Saturday In The Sewing Room

Good Saturday morning to you! Today I am working in my sewing room and thought I'd share some pictures.

Over at So Scrappy, the color of scraps for the month is red. I have a lot of red scraps, but I am focusing on the smallest ones first and have put together my dark red and light red 2 1/2 inch squares which will be sewn together for the Rainbow Double Irish Chain Quilt I am working on.

Each fabric has a story and I even remember where most of them came from.  There's always a snippet of the NC State fabric in any scrap quilt that I make which has red in it.  Three of these scraps were given to me by my coworker, who makes some of her own blouses.  The mushroom one was in a fat quarter set I received for my birthday a few years ago.  Some of these reds were also in the Field and Furrows log cabin quilt I made for my grandson, Eli, about a year ago, you can see HERE
 

My step son-in-law made this quilt hanging shelf for me for Christmas.  I love it!  The items on the shelf are just there for this picture.  I have plans for what I want to put on there, but haven't gotten around to it yet.  I think a 5x7 canvas print in black and white of our six grandchildren would be pretty. The quilt is probably my favorite of the quilts I have made.  Its the cheddar bow ties quilt that was the leaders and enders project at Quiltville, with Bonnie Hunter, a few years ago.  It contains countless different scraps but the cheddar  color ties everything together.  I did some feather quilting in the border, which was my first attempt at doing that.  I hope to do more and am planning some in the Rainbow Irish Chain Quilt.

One has to keep up her strength when doing a marathon sewing session, so here's a strawberry, blueberry, cheese cake smoothie!  It was delicious and works for the Trim Healthy Mama plan.

Do you ever lay awake at night planning quilts?  I have been doing that lately.  The after 50 years old crowd will understand!   Last night I had table runners on my mind.  I want to make some with a watermelon theme.  I found watermelon scraps when I was digging through my scraps looking for reds!

This post in linked to SCRAP HAPPY SATURDAY.

Some Sewing Table Organization Ideas and a Sneak Peek

I got the idea for using this wire picnic cutlery carrier for sewing table organization from  Freda.  These wire baskets are perfect for holding scissors, rotary cutters, markers, pens, rulers, calculators and more.  I am enjoying having a place to put these things.  It doesn't turn over and I can lay my hands on my scissors quickly for once!

I also bought two of these for holding small gardening tools in our outdoor storage building.  Another perfect use for them.  Now is the time of year to buy these summer items.  I bought mine at Dollar General and they were on sale. 

Its also a good time to find other pretty and unusual storage containers in the back to school sales of dorm supplies.  I found this gray and pink fabric bin, also at Dollar General.  It works well on my sewing table to hold fabrics that I am currently working with, instructions, magnetic pin holders and thread.

Here's a sneak peek of another baby quilt I started last night using the leftovers from "Eli's Coming"

Hmmm, seems just yesterday I posted 3 projects that needed finishing.... how'd a new project happen?

Quilting and Life

In life and in quilting, if something doesn't seem quite right.... it probably isn't! Its a good idea to frequently look at the back of the quilt when free motion machine quilting. Its so much easier to fix if you catch it early.

 

 

I like to put some Bible verses on the wall above the machine to read in between quilting, or while a new bobbin is winding. This one is written down on a big index card. I hand wrote it in 2011 and had tucked it into one of my Bibles. I thought it would be a good way to sneak in a little Bible study or just for a little motivation and comfort.



Proverbs 31

This is just one small way to make my sewing area a pleasant place to be.

Organize Those Scraps! .... Sewing Room Organization

Here's a little peek at the on going work I am doing in my sewing room. There has been lots of slicing, dicing and labeling going on in there. I have made so much progress, but still have lots left to do in order to get it the way I want it!

Most of my bins are "see through", like these.  These drawers are labeled: 2 inch strips light; 2 inch strips dark and 5 inch charm squares.  When I am working on scraps and have pieces of fabric that are close to these sizes, I cut them and store them in the appropriate bin.

In the 5 inch charm square bin I have a dark stack and a light stack.  Here's the light stack.

These drawers contain 2 1/2 inch strips dark and 2 1/2 inch strips light.

Dark:

Light:

In the top drawer here are 2 1/2 inch squares, 2 1/2 X 5 inch rectangles, and some stacks of smaller squares.

I am trying to fold all the larger pieces of fabric so that they stand up in the drawers like this.  They are sorted by color.  Here are some browns:

Some yellows:

The larger scraps that are at least as big as a fat quarter, but not really big enough to be considered yardage, are being folded and stored in the plastic dish basin type containers.   I won't slice these up since they are bigger pieces.  I want to keep my options open on them. 

This basket sits at the end of the ironing board for throwing strips smaller than 1 1/2 inch.  Its filling up fast!

I have lots of folding and cutting left to do.  But, I don't want to spend all my time on this.  I have been sewing and quilting as well.  Maybe I'll get everything organized in here before long and can just concentrate on the sewing part!

I am studying quilt books and quilting blogs to find quilts that use the sizes of scraps that I have cut.  There are so many to choose from.  I can't wait to start making some of them.

Sewing, Cleaning and Rethinking

This post is linked to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!

Its so nice to have an unused bed available for spreading out quilt squares. It helps me to see my progress and how much progress is left to do!

I made a few more Disappearing Nine Patch blocks after this picture was taken so I think have 20 made.

 

The Cheddar Bow Ties have been adding up too, but apparently not nearly enough to be that exciting. I have them pinned together in stacks of 10. So far I have 220. That may sound good, but when you consider that a bed size quilt will require over 700... aargh!

I would have made more progress on the quilts during the 3 day weekend, but I got involved in this...

Cleaning out and organizing my sewing room. I spent the whole day yesterday working in there and am very happy with the way it looks now, even though I'm not really through with it. Today I will pick up a couple more plastic storage boxes. I will post some pictures of the sewing room organization later this week. Everything will be labeled with labels made using a label maker. At last I will know what every box contains!

When organizing the bins and boxes I have come to the realization that just saving and organizing all this stuff isn't any good if I don't actually use it. For instance, this box contains selvedges that I have been saving for a couple of years. I either need to use them, stop saving them, or just get rid of them. When I first started collecting them I was excited about all the things I could make with them and now the excitement has worn off and I'm just not into it.

I am rethinking what projects I want to make and what is worth my time and storage space. There are endless numbers of projects that I would love to make. January is a good time to pick, choose and plan what the "best" ones would be.

Sewing Room Organization

I'm deep into the organizing and cleaning of the chaos that is known as my sewing room!

Here's a small idea that I love. Zipper pouches that kids use for pencils in their notebooks make good places to sort like items, such as pins and needles.

I bought these three for a dollar each. Look for the ones with the see through plastic on top. They are better than zip style plastic bags because they are stiff and stand up better. You can also put them in a notebook and put the notebook on a bookshelf.

One of these holds all kinds of pins and needles. The second one holds all kinds of purse making supplies. The third one holds several packages of all sizes of elastic.

Today I plan to go back for a few more of these so I can continue on with the organization of the sewing room this weekend.

My Favorite Room

I love my sewing room, especially early in the morning when the sun shines in so brightly. Its on the east side of the house so its the first room to get that bright sunshine each day.



A quilt picture bought at a thrift store is perfect for the sewing room.



It makes me sad to leave my sewing room each morning just when its reaching its glorious crescendo of sun rays.....

In My Sewing Room - Thursday

This is my sewing chair. We bought it at a "junque" store. Rescued it would be a better description. This particular store has a tiny building with a big shelter and there is more furniture outside than in. This chair was not even under the shelter. It was sitting outside in the weather.

Its perfect for my sewing chair. I put the rug underneath it because I was scratching the wood floors.



I like the red toile fabric seat. I think someone covered the seat with the fabric and then painted the wood black with a distressed look.

In My Sewing Room - Monday

I love my sewing machine. So, I decided it was high time I got out the instruction book to see how to maintain it.

The only thing listed under maintenance is to clean out the bobbin case. No oil. So I dutifully followed the instructions and this is what I found:



That lint has a red tint. Would probably have something to do with the fact I have been sewing a red and white quilt for weeks!



I'm sure this machine will run much more smoothly from now on. And now that I know how to take care of it, I can clean out the bobbin case regularly!

Organized Chaos in the Sewing Room

Good Tuesday morning to everyone!

I still haven't sewn a stitch since moving to our new home. But, I have been slowly organizing the sewing room and am ITCHIN TO BE STITCHIN! I thought I'd show you a few pictures of the "organized chaos" in the sewing room.

The cutting table with labeled totes stored underneath:



The sewing machine set up so I can see out the window. The view is of trees, a field and a bird feeder:



More Storage:



Odds and Ends - Scraps





I hope to show some sewing progress soon!

The Farmhouse Sewing Room "Before"

Believe it or not, this is better than it was a week ago! I'm going to go through all my boxes and totes of fabric and purge some of the scraps and other pieces of fabric that I probably won't ever use. I am resistant to throwing away ANY fabric or ANY scraps. But the time comes when this must be done so that the sewing area will be more efficient and..... well... pretty!

Can't wait to show a picture of the sewing room after it's all organized.