Category: sewingroom

It has been what, 2 weeks since I finished the black and white jacket and no further sewing progress has been made:  nothing, Nada, zilch.  And this despite the best of intentions.

I have been thinking about sewing, that’s for sure, and as the world seems to get crazier around me I think about sewing more and more.  I really want to crawl into a hole this weekend, finish a few projects (non sewing but related), more about those later, and cut something out, perhaps make a muslin. 

But we have social obligations this weekend, including a day in NYC, that will limit progress substantially.

So what has been happening?

1.  I ran out of muslin.  I did go to my local Joann to buy a bolt but they didn’t have any whole bolts.  I could have bought a piece of muslin to get started and ordered the bolt.  But I didn’t.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  The muslin was half price if I ordered it (and I had a gift card if I purchased a certain minimum amount — the bolt qualified) but even at $2 – $3 a yard instead of dollar, it would have been a worthwhile purchase, just to keep me at my machine.

2.  The muslin arrived and I was filing some new fabrics on the shelves after I had taken some out to put up for auction.  On Saturday morning I climbed up on the stepladder to put some items on the top shelf and discovered the fabric was jammed somehow.  When I started to pull the fabric out, I discovered the entire shelving system had pulled out of the wall, and was only still upright (marginally so) because it was leaning on the 6 foot tall cabinet that holds my sweaters.  I realized that I needed to empty the shelves, which mostly held shoes, with fabric only on the top two shelves.  A lot of fabric can sit on two six foot shelves, each shelf piled about a foot high.  That fabric went on the cutting table.  Bye bye cutting table for a while.

3.  The shoes went on the floor of the sewing room between the cutting table and the wall, where the ironing board normally resides.  They take up that entire half of the room.  I know I have too many shoes, there are about 120 pairs of shoes and boots piled on the floor of my sewing room.

5.  I decided to move the shoes to a different closet, one that has been little used in recent years, since we built new closets in the master bedroom.  So I cleaned out and dismantled that closet.  Some of the contents of that closet will go in the sewing room closet, which I am now in the planning stages of reconfiguring. 

6.  I repaired the wall in the sewing room closet, which required some structural repair behind the wallboard, where the woodpeckers who infested our house in December had apparently pecked away parts of two support beams to make a nest, hastening the collapse of the wall. And I repaired the wall in the shoe closet to be ready to paint.

7.  In the meantime, I have been planning a new storage system for the sewing room closet.  This requires sorting and actually measuring the space required for the various things I want to store in that closet. It will still provide sweater storage and I want to make sure that I actually have a place for everything before I commit to the new plan.

8.  Driving home from the paint store today, someone made a right-on-red directly in front of me.  I slammed on the breaks and we only had a minor fender bender.  The other driver was yelling at me because I went through a green light and hit her  when she had the right-of-way because of the "right on red" rule.    When I got home I discovered that the gallon of paint in my trunk had apparently flown across the trunk and come open and the trunk and groceries were covered with paint, luckily water-based.  The eggs also flew across the trunk but were unscathed.  About half the groceries were lost.

6.  Now that I have spent a couple of hours standing out in the cold and snow scrubbing out my car, I get to start the day over and go back to the paint store and the grocery store.

I sure will be glad to stay home and sew again, one of these days.

I have posted the photo album of the sewing room remodel so far.  There is also a link to the before photos.  You can see the photos from the link on the sidebar, or by clicking here . 

One wall remains undone.  I have sorted through all my stuff and determined what is staying but I haven’t yet figured out how I will reconfigure the shelves on that wall to make them more attractive and functional.  In the meantime I need to sew.

The walls are also rather bare and I will work on decorating a bit as well as putting shades or blinds on the windows.  The microblinds that are currently installed don’t appeal to me much.  Although I thought I could leave the window frames alone, they are in need of repaining but it is not yet warm enough to leave the windows open.  Once windows are repainted I can work on window treatments.

Still no sewing but in my dreams.  Thank you for your patience, for sticking with me, if indeed anyone has.  I have thought about it.  I stated on Sewing World  that I would drill the holes in my countertop, install the hole grommets and hook up the sewing machines during the past week.  It has not been done.  Work got a little out of hand.  There is, in fact, still a big pile of it on my desk, at the moment sitting where a sewing machine should be.

The house is coming back together though.  I have thought about hiding in my sewing room, shutting the door, playing with thread and fabric, and pretending the external chaos did not exist, but I have resisted that urge.  Sewing should be my refuge not a way of avoiding life.  I will appreciate the ability to sew so much more once a little more order has been maintained.

Besides I want my workspace together; finally finished, ready to work and play. 

My mind was preoccupied early in the week by the fear that the dust which has blanketed everything in our house had also penetrated the fabric stash.  These fears were unfounded.   The fabrics piled on the guest room bed, those that had been removed from the sewing room, had a light coating of dust, easily dealt with.  They have been restored and put away.  The fabric already in the fabric closet were fine.  The acid-free boxes in which they are stored were tight and the dust did not penetrate through the closet doors and the tightly fitting box lids.  I was greatly relieved.

It has been nice to finally get all the fabric and yarn organized and put away.  I am very happy with the storage solutions I have come up with, some in the sewing room, some elsewhere, and feel I have achieved a happy balance between display and hidden storage.  Occasionally I get overwhelmed but the more I accomplish, the more I see how well this is working out and the happier I become at the prospect of the final outcome. 

There will be pictures soon.

I finally decided what to do with trims and beads, the
little things that had been cluttering up my cutting table for several
days. Everything has been stowed away in
a drawer of the under-table file cabinets:

 

On the far right are the heavier textured and beaded
trims. These gave me the most
trouble. I had them rolled up or folded,
tossed in a big plastic tub. Inevitably
they would get tangled so I put them in Ziploc bags. But then I still had to sort through the
whole tub to find anything. It occurred
to me that I could make bobbins – larger versions of the little plastic things
that embroidery floss is often stored on. It worked beautifully. I can see
everything and I have lots of space for expansion (of course whether or not I
need more trim is another question entirely).

Here is a close-up:

 

The wooden box in the middle of the drawer contains flat
ribbons and lace trim. I don’t have a
big collection of either so they fit easily in that small box. Again, there is lots of room for expansion,
but I have not in the past, been a big lace or ribbon user. Of course these things could change at any
time.

Here are the ribbons:

 

On the left are two plastic sweater boxes, one holds
feathers and fur trims and pieces, as well as some leather pieces for
trim. The other holds belting, cording
and similar items. No photos.

I have accumulated a fair number of beads over the years, most of them for trimming garments, but a few just because I love them.  I suppose someday I will have to actually try and string something.  Meanwhile I love just looking at them.  Most of the beads are stored in small, tackle boxes made by Plano.  You can see them stacked on the shelf here:

These boxes have adjustable inner compartments.  Each box is about 7 1/2 by 10 1/2 inches and can be divided into up to 36 compartments but mine aren’t divided up that small.  These are an older model, the new ones look different, and were originally meant for fishing lures.  I use them for a bunch of stuff such as storing sewing machine feet and the cams for my old Elna sewing machine, buckles and interesting decorative hook closures, and other small things that need to be kept together.

Here are some of the beads in their boxes:

I also have a fair number of tiny beads, size 6,
seed beads and a few delicas. They are
too small for the tackle boxes and would make a mess. They are in plastic bags and jars in a drawer
now, but I have ordered these storage tubes for sorting them out.

 

As usual I’m still not sewing and still haven’t plugged in
the machines because I haven’t dragged the big drill up from the basement and
haven’t denuded the shelf above the desk of its supposedly temporary contents.

Friday evening was quiet. I knitted and we stared at the TV, both in a state of stunned silence
having just gotten the new quote on the work to be done outside on the deck
that ate Dutchess County.  You know what they say about figuring the
cost for a construction job and then doubling it…well, you get the
picture. I have never spent this kind of
money on one thing in my life and G, well, the deck costs more than he paid for
the house in 1978. Of course the house
has appreciated substantially since then. We can easily understand that it is not just a deck, we are putting in a
hidden under-deck electric pool cover system, which will make the pool much
more useable as removing the pool cover now is a two person job. The pool is free form and about 3 feet from
the house, if that, and substantial construction and excavation is required for
installing the pool cover as well as a substantial increase in deck space. 

Have I mentioned that our house is on the edge of a ledge or
“cliff”? Really, it’s more of a steep
slope and not a true cliff. Is there an
official dividing line between steep slope and cliff? What percentage grade constitutes a
cliff? If you can’t walk up or down it,
does that mean it is a cliff even if it slopes rather than drops
precipitously? Whatever we call it,
half of the pool is now exposed on the edge of the cliff, and the exposed
concrete is cracking and needs to be reinforced. 

The status of the pool is what prompted this whole mess,
along with a small 20 year old rotting deck, but it is the pool cover that has
elevated it into mind-numbing territory. We’re not complaining; we both immediately saw that if we are going to
live here and use the pool we have to put in the cover. G is 77, I have a bad back; pulling a big
heavy cover on and off the pool is not going to be feasible in the future. There is no way to put in any kind of
automatic cover without extending the deck over the cliff.

Anyway I am glad I have a fabric stash. Eventually I will have time to sew it.

Saturday was errand day and I finally finished cleaning the
concrete dust out of the kitchen and dining room, floor to ceiling, including taking everything
out of every cabinet and washing it. That fine concrete dust was everywhere. My kitchen has never been so clean.  The rest of the house awaits, dust is everywhere.  It is probably in my fabric too, I know it got into the clothes closets.  What a picnic that will be.

Sunday was gardening day: I cleared out the front flower beds and applied a generous helping of
compost and weed killer. I also planted
pansies around the emerging tulips in the iris bed. Tulips and pansies will be pulled up in late
May to be replaced with summer flowers. I spent hours and the beds look good but the yard as a whole is still
mostly dormant and dreary.

The labor that took the least time and provided the biggest
thrill was the quick and stupid job of cutting “trim bobbins” from a leftover
piece of ¼” MDF that was in the basement:

 

Silly to be thrilled by such a silly thing and a few minutes
work. They sit here, waiting to be
used. 

I wrapped my flat ribbons around small cardboard “bobbins”
and liked that method of sorting them in the box that I wondered if I could do
something similar with the thicker trims. I measured the inside of the trim box and decided to try making “trim
bobbins”. Later today I will wrap the
trim and hopefully be able to file it by color and/or style of trim.

Meanwhile, beads and trims are piled up all over the worktable.

Very little progress has actually been made on the new sewing room, but there is one little island of progress and promise.  You see the only section of wall which has been painted, just barely finished and dry before the file cabinets arrived, and the new cutting table sitting on top of filing cabinets.  Notice the chair in the front left, that is the top of my desk chair, which hits just below my shoulder blades when sitting.  The blue trim will remain, although some deep green-turquoise will be added.   The little corner of white in the upper right is the old wall color, soon to be vanquished.

The new cutting table is in, less its cutting mat, which is being custom made to fit the top and has not yet arrived.   I love seeing the wood of the table top now, and it will look much more industrial once the mat has arrived, but I see no point in ruining this beautiful cherry and walnut table with a rotary cutter.  I had originally planned on just having a plywood top made, but we had this, our old dining table top, and it was easy enough to remove the legs and use it.

The table dominates the room, which I expected in an abstrat intellectual sort of way, but the reality of it takes getting used to.  Having a large, 3 1/2 by 6 1/2 foot table in the middle of a 10 1/2 by 13 1/2 foot room makes a definite statement.  The table is also TALL.  I put our old dining table top on top of four file cabinets, each three drawers high, so the finished table is approximately 42 1/2 to 43 inches high, just a couple of inches below my elbow.  This is perfect cutting table height, and it was the impetus for the entire sewing room redo.

Of course having such a massive centerpoint to the room means that this sewing room will be much more of a workroom than a cozy sitting/sewing room. 

For now I love seeing the wood and the cabinets and the little bit of wall color which glows nicely when the sun hits it later in the morning.  The green is lighter than I originally wanted, but a deeper green will be too dark and now that I see it on the walls, I am sure I made a happy choice.  This small  island in the middle of the room already makes me smile and inspires me to get on with the rest of the work.

There is nothing quite like emptying everything out of the sewing/fiber room/office to remind a person of all her weaknesses, excesses, sins and foibles.

Mardel has the buttons, waay to many buttons.

Part of preparing to reorganize the sewing room involved moving the button collection from their old home, long since outgrown:

(all gone)

Moving them to their new home and reuniting them with their long lost friends, who had been hiding out in shoe boxes and bags, was a long and tedious process. 

I am very happy with the new space however, and I have rediscovered buttons I had completely forgotten.

I finished the floor plan for the soon-to-be-transformed sewing room. The room is small, 10 1/2 by 13 1/2 feet.

There will be no sketches of the views of shelves and walls from different angles.  That would take much to much time, other views will live in my mind until they materialize, in whatever permutation they finally take.

I also looking at new colors.  The old sewing room is white, with one deep blueberry wall.  I am tired of that.  The blue wall will become white, with a white modular cubby unit.  White to better show off the contents of the cubbies.  Everything else is subject to change..at the moment I am thinking green…

maybe verging into blue.

I like color.  I don’t want the room to be overwhelming but I want it to make me smile whenever I walk in, as well as after I have been there for hours.