A Graduate, a Rearrangement, and Other Stuff

What a busy week! DD#3 graduated with honors this week! She now has two Associates Degrees, one in Applied Science in Welding, and one in General Studies. She's got 85 credit hours of college, so if she were to decide to pursue a Bachelor's degree, she'd be well on her way. She didn't walk in the graduation ceremony, so no pics. She heard it was going to be at least three hours long and said she didn't really want to sit there that long. She opted to not have a party either, but we did take her out to dinner, along with the extended family that could make it. Our graduation gift to her, was to help her buy her first car! It's a 2004 Kia Sorrento, and she is thrilled to not be riding the city bus anymore. Now she'll be looking for full-time work, but her part-time position at the college is good for another month so it buys her a bit of time.

On the sewing front, I rearranged my sewing room last weekend. I was originally just going to switch to of the sewing cabinets, but once I started I kept think of better ways to arrange things.

The first thing to move was the green cabinet into the "quilting corner". If you look behind my Bernina, you can see the new quilting extension standing up behind the cabinet. I haven't gotten it onto the cabinet yet. I found out a while back that quilting in a corner is great, because the two walls help keep the quilt from falling off the table and creating drag. I wanted the Bernina back in the green cabinet, because now I can use the knee lift again, and I already had a custom insert for the Bernina in this Arrow Olivia cabinet.

 

 

Instead of moving the cabinet that had been in the quilting corner to the place the green cabinet had been, I opted to create a sewing island, which I've had before. Right now I have three cabinets right here. On the right is my Arrow Bertha cabinet with my Singer 201 in it. My Juki insert works well with the vintage Singers, only about a 1/4" gap along the left hand side. To the left in the front is my Singer 99 in a cabinet, and you can barely see behind it there is an Arrow Gidget table (thrift store find) with one of my Singer 301's on it. Can you see all those quilt blocks piled up on my Bertha cabinet? I am working on too many quilts! I'm anxious to get some rapid fire finishes.

 

 

 

 

Along the wall where the green cabinet was, I moved my cutting table, and my smaller mini bolts. I think the sewing island will work better this time than the last time I had it this way, because with the small mini bolts behind my sewing area, instead of the larger furniture that was here the last time I had a similar set up, I have more room to move around.

 

 

 

My fabric wall remains unchanged. No way I'm in any hurry to move all that fabric again! I did have enough holes in my stash, that I shelved all the rest of my fabric that isn't being used on an immediate project. My stash is fitting in its allotted space! That makes me happy.

 

 

 

 

Is there a quilter that doesn't have any sets of plastic drawers? These were originally sets of three drawers, but I had the upright frame on one drawer break. I bought  new set to replace them, and as I was looking at the now defunct drawers, I realized I could take them apart and add one drawer to each of my other sets, and only lose the one broken drawer. Turns out two sets of four drawers exactly fits the space under my cutting table. On the opposite side of the cutting table, there is a similar set up of drawers, but narrower sets of them. In case anyone is wondering, I bought a counter top height kitchen table to use as my cutting table. The height is perfect, and now that my storage underneath is using every bit of space, I don't think I could have chosen anything better for my sewing room.

 

 

 

My ironing station is still the same, in the same place. I am debating adding a light strip under the shelf above my ironing station, to help when I'm ironing at night.

 

 







 

I finished the blocks for another quilt this week. I have three grandsons, and I have pieced the blocks for a quilt for each of them while working on the 25 patch quilt. I am a firm believer in leaders/enders, and a project like the 25 patch goes through a lot of leaders/enders. I only have 8 more 25 patches to make, I've got 92 done! I'm hoping to get those done on Memorial Day, and start assembling quilt tops sometime next week. I still have three baby quilts I haven't started on, but I really want to a couple of the current quilts finished before I start those. The babies are all due in September, so I can't wait too long! I have company this weekend, but Monday should be quiet.