Sunday, August 23, 2009

Summer's nearly over? No way!

Summer heat and sewing room progress....these photos did not exactly land where I wanted them to, but so be it! This is one half of the closet, with the old dresser that is now filled up with most of my stash. It isn't organized yet and I didn't bother to paint over the blue that used to belong to Nick when it was his room, but lots of action will take place here in the future!


A while ago I got the (not so brilliant) idea to fold my fat quarters into triangles, so they are pretty spread out in this drawer. I'm sure I'll refold them in the future so I can get a lot more fabric in there...All of the drawers have fabric in them; the bottom two are yardage sized pieces and the rest fat quarters. My precut strips live in a rolling drawer cart pictured below.


Here's the view of my little sewing room from the doorway.

Below is a wooden chest 2' x 4' high that my SIL was getting rid of so I snagged it before my brother put it in the Goodwill pile! As I just brought it home yesterday it is empty but I know I can quickly fill with quilty stuff!


This is a vintage blond oak sewing desk my MIL bought new in about 1954. It no longer has a sewing machine but is pretty cool looking and makes an extra horizontal workspace for me. I removed the hardboard "cradle" for a lowered sewing machine so I could fit in my drawer unit.


Below is the Hoosier cabinet gussied up a little. The wooden duck on the top has padded fabric wings to hold pins or needles and a slot for the scissors to be the bill. This came out of my grandmother's things but I don't know if it was hers, her mother's or her sister's.


We are finally getting our share of hot weather here in the So Calif coast. Weird monsoonish type weather, hot and humid with big thunderheads over the mountains. My new sewing room was quite a sauna last night. Grant even brought in a fan for me, though he stole it back this afternoon for the office. I've been working on my Rickrack Road, which is all in summery colors. Turned out I was short by three units, dangit. In going through my stash I found only ONE lonely white fat quarter --that's the extent of my lights! I tend to run low on those often because I mostly go for the colors when I shop. I had to scramble to find scraps large enough to use. Luckily I haven't worked on my "scraps to cut down" boxes so I found suitable pieces.

I got all the units for Rickrack Road made up and sorted into four piles of 28 for the vertical rows. Next will come the puzzle of getting them arranged into four units per block without too many repeats or same fabrics touching. It is a happy, bright quilt and I'm loooking forward to setting it together. I ordered what I thought was the perfect fabric, and it is really pretty and happy too, but I am afraid it is too white and may need a tea bath. Can anyone recommend a tea bath method?

3 comments:

Julie in the Barn said...

Hi Annie
I enjoyed the tour of your sewing room. I have a Hoosier just like yours! Lucky you to get that neat little cabinet before it went to Goodwill. I tea dyed some fabric years ago by using instant coffee in a dishpan of hot water. I just put about 1/2 a small jar in a small dishpan of water, stirred it up to disolve and soaked the fabric for a couple of hours. Then I soaked the fabric in the same dishpan with a healthy dose of white vinager added to fresh cold water. It seemed to work and the aged fabric is still intact 20 years later so I guess the treatment didn't harm it.

Holly said...

You really scored on that white wood chest. Don't you love when that happens?! I like seeing other peoples sewing setups.

Stephanie D said...

I really like that wooden chest--what a score! And you can never have enough storage, in my opinion.

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