Slow Going

It's Sunday and foggy and lots of rain is blowing in on the wind as I begin this post. It's nice to be indoors where it's cozy and warm. Today I'm linking up with Kathy at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching. We also link up with our church on line for the Sunday morning service and are so glad in this time of Covid 19 for the technology available to make this happen. But it's early yet and I have a little time to write about my slow progress this week on Abigail's quilt.

I contemplated long on how to quilt Abby's Roman Square quilt, I had plenty of time to think about it while I waited about a month for the backing fabric I ordered on line to be delivered. In that time I made a sample quilt and came up with what I thought would be a good quilting pattern and tried it out on the sample. It didn't turn out well at all. I still like the little quilt I made, but I don't want to look too closely at the quilting because it is so disappointing. The design was inspired by one recently posted on Lori Kennedy's blog. I had tried doodling her design but my doodling didn't turn out well until I changed it up to the design shown here. Sadly my free motion quilting experience is very limited and this simply didn't turn out as I had sketched it. Anyway it was back to the drawing board, so to speak.

Abby's middle name is Rose and I originally wanted to use a continuous line rose pattern for quilting but I couldn't find the pattern. I knew I had one, it's part of the set Follow the Line Quilting Designs by Mary Covey for That Patchwork Place. It was visible in the little instruction book that comes with the pattern packet, but the page with that design wasn't in the packet and I didn't know what I'd done with it. Fortunately I happened across it while looking for something else recently. I really need to keep things where they belong! It could have been a very long time before I found that pattern.

Anyway, I was happy to find it and to find that the dimension fit the rows on Abby's quilt perfectly.  I changed it up a little bit, deleted some loops and simplified the center then made three stencils for the three parts of the rose. Over the weekend I made a little table runner to use as a sample for the quilting. The stencil worked out nicely though my placement could have been aligned better. The marking took a long time, but once it was ready the quilting itself went quite quickly.

So Monday of this week I began tracing them onto the quilt. So far this week I've spent somewhat over 12 hours tracing the pattern onto the quilt top and have 9 rows left to mark. The good news is that each row gets smaller as I go along. I started marking in the center of the quilt where the rows are the longest, marked four or five of the longest rows and then moved off in one direction toward one corner of the quilt.

Now I'm back to one of the longer rows, 17 blocks, but as I said each row will get smaller by two as I make my way to the finish. The marking is tedious and my back gets sore from leaning over my cutting table for such long periods of time. So though my week hasn't been taken up with slow stitching it's certainly been S L O O O O W.

So today I think I want to take a break from marking and actually work on some slow stitching, and I have many options for doing that. I still have about two inches to finish on blanket stitching around the outside edge of my little needle book that has come to a standstill because it is so tedious. Next needle book will be done differently. There is the purple witch's boot project to work on, and a small purple whole cloth quilt (pictured here) that I started hand quilting many years ago that has fallen by the wayside. I've recently pulled it out of hibernation and have done a little work on it over the last couple of weeks. Each of those projects feature my favorite color, purple, so I'll leave off there and not go into the yellow, green, blue, or hexagon UFOs that await my attention.

Well, this post has been rather slow going too, I've had some trouble with the new blogger format and had to revert to the original version to make my post. I've taken time out for our church service, which was on REST and very welcome and timely. The fog has lifted and the rain has stopped but the sky is still cloudy and gray and the wind is still blowing, a perfect day for sitting in a comfy chair and stitching. Guess I'll get to it. 

I hope you are well and enjoying this day.

I'm linking up with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching at https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/

Maybe in May

Roman Square Quilt / May OMG 

My monthly goal for April was to be at least half way finished quilting this Roman Square quilt. However I didn’t have fabric for the back and mail orders are snail pace slow these days. But today I got notified that my order has shipped. Hurray! Or is that hurry!? It’s posted to arrive on the 11th. So now it’s time to get the top down off the design wall and get it marked so it will be ready to layer when the backing fabric arrives. My One Monthly Goal for May is to get it done. Abigail’s birthday is early in June and I’d love to have it ready for her by then.

Suzette checking out my stash

I spent some time last week rearranging the storage system for my stash while waiting for my order to be shipped. I don’t have a large stash because I try to refrain from buying fabric that I don’t have a plan for, though sometimes I do splurge and buy fabric I just love hoping that I’ll figure out something to do with it. I’ve had my fabric in plastic storage bins since moving it into Flo’s studio because the studio was known to sometimes have unwanted critters on the loose. Having it in bins also made it very easy to store while the place was for sale and to transport to the new house. And it was organized in the bins so I left it that way until last week. Every time I wanted to look for fabric I had to pull out one or more heavy bins and I was getting tired of it. Now it’s all visible at a glance and the only critters in my sewing room are my cats. They may be curious but they leave my stuff alone unless I’m actually working on it. Then of course they want to be in the middle of it. The picture only shows part of the stash.

Boot Quilt Beginnings

One of my newly emptied bins will make a good project box for the boot quilt I started over the weekend. It’s intended as a Christmas present so no real need to work on it for the moment. I don’t have a suitable background fabric for it so can’t do much more now anyway. It can wait while I work on Abby’s quilt. Having chosen fabrics reserved in the project box will be good. And having block dimensions and my general plan for this quilt noted in my database will be very helpful when it’s time to pull it out and get it done.



I’m linking up with Patty at Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal.
https://www.elmstreetquilts.com/2020/05/one-monthly-goal-may-link-up.html

These Boots Aren’t Made for Walkin’

The RSC color for May is dark green. I knew I had a good supply of scraps that would work so I pulled them first thing this morning. But I had no idea what I was going to do with them. So I went out to the living room to drink my coffee and relax hoping to come up with an idea at some point today.

I read a few posts on the blogs I follow while enjoying my coffee. Barbara at Cat Patches mentioned a pattern that she received in the mail from a friend. It’s a boot pattern called Crazy for Cowboys.  It looks like a fun quilt and reminded me that I made a boot quilt long ago for my niece Hannah, with a pattern of my own.

If you aren’t familiar with Cat Patches check it out. I always enjoy Barbara’s posts. https://catpatches.blogspot.com/

Boots from dark green scraps sounded like a good idea so I went to the sewing room, dug out the pattern, and got started. I will likely include other colors but this is a good beginning. Some of the patterns were already traced onto fusible web leftover from the original quilt so I didn’t need to do much prep work today, though some of them gave me quite a bit of trouble so I may have to switch over to newer fusible. I got three pairs of boots done today. I don’t have a suitable background in my stash but just learned that our local quilt shop is open for limited hours during the week. I may have to pay them a visit.

Here is a shot of the original quilt. I plan on doing a very different layout for the new one. I will also change up some of the boot design details, and won’t be using any wild bright colors. I wish I knew when I made Hannah’s quilt, but I have no notes on it at all. I’m glad I have a picture of it. I asked Hannah about it and she thinks it was 2006, the year she was into horseback riding.

I’m linking up with Angela at So Scrappy for the 2020 RSC.
https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

Speaking of boots. I pulled a rather old project out this week and have started working on it again. As I mentioned above I like to have some quiet time in the morning while I enjoy my coffee. Hand work is ideal for that time of day. When the weather is cold I like to knit and crochet, but when it warms up I want a lighter project and embroidery is just the thing.

The  piece is actually further along than what’s pictured here. Maybe I can get this part of it done by October. This is the center piece of a quilt called Which Witch’s Boot by Meg Hawkey of Crabapple Hill Studio. I chose all the fabric for the project when I bought the pattern and have been saving it with the pattern so it will be ready for me when I finally get the embroidery done.

I’ll be linking up with Kathy tomorrow for Slow Sunday Stitching at https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/

April Finishes

April Roses

Well April is nearly gone and my OMG for the month has not been met. Not only not met - I've done no work on it since I posted my April goal here early in the month. My goal was to get the quilt for my niece Abigail layered, basted, and at least half way finished quilting.  However after posting that goal I realized I didn't have enough fabric for a backing and with stay at home orders in place in California I couldn't go to our local quilt shop to buy fabric. My only option was to find and order fabric on line, which I did right away. It hasn't come yet. I got an email from the company over a week ago asking me to be patient, that they had to reduce their work force to maintain a safe distance in their work environment. They promised to get my order shipped as soon as they could. Their email came two weeks after I placed my order. I haven't gotten any notice yet that my order has been shipped.

Saturday Blues

Happily Abby's birthday isn't until June, so I still have some hope of getting the quilt done, if not right on time, at least not terribly late. I'm glad that the company is working to keep their employees safe from the virus, so I will continue to wait and hope. In the meantime I've been busy in the sewing room. Today I finished and hung my Saturday Blues quilt for the April RSC in the hall outside my laundry room. In the old house my kitchen and laundry room/pantry were blue and white. This house however doesn't lend itself to that color scheme so the only place I can put my blue things is the laundry room. But there's no wall space for it so the quilt brings the blue out into the hallway.

Nigel

Nigel came to keep me company while I stitched down the binding on the back, which was fine while he stayed put and watched. But being the big sweet boy he is he decided he wanted to "help" me stitch. Of course I didn't want his paw to get damaged by the needle, nor the thread by his claws so I had to resort to a little deception to move him along. I managed to make my thimble tap loud enough on the underside of the table to make him think someone was knocking on the door, which did the trick. He got down and went to investigate and let me finish my task on my own.

Pinwheels Quilt

The Saturday Blues quilt is the second finish I managed this month, I also finished  the Sparkle Stars quilt that I started in February. It's a little quilt for Nigel and you can read about it in my post Sparkle Stars Finish. I've also gotten some work done on the dark blue and tan pinwheels UFO that I ran across in February when I organized my scraps and rearranged my stash. The blocks are sewn into rows, but the rows still need to be sewn together. Then I will have to figure out what I'm going to do to it next. As you can see Abby's quilt is still on the design wall, I'm now just pinning other things over it. Orange bits on the pinwheel quilt are just row markers.

Spring Tablecloth

Lastly I decided I wanted a tablecloth in spring colors, so I spent a couple of days last week working on that. It still needs a couple of borders to get it to the right size for my kitchen table, so it will keep me busy for a while yet unless the back for Abby's quilt shows up. The pattern is Afternoon Delight designed by Ann Laure for Grizzly Gulch Gallery. I have a tablecloth in fall colors from this pattern and have another top finished in Christmas fabrics which is just waiting to be quilted. I used my favorite colors in this one. It is also pinned over something else on the design wall waiting for my attention.



 I'm linking up with One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts at
https://www.elmstreetquilts.com/2020/04/one-monthly-goal-april-finish-link-up.html

Sparkle Stars Finish

Sparkle Stars is my second 2020 finish. These little quilts go so much faster than the large ones I typically take on. It feels really good to have accomplished something, even if it's small. This little quilt will live on our antique dresser. Nigel loves to hang out up there, it's by the window where he watches out for the neighborhood cats that often track across our front yard. We've had an old ragged blanket up there but it looked pretty shabby and I wanted to make a whole quilt using the Sparkle Stars pattern after making a sample block in teal, the RSC color for March.  A small quilt was all I wanted to do, so decided that the top of the dresser would be an ideal place and a good size for the piece I wanted to do. It also gave me a good place to start practicing free motion quilting. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, even though a couple of the points got cut off when I put the binding on.


 

I wanted to get a picture of Nigel on his new quilt, but he has disappeared, most likely under a bed. So instead I've got Suzette on her Strawberry Basket quilt.  It's a little scrappy quilt I made the summer I got to work in Flo's studio.

There is a little swallow's nest in the eves just above the window there. Suzette likes to come in the afternoon and watch the swallows fly, she also likes to sleep in the sunshine and just hang out with me while I work in the sewing room. It's not sunny today, warm but overcast, kind of dreary. But I hear voices wafting up from the neighbors, so some folks are enjoying the outdoors.

The RSC color for April is light and bright blue, so last weekend I made another little sample quilt with my blue scraps so I could practice some more free motion quilting. It's a little larger than the Sparkle Star quilt. Today I got it basted and ready to quilt. I just have to figure out what design I'm going to quilt.  That is turning out to be a challenge.

I've been doodling for a little while trying out different motifs but I'm not very good at drawing so they all turn out looking pretty funky. I would like to do an all over pattern, something that could just skate up each row. I really do sorta mean skate, Abby's birthday is in early June and her quilt is queen size. I need a pattern that is not too fussy or detailed, something that will work with the Roman square blocks. I'm open to suggestions.


Well, I think that's enough for today, I need to get back to figuring this out, more doodling ahead.


I'm linking up with Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2020 at So Scrappy at http://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

Location, Location, Location

One of the things I love about my sewing room is it's location. In our house at Shibui my little sewing corner was the northern most corner of the house, Dan's office was the southern most corner of the house. Now his office is just down a short hall from  the sewing room. Sitting at my sewing desk I can look right out the door and see him sitting at his computer desk.

Dan teaches on line classes at our local community college. He's fortunate that he didn't have to scramble like so many of his colleagues did to get his classes on line in a hurry because of the virus. What is new for him in this time of stay at home orders is that all his meetings are now also on line instead of on campus.

I'm very much liking having him home all the time. I know that will change when the order is lifted but for now that's one thing about this situation that I am not complaining about.

I spent the weekend working on a little sample quilt with fabrics from my scrap stash. It's small so I got all the blocks done Saturday afternoon. I had to do the layout on the bedroom floor because the design wall was already full. But since it was small it wasn't so bad. It only took a few minutes, I got a picture of the layout I wanted and then stacked up the blocks and returned them to the sewing room where I put them together yesterday.

You would think that having just finished piecing a queen size quilt in the same pattern that I would be able to get this little thing together without a hitch. How about sewing right sides together - every time! I missed that on one of my long strips while making the blocks. Sewing rows together wasn't any better, I sewed one of the longest rows together top to bottom instead of side to side. So I made good use of my seam ripper both days.

The top did get done though and now it's time to find a backing piece. I've prepared the binding in a pretty bright blue fabric. You can see it pinned around the outside of the quilt in this picture, though it looks like a border, it's just pinned up to make sure I have enough of the fabric in three strips so I don't need to cut a fourth.

The large quilt behind it is for my niece Abigail. I hope to have it done by her birthday in June. I am waiting for the backing fabric to arrive and hoping I don't have to wait too long. In the meantime I'm going to use the little blue sample to practice the free motion quilting pattern I want to use on the large quilt.

The remaining portion of the design wall is taken up by a crib size quilt waiting for me to piece it. I love the ladybug fabric, but the colors of the four patch blocks between them don't do much for me so I'm not that motivated to get it done. 

Another project hanging around waiting for me to get to it is pinned up on a piece of foam core board. I've had the pinwheel blocks hanging around forever and have finally decided to do something with them, but I'm not moving too quickly on that project either. The pinwheels are hard to even see in this picture - they are turned on point. I have lots more of them to add side triangles to, the little piece of foam core won't hold too many more of them, but I wanted to make them visible in the room in hopes of getting me to move on them. The square blocks that look black are actually a dark navy with a small tan print.

Well, that's what's on the design wall this Monday. If my backing comes in for Abby's quilt it will free up lots of space on the design board for other things that are waiting in the wings.

Speaking of wings, there have been many outside my window as I've written this post. The swallows have arrived and are nest building - some of them in our eves. Most of them on the houses higher up in the neighborhood. They make a mess, but I love to see them fly and the sounds they make are endearing. They move too fast for a picture and I won't bother with a video, so I leave you with a picture of wings of a different sort. This is my angel wing begonia. I was afraid that I had killed it last year and am so glad to see it coming back. It will fill the pot and trail over the side with sweet little orange blossoms. I'll post another picture when it's in bloom.


I'm linking up with Small Quilts and Doll Quilts for Design Wall Monday at https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com

Saturday Blues

The most precious thing I have from the Shibui studio is Flo's Bernina. It's by far the best sewing machine I've ever had, there's no comparison on quality or performance. It hums, it makes beautiful consistent stitches. It's the easiest thing in the world to thread.  So you can imagine my dismay when I put my foot down to start stitching and heard nothing but a whir, and saw no movement. Flo's words came immediately back to me from the first time she allowed me to use her precious machine, and I quote, "If you break it I'll kill you." Those words did not in any way represent her normal way of speaking. She was more likely to tell me I was perfect and that there was no such thing as mistakes, just happy accidents. An accident with her Bernina though would not have been happy. 

How does one get one's machine fixed while in the midst of a mostly national shut down? I'm in California, we are still under stay at home orders. What was I to do? I didn't even know where in normal times I would take it to be fixed. There used to be a Bernina dealer in Paradise, but he died and the shop went up in flames when the rest of the town burned, though he was already gone by that time. I've had it serviced in nearby Magalia, someone comes once a year and you have to make an appointment to have your machine serviced. This year she came the first week of the lock down, and I had already been in stay at home mode for over a week by that time, so I missed getting it serviced this year.

I texted my friend Kathy and asked where I might get it fixed. She said the person who used to service her machine lived in Paradise and was probably no longer here because of the fire. So I stepped back from my plan for the day and and worked on marking the outer edges of my Sparkle Stars quilt. Just as I was finishing that up my husband came in and I told him about his mom's machine. So being the guy who wants to be a fixer - he started asking questions. Have you unplugged it and plugged it back in? The first question he always asks. No, so I did, just to humor him. Still just a whir and no movement. So he started asking what's this? and this? and What's that? pointing at the bobbin winder. I told him and as I looked it at I noticed that the bobbin winder was what was whirring. There was no bobbin on it but it was spinning and making the whirring sound I had been hearing. So you know the rest of the story, right? The needle doesn't go up and down when the bobbin is being wound. Somehow it had been bumped and as soon as I pressed the release button my machine began doing what it's supposed to do. I felt like such a dummy, and was so grateful that Dan had come in and started asking questions.

So my day started out blue because thinking the machine was broken made me very sad. And then my day continued blue, but it became a scrap happy blue because my plan for the day was to finally get something done with the the blue scraps that have been sitting out for the April RSC since the month began. So the afternoon got spent making Roman Square blocks for a small sample quilt that I want to use for quilting practice before I try doing any quilting on Abigail's quilt.

I have 34 blocks for the little sample and have gotten the side triangles cut. I also have lots of scrap strips set aside for the binding, it's fabric from a dress I once made, not left over fabric either - I cut up the dress. I wore it for quite a long while before I did that though. If I think it needs a border I will have to pull some fabric from my stash - but to get this much done just from my scrap drawer I thought was pretty good. I'm glad to be actually using my scraps after having hung onto them for so long thinking that maybe someday I would use them somehow. I'm grateful to Angela at So Scrappy for the RSC challenge that's gotten me using them. This month is light and bright blue. About half the scraps are from my floral log cabin quilt and about half from the scraps left from Flo's stash. I hope by next Saturday to have it put together and start my practice quilting. My OMG for April was to get Abby's quilt to the point of being at least half quilted but I found that I didn't have enough fabric in my stash for a back, so ordered some on line and am still waiting for it to arrive. I'm thinking I won't be meeting my April goal. I'm glad Abby's birthday isn't until June. I hope I can have it done by then.

I'm linking up with Angela at So Scrappy for the April RSC at https://superscrappy.blogspot.com

I hope you are staying safe and well!

Morning in Paradise

                        

    Sunrise on the canyon.

                                 A rainbow in the distance.

I love mornings. I’ve always been a morning person, it’s when I have the most energy, and the day is fresh and new. I enjoy the quiet and stillness, and the birdsong when there is some. I realize that many households have a very different experience of morning, rushing to work, getting breakfast and lunch ready for kids before the bus arrives. That is just not my reality though rushing off to work to care for other people’s kids has been a big part of my experience. It just isn’t now. Not because of this virus though.

I wonder if the stay at home orders have brought anything other than anxiety to families that are used to the morning rush. Have there been any positive effects to not having to run out the door and be away from each other for most of the day? Some families are spending much more time together because of all this, and some are forced apart, they don’t live together so they can’t see each other, except electronically. I’m about an hour and a half distant from my dad who is in his 90s. I had planned for more frequent visits now that I’m retired and have the time to go, but that will have to wait. I have other family there as well that I also miss seeing, and family farther away. I’m grateful for the ability to stay in touch electronically. 

                                 In the meantime I quilt. 

My OMG for April is coming along. Only one corner area left to piece. Most of the rows are already sewn together. I hope to have it together by the end of day tomorrow if not today. There are other projects waiting in the wings.

                         

                             A baby quilt waiting to be pieced.

 RSC blue scraps waiting for a design.

Lots to do, guess I’d better get busy. The sun is fully up now and the morning is glorious. I’ll leave you with one more glimpse.

                     Sunlight and raindrops on the maple leaves.

April Goal and TaTa Teal

It's gray and dreary with a bit of a wind and light rain in Paradise this morning. The sewing room however is just as cozy as can be, a great place to spend time indoors whether because of the rain or because of social distancing. There may be a gray sky out my window but in the sewing room there is no lack of color. The queen size quilt for my niece Abigail is on the design wall and brings me delight every time I walk into the room. I'm going to miss it when it's finished and gone. I'm more than half way done with the piecing and it's going relatively quickly now as each row is getting shorter since I've passed the half way point. Abigail's birthday is in June and I'd like to have it finished by then. So my OMG for April is to be at least half way finished with the quilting by the end of the month.

I missed posting to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge last Saturday, but did have the top of the teal and purple Sparkle Stars table topper done by the 31st. I'm practicing some free motion quilting that I want to try out on that little quilt. I've never done any free motion quilting before and am anxious to try, and this little quilt seems like a good place to start. A practice piece for a free motion feather is pictured below. I've been taking lots of classes from Bluprint this last week or so since they are being offered for free until the 16th. There are a bunch of great classes and teachers. I’ve always been intimidated by the thought of free motion quilting, especially feather motifs. The classes I’ve been taking are giving me the confidence to try. You can check them out at:  https://www.mybluprint.com/cr_maid=120946&cr_linkid=20200403_SVOD_WTW_hero&vpe=true&cr_source=Bluprint&cr_medium=Internal%20Email&st_id=19890224&cuid=20948247

A couple of weeks ago I found and printed out the Quilt Project Planner from Hello Melly Designs, available from Quilting Digest at:  http://quiltingdigest.com/print-this-planner-to-keep-track-of-quilt-projects/.  It has a good number of things listed that one would want to keep track of when planning a quilt. I used it as a jumping off point for my own planner. I love working with and designing databases and don't know why I haven't made one for my quilt projects before. It gives me a greater ability to track every detail of a project than a print out could. It also gives me a space to attach pictures which will be a great help with future projects. I've found that as I'm pulling out UFOs to work on I don't remember which fabric I had chosen for which part of the quilt. I've sometimes made notes about quilts I've started but have not had a single place to keep them, had any consistency in what was noted, or been able to attach pictures or even samples of the fabrics I intended to use. Now with the database everything will be in one place and notes made on the fly as I work won't get lost. It's also a place to keep notes on quilts that I've completed over the years. I've been surprised by the number of quilts I've done because I've never had a list of them before. Both the Roman Square quilt for Abigail and the Sparkle Stars table topper are in the database. I’m anxious to move them both onto the completed list.

I'm linking up with One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts at: https://www.elmstreetquilts.com/2020/04/one-monthly-goal-april-link-up.html

I’m linking up with Rainbow Scrap Challenge at SoScrappy at: https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

First 2020 Finish

My OMG for March was to get the elephant quilt marked, layered, basted, and at least the elephant quilted. It may not have been a very ambitious goal but I kept going after reaching that goal two weeks ago to complete the quilt. Having so much time to spend at home this month has helped me accomplish this first finish of 2020, even after spending an entire week chasing squirrels.

I began this quilt in July of 2018 before my niece’s baby was born. Beckett James Rosenbaum is 19 months old now. I don’t have a very good record for getting baby quilts done when the recipient is still a baby.

Now that it’s done I’ve got to figure out how I’m going to get it sent. I understand the post office is open but I’m reluctant to go out when I don’t have to, I’m in a high risk category for this virus.

Here is the quilt partially done in November of 2018 and the squirrel of a runner that sidelined it for many months. Thought I needed a new runner for my kitchen cabinet. Of course the Camp Fire also happened in November of 2018 and though we didn’t lose our home in the fire we had to be out of our home for six weeks because of the fire. Then medical issues happened that kept me from quilting for most of 2019. I was so glad when last year was over, only to find the whole world in jeopardy in 2020.

Not to end on a downer note, here is the finished runner. Each little section was quilted individually so the whole thing took quite a long time. But I’m very happy with the result. It was a 2019 finish.

Another baby is on the horizon, Beckett will have a little sister soon and I hope to have her quilt done in time for the baby shower in May. That is an ambitious goal. The pieces are cut and arranged on the design wall, sewing the pieces together has begun too. This quilt won’t be such a challenge as the elephant was, but I think it will be sweet all the same.

I hope you are getting in some good quilting time during this new shelter in place reality. Please stay safe.

I’m linking up with One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts.
https://www.elmstreetquilts.com/2020/03/one-monthly-goal-march-finish-link-up.html

What Makes A Studio?

Studio or Sewing Room? I’ve had designated sewing spaces since 1996. They have each been quite different, some more useful than others.

My first sewing space was little, simply a corner in the great room. I had a sewing desk, a design wall, and one open cabinet for fabric and tool storage. This picture is probably from around 2002, teaching my niece Hannah to sew. She made a sweet pillow during her first visit and a couple of small quilts on later visits. This is certainly not a space that I would call a studio, though quilts got made here. 

The design wall was small so layout had to be done on the floor for any large quilts. Basting had to be done on the floor unless I took the project to my friend Kathy's house so we could layer and baste the quilt together on her kitchen table. The paper pieced kaleidoscope quilt I made for my Dad is starting to come together on the great room floor in the picture to the left. Fabric cutting was done on the kitchen counter or dining table. Quilting was done on the dining table. Cats were always around and difficult to keep from laying down right in the middle of the work.  Nigel Sebastian in the picture below is in the middle of my sewing area keeping me from working on my Churn Dash quilt.

So if quilts get made here and all my fabric, tools, and other necessaries, like a design wall are here, but it's only a little sewing corner, what makes a studio? The property we lived on was shared with my husband's mom Flo Barnett. She had a studio, though she was not really a quilter. She was however one of the most creative people I've ever known. She had lived on the property for many years and our home had originally been her studio. We built a new studio for her when we moved to the property in '96 so she could keep working and teaching. She taught watercolor classes for many years and had a very loyal group of students. She had many paintings and sold her work, her income depended on having a studio to work in. She had a 700 sf space right on the back side of her house.

So is it size that makes a studio? Is it a space occupied by a professional artist? Is it having a name and a sign and an official business? I think the designation studio is usually associated with a professional occupation, though I just saw a video of an extraordinary man who's hobby of making things with matchsticks would certainly qualify his work space as a studio. His work is without question professional even though the label of hobby fits. Here is the link to the video.   https://youtu.be/HyuE1XnYO0I

Shibui was the name Flo gave to the place we lived and to the studio she worked in and the gallery she at one time had for displaying and selling her work. I started a blog several years ago to write about and showcase her work after she died. I'm afraid I only managed a few posts at the time, I may have to revive that blog. You can find it here https://shibuiliving.blogspot.com/

After Flo died we had two homes and a studio on three and a half acres. We tried for quite some time to sell the place but it just wasn't working out, so I moved my sewing desk and fabric cabinet out of my little sewing corner into the studio. Wow did I get a lot done once I had that space. I also wasn't working at the time and that made a huge difference too. I put up a much larger design wall and put it to good use. I am no professional quilter or artist of any kind, but I had a studio for a while. Besides getting several quilts done there from start to finish, I had one very fun weekend with friends in the studio.

We had a quilting weekend in September of 2016. They brought their own projects to work on and we had a great time together. Here is a group picture. From left to right - Cindy, Speri, Kathy, Cindy, and Barb. I took my things off the design wall so it was free for their use and got my stuff of the tables so there was room for each of them and their projects. Sadly all but one of these women lost their homes to the Paradise Camp Fire in November of 2018. The studio and both homes on the property also burned to the ground. My husband and I had lived there for 21 years but we sold it a year and three months before the fire. It's just up the street from where we live now, it's still very sad every time we drive by to see that it is all gone.

But the weekend retreat was a lot of fun! Here is Barb with her sweet whale quilt on the design wall. Barb moved out of state when she lost her home in the fire. We miss her!

Speri is in the picture below with her mother-in-law Kathy on the left and her mother Cindy is on the right. Showing the finalized design for the quilt she made for her husband Michael. She worked a long time on that design. It's the only quilt she took with her when she ran from the fire.

I made several quilts in the studio in the short time I had it. It was a lovely place to work. One of the great things about it was that I could make a mess and leave it when I was done for the day, to be picked up where I left off the next day. When I had a corner of the great room for my sewing space I had to constantly be cleaning up, especially when I used the kitchen counter as a cutting surface.

When we sold Shibui we bought a house with extra rooms so my husband could have a designated office and I could have a sewing room. A lot of sewing has happened here lately and I can close the door in the evening when I'm finished for the day and the mess I've left is not in the way of anything. I have space here to have a friend come sew with me, but not enough space to hold another quilting retreat weekend.  But right now even having a friend come sew with me is off limits since we are all under social distancing restrictions, and we are all supposed to stay home to help stop the spread of this awful virus.

Though quilts get done here I wouldn't call this space a studio. Though in some ways I think it's actually a better work space than the studio was. The studio had almost too much space, this space is more compact, everything is close to hand, and the storage situation is actually much better than it was in the studio.

My favorite thing about my sewing room is the position of my sewing desk. This is where I do my piecing. From here I can look up and out the window and all the way down the canyon into the valley below. It's a glorious sight.

Well, this post has gotten long. If you are still with me you are a real trooper! Thanks. I hope to create a tab called Studio Stuff even though I no longer have a studio. If I can figure out how to do that future posts with the Studio Stuff label will be about stuff that makes this space special, about tools and organization and ideas for future projects. I hope you will check in sometimes to see what's going on in the sewing room.  I will finish off this post with one of Flo's paintings that graces the wall of the sewing room.

Mom loved collage, if you look closely you can see the scrappy nature of the painting, the sun rays are actually just torn from another work. It's a very gray day outside and I've only got light coming in from the window now so it doesn't show it's sunny nature very well, but it's a painting that lights up my days.

I hope in your days at home just now you are having some time in whatever sewing space you have, and that being there gives you joy.

There is space for comments below, I'd love to hear from you. I do try to answer when people comment on my posts, but sometimes they just won't go through, and I don't know why. I will keep trying though.