green cabinet, to the left of my sewing machine, so I could just pivot left and press when I was sewing. Now that the isle is narrower, I must find a new place for the ironing board!

The new light over the sewing machine is SO much brighter than the two mismatched lamps I had on my table before! I am no0t a huge fan of fluoroescent, but the light is bright and cool and it could be hung and plugged into an outlet. I REALLY wanted recessed lights, but that is a much bigger deal to provide!

So, "WHY," you ask, "are you doing all this rearranging?"

Because I have made a new purchase for the sewing room and it takes up space!

Yep, I got a long-arm quilting machine! Isn't that exciting? Well, it is to me! I have been dabbling with quilting for the last few years, and enjoy the piecing and designing but doing the actual quilting was always a challenge. Before, I have showed you the HandiQuilter frame that I was using with a Brother 1500 sewing machine...including the PVC handles I made to enable me to quilt from the front side.

But even with that set-up, I always dreaded the 'quilting' time, because I knew I would have trouble...skipped stitches, uneven stitch lengths, etc. It seemed to take forever to sew a tiny area.

Plus, the scale of the designs I could stitch was very small due to the size of the throat space on the machine.

So now, I can stitch larger designs!

I am still practicing, but am having fun!

I am now considering what lighting I will get for over the quilting machine. The fluorescent light made SO much difference over my sewing machine that I am considering getting a couple more to put over the longarm...but I hate the thought of all those cords and chains hanging down! But it is very apparent that I will have to get/make something...perhaps a light rail! :)

Snow day

Yesterday we were once again beset by accumulating snowfall, an event which is not all that common here in southwest Tennessee...although this year has NOT be the norm! Like much of the rest of the country, we seem to be getting more than our usual flurries!

I generally stay home when it snows, as we don't have snow plows here...the snow melts and refreezes on the streets, making driving an unofficial demolition derby.
I am not into that.

I have been spending my snow days cleaning up my sewing room! Earlier this week, I finished the challenge quilt...well, all but putting the label on back...so I figured this was a good time to clean up before I started any new projects. I have accumulated mulitple 'piles' of stuff on every horizontal surface...including the floor! This is NOT conducive to creativity!!!

But as is typical of my projects, this one has grown beyond the initial scope. As I look for places to put the 'can't-do-without' stuff that has been piled up in the room, I find myself also reorganizing closets and cabinets, deciding what I can give away to make room for those other 'precious' things. It's a vicious circle! Clear off the table, then immediately cover it with more stuff! I hate looking in there!

I am making progress, though! I went through all my old patterns (self-drafted with PMB) and tossed out MANY that I know I will never make again. This alone made a huge difference, and was really the goal when this began! I had patterns hanging on the outside of the closet door, because the inside was already so full! I have whittled the pattern supply down to a manageable number, and now they ALL fit inside the closet! Yea! They generally hang on the inside of the closet door, as you can see in this picture. When the door is closed, you don't see them. That's the way...uh huh, uh huh...I like it...uh huh, uh huh!

I'm also sorting through various other crafting projects, trying to decide which should remain in the sewing room and which could live elsewhere. But this means I am opening closets in OTHER rooms, looking for available space. And oh, how distracting that is! After a few minutes, I realize I am now cleaning out a close in a different room! That is NOT today's task...I must focus!!!

One of the things I really need is book/magazine storage. I have lots of those piled up around, and have still not quite decided how I will organize and store those. I have some ideas, but am still thinking. I intend to do some remodelling in this room and put built-in cabinets in the front knee-wall between the dormers (left of treadmill in this picture--not shown), which will help. But that isn't done yet and I need to find adequate storage in the meantime.

Well, break time is over...I better get back to it!