Back in Business

It was another no sewing day, but I'm happy to say that I spent most of the day putting my sewing room back in order. Now, I'm happy to say it's back!!! And since that's how I spent most of the day, I took a few pictures.

Generally, I'm working at this end of the table. The sewing machine and ironing board are at this end of the room. It's entirely too tidy right now. I need to spread out with some fabric and thread and make a good ole mess, don't you think? So the picture above is taken from the far end. There's no door on my sewing room, but the entrance is in the upper left corner of that image above. Just turn the corner there to go up the stairs or into the family room.

If you stand on the other side, it looks like this:

When we bought this place, the room was strictly a utility room. It was kind of a strange space, and I hadn't returned to sewing at the time. Here's a picture we took of the room when we first looked at the house and were considering making an offer.

What you can't see in the image above is another one of those strange "inlets" on the right side of the image. That's where Mike built shelving and a table for my sewing machine. You've seen it plenty of times:

When I first started quilting, the ping pong table was set up to function as an actual ping pong table. Since no one ever played ping pong, I took it over as my sewing table. I wasn't sure it wouldn't ever go back to being a ping pong table, and so I had some plastic sheets cut to size to cover and protect the surface from scratches. Eventually, I started storing fabric and other supplies underneath. 

Walking to the left side of the room, you can see way back there to where the ironing board is. There are some wine racks back there that have yet to be put back into service. Some of the baseboard trim has become broken or warped, and there are a few places where workers will be back to make those cosmetic repairs. The wine is a hassle to deal with, and so we won't be able to put that back until the work is 100% complete. 

In the foreground is one of my two lightboxes. I keep it covered with a doll quilt my grandmother made for me. You can see another one of her little doll quilts hanging just to the left of the wall of thread. It's the one at the top with the patchwork. This is the lightbox I use when I'm working on applique or collage quilts. All my different kinds of fusibles are rolled up and stored in empty rolls from paper towels. That's a big box of Heat 'n Bond there.

This is a basement, right? And the furnace, water heater, and water softening equipment is in these closets. The open closest in the image below is what we began to affectionately refer to as the He-man Woman Hater's Clubhouse. (You'll only get that reference if you're old enough to remember Spanky and Our Gang on television.) Smitty was the first one to use the clubhouse, and he did that to escape the annoying sister cats he's had in his life; namely, Gracie, Maggie, and now Sadie. 

Of course, formerly feral Sadie came to us so uncivilized that she did not recognize this as his personal space, and now she's pretty much taken it over. She does allow him to visit. She hops up on the shorter and then the taller of the two tanks you can see in the image above, and them boop! The image below is looking up. She gets into the "clubhouse" through the opening between the rafters in the image below. It's the space between the basement ceiling and the main level floor. Sometimes we get mice in that space since it's at ground level. The kitties keep the whole area mouse free.

After I took that image, I turned to look up and behind me. There, Smitty was hard at work on mouse patrol. Good kitty!

Okay, and so moving down nearer the ironing board, I hung my last finish before the sewing room was dismantled. I didn't set out to cover all the walls of the sewing room with quilts, but what the heck. There's still more room on the walls. (Note to self: Make more quilts.)

To my right is a little doll bed. I saw a doll bed in an antique store during our USA Perimeter tour, and I came home with a powerful yen for one. When we arrived home after that trip, I found one on Etsy. It has no function other than to make me happy. 

You can see there's a little doll sitting in the bed. There's another one that can't be seen in this image, leaning against the opposite corner. Here are the two dolly friends together:

My friend Sharon made that one. When I was still running a monthly doll quilt swap, Sharon always included a little dolly with her doll quilts. They were very popular. Eventually, she wrote a tutorial about how to make them. Oh yes, and that's a little bluetooth speaker sitting next to the doll bed for listening to audio books.

But this is the best part of this whole debacle. As I've mentioned before, we got rid of at least half a ton of crap that has been filling this closet and pretty much every closet in the house. If you look to the rear of the image below, you'll see some diving equipment there. That will be sold eventually since our diving days are probably over. We haven't been diving in more than ten years. Riding ATV's has taken over our quest for adventure. So, anyway...I get to use this space for sewing supplies now.

On the left side, I was able to put all my project boxes. Before the plumbing disaster, these were all sitting in piles in various places around the sewing room. Now they're put away and oh so tidy. Oh yes, and at the bottom of the image are all the wine bottles. Those will eventually get put back into the wine racks, and I'll have even more space for sewing supplies.

While the work was going on, all the quilts were piled up in our bedroom. Now they're back on this quilt rack, and reorganized according to size and "occasion for use." And you can see there are at least two whole racks at the top with no quilts. There are more farther down that you can't see. (2nd reminder note to self: Make more quilts.)

Okay so after two no sewing days, it's time to spend the day sewing, isn't it? The one last thing I need to do in the sewing room is to "process" and put away all the fabric I bought while we were traveling.

But first, I'll get back to my quilting. I've decided how to quilt the interiors of the beaded snowflakes. I've only quilted two of those blocks, and so I'll fill in the centers and then move along to the rest. I'll do six more blocks today, and then I'll head into the sewing room to put away the fabric and do some more sewing. I'm woefully behind on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for 2022. When I made the last blocks back in July, it looked like this:

I need to add August's orange, September's light blue, and October's light green. I believe I'll have all the blocks I need for this quilt when I'm caught up on the colors.

Also, I need to catch up on the Books & Roses blocks from Jenny of Elefantz. Since I have a slow-stitching project already in the works, I'll just prepare the blocks for slow-stitching when I finish what I'm working on now. Here are the blocks I have so far for this quilt:

She's posted blocks for August, September, and October, but nothing so far for November. She's also started some new BOM's, and so I'm not sure if there will be more blocks for this quilt. It might end up being a table runner if there are no more.

So you can see there's plenty to do on the sewing front. I'll be doing laundry today, which is a good side hustle project to do alongside sewing. There's not a minute to waste, and so I'm just going to get right to it. It's going to be a good day.