My Sewing Studio

My Sewing Studio

When I purchased my current house, I set up a sewing area in the spare bedroom.  While this worked for a while, it quickly became crowded and difficult to use efficiently.  I had to set up a cutting table in the living room just so I could free up some space in the small room.

It's a small room but I managed to make it work.

I had just enough room to set up 3 of my sewing machines.

I created a make shift pin board with a piece of insulation Styrofoam.

I built this sewing table myself using a 1 inch melamine desk top, some legs and a drawer unit from Ikea.  I cut out the opening for the sewing machine, made a tablet to hold it and mitered out the shape of the original transparent sewing table.

I eventually decided to built a new sewing studio in my basement.  The room measures 13x16 feet and is fully finished.  It has 4 large florescent light fixtures in the suspended ceiling.  I build a large storage unit along one wall including drawer units at the bottom and shelves on top.  There is an old shelf unit in one corner, an ironing station, two long tables along the outside wall, one for the embroidery machine and the other for my primary sewing machine.  I added two extra sections of desk that I can move about as needed.  I built a floor to ceiling, 5 foot wide pin board and have a peg board for all my accessories.  I also included an old book case with doors to store office and sewing supplies.

After the walls and ceiling were built, I started building the storage unit.  That pipe is the access to the anti-flush back valve for the washroom on the other side of that wall.

 

Three bottom drawer sections and three upper shelf sections.  I had to take into account the presence of the support beam and the water pipe in the left end section.

Frame is all built.

 Painting the frame.

Installing the shelves, doors and drawers.

Fully assembled. For some reason, one cabinet is crooked. Meh!

The room is almost finished!

I installed a pocket door to save space.

A view of the rest of the room before moving in.

TADA!

A view of the pin board and accessories board.

The cutting table I built.  Still installing the ironing station.
Folding Work Table Plan

A view of the storage unit and book case.

 

 The cutting board is based on a pattern I found on another quilting blog.  I made some minor changes to the design.  It is a full 4x8 feet in size when fully opened.

 It can be folded.

Tucks away nicely to leave the floor free for use.

In the fully folded position.

With one leaf opened.

 A view of the studio from the doorway.

 

Close up view of the sewing desk.

Working at my sewing desk!

I have added two more table sections that I can move about as needed using a 3/4 inch melamine desk top and legs from Ikea.  I cut the length to create a small and long table.

Another view of the extra tables.

Blue Dream - Stack'n Wack Quilt

Blue Dream - Stack'n Wack Quilt

This is another quilt that I had started with the intent of donating it to the office charity fund raiser.  However, I was busy doing 3 baby quilts one after another and this one got sidetracked for a while.  Since I retired before I could finish it I decided to finish it and see if I can sell it.

This is based on the Stack'n Wack pattern for making quilts.  Pretty simple process whereby you first decide if you are making a multi colour quilt or a single base colour quilt.  In this case I chose to go with a single base colour, blue.  We selected fabric in 9 variations of blue,  I cut 3 stacks of each colour plus 1 extra set as this takes 28 blocks.

All 3 stacks of 9 colours are placed in the same order to begin with.  Taking the first stack, you cut an angle line from the top right to the bottom right using different starting points.  For example start at 2.5 inches from the top corner and cut down to 3 inches from the bottom right corner.  While some quilters will cut all 9 pieces in one slice, I prefer to cut them one at a time to ensure that the cuts are accurate and even.  Once all 9 pieces are cut and stacked in the same order, take the first right side cut piece and place it at the bottom of the pile then sew the pieces together creating 9 blocks with two colours.

Once the first cut is done and sewn, cut the pieces on the left side repeating the process using a different set of measurements top and bottom.  Once the cuts are made, take the two top left side pieces and place them at the bottom of the stack then sew the pieces back together.  Now you have 9 blocks with 3 colours each.

Next, turn the entire stack 90 degrees counter clockwise then repeat the above process, again using different measurements for the cuts.  After making the first cut, move 3 pieces to the bottom of the stack and sew.  Cut the left side, then move 6 pieces to the bottom of the stack and sew.

Now  you have 9 blocks each with 9 colours in different orders.  For the second stack, move the two top pieces of fabric to the bottom of the stack then cut and sew in the same manner using different measurements from the first stack.  For the third stack move the top 3 pieces of fabric to the bottom of the stack and repeat the process.  You now have 3 stacks of 9 blocks with 3 different patterns and colour combinations.  This is 27 blocks.  For my quilt I needed 28 blocks, so I had to make one more block manually by cutting 9 pieces of material to the same size as one of the existing blocks.

Once the blocks are squared they are placed one from each stack in order the pin board, 4 across by 7 down.

Then they are moved about in order to avoid having two of the same individual colours next to each other and/or two same patterns next to each other.  This process can take a while.  Having a nice big pin board that you can stand back from to view the results is a big plus!

Once the blocks are in the desired order, sew, add the borders and it's ready for quilting.

For this I used a simple diamond shape crisscross pattern.

 Each quilt line starts and stops at the edge of the small border.  Each of those sets of threads has to be tucked in since I am not using knots.

That's a lot of work but the end result is very nice!

Once the crisscross pattern is done, I sewed a small diamond stitch down the edge of the small border, then down the middle of the outer border.

A close up of the crisscross stitching.

The fully completed quilt on my cutting table.

Handing on the pin board.

The back side of the quilt.

I used the same small diamond stitch to finish the back side of the binding instead of sewing it by hand.

Here is the quilt name and signature block.

 A close of of the back side finishing.

Another view of the back corner of the quilt.

For Baby Alexandra

For Baby Alexandra

This is another baby quilt, however I made this one for a young lady at the office and her first child, Alexandra.  I started with a baby panel fabric and with help from my cousin Linda (she selects all the colours for me), I came up with a design based on 4 primary colours, using 6 variations of each colour, light to dark, cut and assembled in diminishing size from the larger piece being light and the smallest being the darkest tone.  I made two blocks of each colour then assembled it in alternating locations with the panel blocks.  The back panel is a nice sheep and owl fabric.

The fully assembled baby quilt for Alexandra.

A close up of the upper corner of the quilt.

This is the upper left corner of the quilt.

This is the center blocks of the quilt.

This is the lower left corner.

Finally, the lower right corner of the quilt.

The back side of the quilt.

Here you can see the quilting pattern I used with the quilt name and signature block.