Rearranging

DH redoing his office is having a domino effect in the house. Honestly, I think it's just the push we needed to do a few things we've been putting off.

The first rearranging I did this week was in the living room.

 This is the sewing corner in my living room. I put up a machine when I want to sew in there, but lately I've been cutting in here. Usually when I sew up here, I'm making string blocks, so the lingerie cabinet in the corner has sewing supplies and all my foundation papers for making string blocks. The bottom drawers even have strings for a current project. 

I rearranged the furniture a bit, and now the loveseat on the right hand side completely blocks the view of my sewing area from the seating area. I can still easily see the television from my sewing area, but I don't have to look at whatever I was working on when I'm taking a break from it. Feel free to ignore the back wall, right now it's got three vintage machines and a set of shelves along it. I'm keeping the two treadles, but I think I'm going to sell the featherweight in the cabinet, and that set of shelves is getting donated. I have plans for what to put on that wall, but it will be a while before that wall is finished. 

I had a different quilt rack in the living room, but this one is nicer and was hiding in the guest room, so I swapped out the quilt racks. 

Next I started on my fabric room. My yardage cabinets aren't getting moved unless we move houses which we are no longer thinking about. Those cabinets are fastened to studs in the wall, and so they are permanent as long as we live here.

The kitchen cabinets I have in fabric room aren't fastened to anything, however, so those I did move. 

I decided since the room is long and skinny, it made more sense to put the kitchen cabinets on the short wall, since they are really deep, and having them where they were made the room even skinnier. 

We had two sets of shelves we were going to donate, but I decided to move one set down to the fabric room and put my smaller Go and Studio dies on them. My big Studio strip dies are in the cabinets under the Studio cutter. The shelves I had the small dies on is short, and you can see the side of it slipped under the countertop between the kitchen cabinets. I don't have a large area to access those shelves now, so I'm using it to store bolts of interfacing and fusibles, and it works just fine for that. I thought about getting rid of those shelves, but they fit in an area that would have just been dead space, so I decided to keep them. 

The folding table I'm currently using as an island in my sewing room is 30x96", and I have plenty of room to walk around it. It's up on risers, but I'd like to get taller risers. Actually, what I'd really like is to have a custom island for the fabric room 48x84" and 35" high. That would be ideal for the space, and be a better height for me to work at. 

I've spent more time rearranging this week than sewing. I did start sewing the quilt blocks for my BIL from my late sister's clothes. I also finished cutting the second rag quilt for her kids. For some reason, after cutting about 150 blocks, the rag die suddenly became easier to roll through the cutter, but it continued to cut just fine. I don't know what the change was. I need to cut out a baby quilt, and then I'll be sewing like a madwoman, to get all the cut projects sewn up. 

It looks like another of my kids has Covid 19 now, so just a reminder to stay safe. 

Even the dinosaurs around here are masked up! 

Rag Dies-Yay or Nay?

I bought an Accuquilt Go! cutter several years ago, but a couple years ago I upgraded to a Studio Cutter. I MUCH prefer the Studio cutter, for several reasons. I sold my Go! cutter to help fund my Studio cutter purchase, and I don't miss it at all. I sold some of my dies with the Go! cutter, because I purchased almost all of the strip dies for the Studio cutter, so I knew I could cut squares and rectangles easily without the shape specific dies. 

Why do I prefer the Studio cutter? 

1) The handle on the Studio cutter is much easier to turn than on the Go! cutter. 
2) I can use Go! dies, Studio dies, Ellison dies, Blue Wren dies, and even a lot of Sizzix dies on my Studio cutter. Some require an adapter plate, but I just bought the largest one for Go dies and Sizzix dies and I can make any of those work now. 
3) Studio dies are larger, and cut up to 10 layers at a time. If I need a bunch of 1.5" strips, the super giant Studio die can cut 40 WOF strips in one pass. The Go! die for the same size strip can only cut 15 in one pass. 
4) In the long run, I believe the Studio cutter is LESS expensive. I know, the cutter itself is more expensive, by quite a bit, but you only buy the cutter once. Dies are the real test. If you look at the website, and there isn't a sale on, Studio dies look far more expensive. The thing is, Go! dies don't have good sales, 20% off is about as good as you'll get. Studio dies go on sale for 50% off or BOGO several times per year. When I bought all the strip dies for the Studio, it was a 60% off sale. 

I have a good selection of dies, and I really like most of the ones I have, but I am questioning my purchase of a rag die. Normally I find the Studio handle very easy to turn, but I find it so difficult to turn with the rag die that DH had to help me cut out a quilt. I have another rag quilt that needs to be cut, and he'll have to help me with that too. I have learned that if I tilt the die in the tray so much it starts on a corner, that it is a little easier to do. 

I had read the review on rag dies. I knew that the are very hard on cutting plastics (or mats if you are using the GO!). I am making two twin sized rag quilts, so I figured one cutting plastic per quilt. Make that 2 cutting plastics per quilt! The cutting plastic gets so damaged from that die the fabrics embed in the plastic, and even with frequent cleaning of the plastic and using a sticky roller, it still happens. DH was trying to make the cutting plastic last longer so he even started sanding it, which helped it make a few more cuts, but even with all that we went through two cutting plastics for one quilt. 

I had hoped the rag die would allow me to have each block piled nicely to take it straight to the sewing machine. Now, since these quilts are using my late sister's knit shirts as the top layer, I don't know if it's the knit fabric that is causing the biggest problem. The die is cutting the fabric just fine, I'm not having to snip threads or anything because it's not cutting. The knit fabric is getting very caught in the cutting plastic, and lifting off the flannel layers, so I'm going to have to spend a lot of time fiddling with matching up the layers before I can quilt through each block. Trying to match up the layers is made much more difficult by the fringe, and honestly, If I knew this would be the result, I would have never purchased the die. I was thinking quick, easy to sew blocks, and no spending hours snipping the seams. I need the second quilt to look like the first, so I will cut the second quilt with the die too, but then I think I'm done with that die. Snipping seams is not as much of an inconvenience as the difficulty of using the rag die. I think if I was doing a rag quilt with all flannel, it would work just fine, but for a t-shirt rag quilt, I wouldn't recommend it. 

All that said, I do think the rag quilts will end up looking nicer made with the die. I don't snip seams as closely as the rag die does, and since the knits won't fray, I think the smaller fringe will look better. Flannel frays just fine, so although I think the die would work better with all flannel layers, I don't see the necessity of using it. This is really my first case of die purchase remorse.

 Here is a basket filled with about half the blocks for the first rag quilt. I think the quilts will look great when finished, but using the die wasn't the labor saver I had hoped for. 

I rearranged my sewing room a bit. I decided I really do like the extension table up on my Bernina cabinit, so I moved it 90 degrees and put up the extension table, and moved my Singer 201 next to the extension table. The design wall is behind me if I'm sitting at the green cabinet. There is more room between the cabinets than it looks like in this photo. I really need to get better lighting in my sewing room, and I've been researching better ways to do that. I'm thinking LED linkable shop lights around the perimeter of the room. 

I moved my Iris scrapbooking cart under the extension table, and I can fit a second one there just fine, so I ordered another one. I really like these scrapbooking carts for quilting projects. The project boxes snap shut, so they can easily be taken to other rooms, or even on a trip. The cart means they slide out just like a drawer, so taking out the bottom one is as simple as grabbing the top one. You can buy the project boxes separately, and stack them if you prefer, but I really like the carts. I'd like to make 2021 the year of the quilt kit, so cutting up a few quilt kits and putting them each in a project box so I can take them out and sew them as I can seems to be a great option. I have too many quilt kits in stash, and I really need to get them made. I've only purchased a couple quilt kits from other places, but Craftsy/Bluprint was my downfall for buying quilt kits. I'm very glad I can keep watching my Craftsy classes even after the buyout, but them not selling supplies is probably good for me ;-)

 

Do any of you have great lighting in your sewing rooms without using several floor lamps like I currently have? What did you do to get good lighting? I am definitely open for suggestions!

Photosensitivity

I don't talk about it much, because it isn't much fun to talk about and it always sounds as if I'm whining. The thing is, I have a chronic headache, as in a 15 year long headache, 24/7/365. When I first got it, I could barely function, but I've learned how to make myself function on all but the worst days. My worst days are usually in summer, and this summer is no exception. I get horribly photosensitive, (my kids call me Vampira on days like these) and I end up wearing sunglasses even in the house, like I'm doing now. 

We had some unexpected, but very welcome company for the weekend, and I appreciated the distraction. Monday was a bad day headache-wise, and I pretty much spent all day in my bedroom where I can block all the light. 

The thing about any chronic pain is you get used to it and can do things through a lot of it. When I have a non-functional day it's a REALLY bad day. I've hosted 70 people while seeing auras around everything, I can be dealing with horrible nausea and still cook dinner for my family, I can need to close all the blinds in the house and wear sunglasses to deal with the photosensitivity, and still get some stuff done. Some days though, are not days I can function through. None of my coping strategies work and I'm just down until it eases up a bit. This week has had it's share of bad days. 

I may not have gotten much done, but in short stints, I did get a little bit done. 

Last week, before things got bad, I finished assembling a quilt top. 

I really like this one, and I would have made it larger had I not run out of three of the fabrics I used. 

I finished putting a quilt on the design wall.

I had already pulled down the first four rows when I took this photo, but I think it still shows more than my last post. Assembling this quilt is a no brainer type of activity, so good to do while my headache is raging. I'm sewing up the nine patches I matched up a couple weeks ago as leaders/enders while I assemble each row. 

Sometimes nine patches made with novelty fabrics come out pretty funny! Anyone have a guess as to whose eyes those are?

I'm glad I decided to just crosshatch on the UFO I'm quilting. I'm not feeling well enough to do anything more complicated than that. After multiple small sessions I finally finished the lines in one direction. No matter how much I want to get things done, if 15 minutes of doing something is all I can handle right now, that's how much I do. I need to mark the first line in the other direction before I can start quilting that, but I know I'm done for today. 

I had hoped to  be almost finished cutting the four colors of flannel I need for the rag quilts I'm making, but instead, I've only finished cutting one color.

When I realized I hadn't bought enough lavender, I ordered more of the same color, but obviously the dye lots were different, because you can see the color change about 1/3 of the way down. Unfortunately, I had to buy more dark purple too, and I have the same problem, the dye lots aren't the same and there is a bit of a color difference. The lavender is for the center layer of the rag quilt, so I don't think it will be very noticeable in the fringe. The dark purple I have yet to cut will be the backing, and it may very well be noticeable, but I'm just going to have to make it work. With how slow I'm working, until this bad spell breaks, I'll only be working in short stints. Good thing I've learned that any progress is progress, and I'll take what I can get. I had hoped to have all the flannel cut by the end of this week, but now if I have one more color cut it will be a huge win. 

Here's a couple pics of my unexpected company, they were a joy and a nice distraction. 

A Couple UFO's

I have two finishes this week, both UFO's. 

All the HST's in this quilt were bonus triangles from another quilt. The border fabric is completely busted from my stash, I figured the sashing and border sizes by how much fabric I had and used it all. 

I debated back and forth on which color binding to use. The backing is pink but I didn't like it with pink binding. I'm really happy with the black/white stripe.

This was already a UFO top when it came up that I had a great niece who would like a bigger quilt than her baby quilt. Her favorite colors are pink and purple, so I thought this would work nicely. I used a pink gingham binding on this one. This was one of the quilts made from my huge scrap busting project.

My cutting time this week was all spent on my late sister's clothes. I'm about done working with her knit shirts, and it's time to get out her pants. My goal is to cut all all the projects I plan on making with her clothes in July. If I have them all ready to go, I should be able to finish them all in a timely manner. 

The quilt that was on the design wall last week is almost assembled. I think I'll likely have it a top tomorrow. 

I'm working on putting another quilt on the design wall now. I'm putting it up sideways so it will fit on the design wall. It's another scrap busting project. 

I've got some rearranging to do in the house today. DH is getting a major home office upgrade. He had a broken desk, and a mishmash of furniture we bought over 30 years ago that had seen better days. We tossed the broken desk before DD#3's family moved in for a couple months, and DH has been using my desk. Well, with the office upgrade, we bought him a new desk, and now that his office is painted, his new desk is assembled and I have my desk back! I was really tired of only having a small craft table as my desk, and I'm happy to have my desk back again. 

We debated buying new bookshelves for DH's office, but since we just got him the desk and a new computer, we decided to move the nice bookshelves in our living room to his office. That meant I had to find places to put everything that was on those shelves or do a huge purge. I had been purging stuff from those shelves for a while now, so one of the three units was basically empty. Almost all the books that were left on another unit belonged to DH, and this got him to actually go through those, so that was good. The biggest issue was the photos. The bottom of one set was all photos, both albums and photo boxes. I don't have the mindspace right now to tackle that project.

I did move the photos from some albums that were falling apart to some albums I bought ages ago to replace them. I've found places to put all of the photos for now, but eventually, I need to go through all the photos. Scanning the photos into the computer and putting them on DVD's might be nice, and then I could easily add in more recent digital photos, but that project would likely take months, and I'm just not motivated to start that now. 

I also have to move the board games, and that's today's project. When my kids were young we kept the board games in the upstairs hall linen closet, but when we bought the bookshelf/cabinets for the living room a few years ago I purged a bunch of them, and moved them down to the living room. Now they are going back to the linen closet, and I need to rearrange the linen closet to make that work. I purged a couple more games, but we play what's left with the grandkids, so those will stay.  I'll probably end up moving some of the linens to another linen closet in the house, so I'll actually be spending my afternoon rearranging two linen closets. Neither closet is full, so it won't be that bad, but I had already purged down to two sets of sheets per bed in the house, and just enough towels for each bathroom, so there's not anything I could easily purge in either closet at this point. 

I always find it funny how one household change leads to several. DH's upgraded office is coming along nicely. He has this weekend off, which is unusual, but it will give him a chance to get things settled in his new furniture. He's purging what he can, and some things will be moving to other spots in the house. He had some things in his office that are better suited to be stored in the storage room in the basement, or even on the main floor. I now have an empty wall in the living room, and we are debating what to do about that. We have an idea, but it will take a while to make that happen. If the empty wall makes me crazy I'll just move a big picture there temporarily. The furniture DH is no longer using we had thought to get rid of, but I think some of it will be repurposed instead. The ancient shelves might head down to the storage room, and another piece of furniture will be moved to the kitchen, and the piece that replaces goes to the grandkid room...

We have a big purge planned in the kitchen soon, taking out some cabinets that were a huge help when there were seven people living here, but really unnecessary now. We had used cabinets to make built in seating in the dining area when we remodeled the kitchen 15 years ago, and now I'm ready to take those out. We had just installed them over the flooring, and the flooring really needs to be replaced now, since we hadn't replaced the flooring during the kitchen remodel. We weren't the ones to put down the kitchen flooring, and we've lived here 17 years, so it's old flooring. We were going to have to uninstall the built in seating and corner china cabinets to put in new flooring, and after thinking about it, I decided I don't want to put them back. I'll be purging a bunch of special occasion items, and getting things down to what I really use. I have a milk glass collection that DD#3 really wants, so it will go to her. I think the new flooring will be a 2021 project, but we can uninstall the cabinets and do the big purge whenever we want before that, so I'm hoping that will be soon. 

I bet we aren't alone in redoing our living spaces. With everyone spending so much time at home these days, it makes you look at things differently. We are empty nesters now, so we are at the purging stage of life, trying to simplify as much as we can, so things are easier to care for. I've always thought the cheapest way to redecorate was to get rid of things, and besides replacing some things that really needed to be replaced, that's exactly what we are doing.