My daughter-in-law stopped yesterday afternoon with an elephant ear from the fair for me. It was still warm! Yum!! Deep fried bread dough, butter, sugar and cinnamon, what could be better.
While she was here I asked if we could make a path to my sewing machine. She moved the dining room chairs out and rearranged the bookshelves on wheels.
Next I needed to clean off the top of the cabinet. Most of it was just shifted over to a shelf on the rolling cart.
Remember the little 2" pinwheels made of the Australian fabrics? The fabric I thought I was going to use as alternate squares didn't work so I used this yellow one. The squares are 2" finished so you can do the math to see how little it is. I will have more fabric to cut the little triangles from when I cut the rest of the Hunter Star blocks so I may add on to this later.
In the spring and summer I pull out all of the Goldenrod that I see but there are always a few plants that I miss. This one is out by the raised tomato plant bed.
This is the before photo. This drafting table sits under wonderful lighting but it is too tall for short me to use for my die cutting machine.
Now I have a standard height 96" table in that spot with my Accuquilt Studio die cutter on it. My basement isn't fancy, just concrete walls and floor with odd carpeting pieces and foam puzzle piece flooring in other areas. It is a terrific studio with 3 cutting tables, 8 design walls and enough tables and cabinets for 6-8 people with sewing machines.
I have a shorter table under the 96" table. I have two steel trays for my Studio cutter so I store the extra one on the lower table.
This is where the 96" table used to be, totally unusable between two tables running in the other direction and two sewing tables.
Now the 5' table that the cutter used to be on and the drafting table are in the spot where the 96" table used to be. The 5' table becomes an extension for one of the sewing tables and also a storage spot for my water bottle and spritz bottle for my iron.
Now I can get busy and cut these stacks of fabric into 2.5" squares.
First though my two friends are coming over today to sew and have fun.
Since I moved the serger cabinet out of my studio I have room for my bookcase in there now. The red edge on the right is the kitchen wall.
Turning to the left this is the rest of the wall. It is about 15 feet. I'm so happy to have a design wall on the main floor now too. The other 8 design walls are in the basement.
I did some more baking and making Chex mix and then started putting books back into the bookcase.
Tomorrow I'll show what went into the spot where the bookcase used to be. I thought I had taken a photo but it is on my cell phone and isn't very clear so I'll take another photo today.
It took me about an hour to achieve this.......what is this? A clean work surface........something I haven't seen for a long time. If you want to see the other side of the cabinet or want info about it go to this post.
I spent another hour going through all of the stuff on the cutting table. It isn't cleaned off by any means but I can cut something there now. There is a leaf folded down so if I need more space I can raise that.
I also made another batch of fudge and some English toffee squares. I have company coming today, a reader of my blog who visits me every year at this time when she is traveling through my area of the country.
My youngest granddaughter came over to sew yesterday. She wanted to make some Christmas gifts so my gift to her was all of the fabric she wanted to use. She created 4 items which are secrets in case any of the recipients read my blog. While she was here she put up an 8' fluorescent bulb for me and helped carry the serger cabinet (heavy!!) and chest to the basement for me. We went out for lunch too. It was a fun day!
We had all five boxes of flannel fabric out. After she left I pulled out all of the scraps and filled the bin at the bottom of the photo. I am going to start cutting a flannel quilt from the scraps after Christmas.
The tables are finally cleaned off and the cookies baked. The art quilters will be here today. I laid the blocks on the table so I won't forget to show them today.
We're going into a warm spell now which is unusual for early November. I'll probably spend some time outside this week with fall clean up. The plants in most of my pots still look pretty good so I hate to dump them, but it is time.
I have been busy packaging and mailing colorwash kits that I sold and the studio desperately needs to be cleaned up. This is the main cutting table with my personal collection of batik squares. I had them out to help in the tweaking stage for the class last week.
This is another cutting table. I had sorted all of the scraps that I can cut for my own collection but haven't had time to do it.
My granddaughter invited me out to her house for pizza last night. My other granddaughter and her boyfriend were there too. I held the new baby who is 8 weeks old today. He is a smiley little guy.
Last night I was moving all of the design walls into position for the class. 2 sets of them are just stacked and need to be spread out side by side. I was shocked to find that 2 of my new 1.5" foam boards were too wide to fit into the space that two 1" fit into. The 1" boards are tongue and groove so they must be a smidge narrower than 48". The 1.5" are flat on the sides. I had to move the 2 new thicker ones from across the basement to this position in front of the fireplace and take the 1" boards that were taped together to make 2" boards from here over where those were. Also I had them cut off at 7' and the conduit pipes are a little lower than the rafters so that caused a problem. I should have done a dry run on this last week.
When I walked downstairs after the art quilters left, it was TOO clean!! I'm going to have to mess it up, make it look like a working studio. OK, it will be easy..... Even though it was predicted to have a big temperature drop during the day it stayed at 33 and sunshine the whole time the group was here. Then last night the snow started and it was down to 16 by 11 p.m.
I have finally finished the binding on this quilt started around 1998. It is my favorite of all of the trip around the world quilts that I have ever made. I have to say that it is one of my favorite quilt patterns to choose fabrics for. I think I have probably made about 20 of them over the years with all of the ones I started to demonstrate the work in progress for my classes. I made a king size in multicolor batik and sold the top in Houston when I worked at a booth in 1996. I think I would like to do one in all batik again (but not king size!).
Last night while watching TV I finished one dishcloth and started two more. I almost always have 2 on the needles at the same time. If I had 3 pairs of that size needles I would probably have 3 going at the same time. Variety is the spice of life.
