Yesterday, I finished the potholder to go with the casserole carrier for the Guild gift exchange next Tuesday night. I'll simply pop it into a gift bag with some tissue and call it done!
I also began working on the little key ring/coin purses that I want to give as my gift to the guild members. I managed to get 15 of them sewn yesterday--yes, they make up that fast!--but sewed snaps on only 10 of them last night. I'll finish the other five today before making up more of them.
These coin purses call for 3.5" cuts and I happen to have a bin of 3.5" strips so I managed to use quite a few of the already cut strips. Today, I'll use up the rest of them and then will have to cut yardage. My goal is to make about 40 of them so I can give one to each Guild member attending the holiday party on Tuesday. I don't know how long it's been happening, but there seems to be an unwritten tradition that the Guild president have a little gift for the members. I'll see if I can find little candy canes to tuck inside each purse to make it a bit more festive. Especially in the purses made of hot pepper fabric!
I really don't have anything much to say today. After I'd straightened up the sewing room from the boys' stay there, and before I made too much of a mess again, I took pictures and I'll share them with you today. My sewing room is in the basement and it's fairly large. I can nearly lay out a queen sized quilt on the floor if I rearrange some of the furniture.
This is what you see as you enter the room. My sewing station in front of you with the cutting table next to it. Ironing board along the wall to the right, and a closet area to the left.
The sleeper couch is to the right of the doorway, and it comes in handy for putting things on but then when we have extra guests, I have to unload it and actually put things away. And then try to remember where I put them! Sometimes, I even sit on the couch and do some hand stitching, as I may do this morning sewing on the rest of the snaps for the coin purses.
My cutting table. Usually there's less space for the actual cutting since bits and pieces of leftover fabric creeps in. But I manage to make it work for me.
You can see in the above photos that I have a wall of framed pictures above the cutting table. I call them my "The Naked Quilters." I love the women on the motorcycle above and the ladies at the piano below. I have 9 of them all together and they are calendar art. My daughter went to Australia in 2005 and brought back a calendar for me from Broken Hill in the Outback. It was a fundraiser for a guild out there and I absolutely loved these women. This was during a time when I wasn't in a guild--I'd left the one I'd been with for about 4 years and hadn't yet found my present guild, so I was a lonely quilter in those days. Sometimes, I'd just sit back and look at them and felt myself surrounded by kindred spirits.
Continuing the tour of my sewing room, above is my sewing station. I bought a Tracy Table quite a few years ago now and I love it. My machine sits flat with the table top. I have two Plexiglas inserts so I can use either of my two machines on this table. I could get another one for the ole Kenmore that I have, but I so rarely sew on it that I don't think it's worth the expense. I like that I can raise and lower the sewing machine--higher if I need to sew on the free arm, like I do with the dolls' twirly skirts, and I can lower it to below the table surface so it's out of the way, as I do when the boys stayed in the room. I have a wooden insert to use then to cover up the opening. I don't have any affiliation with this company but I really like my sewing table and after many, many years of sewing on the dining table, I'm very grateful to have this.
Notice my sewing chair, It was originally a putrid green and I made selvedge fabric and reupholstered it! I also made a sewing machine cover out of strips and selvedge which I keep on the back of the chair when I'm sewing.
To the left of the sewing station is a closet. A very large closet! A four section closet! This is where i store my fabric stash and I don't dare take pics of that as I'm afraid the camera will totally shut down! It truly is a mess, but I can usually find what I need. In the picture above you see the entrance to the closet or Room 1, and at the back of it is Room 4 where I store the Christmas items and the china and crystal that I don't have room to unpack and display. To the right side is Room 2 which is filled with fabrics and all sorts of "must have" things.
To the left is Room 3 where I keep more fabrics as well as my machines when they're not in use and the growing collection of completed quilt tops that are waiting to be quilted up and taken upstairs to a bed. I have 7 hanging and a couple more in boxes waiting as well.
And that completes the tour of my sewing room. Where I live, it sometimes seems. You may notice there's no television or computer in this room and that's deliberate. When I need something that's on the computer, I'll bring a tablet down for that purpose. And I purposefully don't have a TV--I find it too distracting and have to stop and watch instead of sewing. I have a radio tuned, permanently, I think, to Wis Public Radio and I have that on when I'm working in there. I find the programming on WPR is exactly what I need to stay connected with the world, I listen to the Ideas Network, not the Classical Network, and there's a huge variety of informational programs, and on the weekends, it's lighter and more comedic. Now that the election is finished, I'm looking forward to learning about sea urchins, and why alcoholics drink, and how Rembrandt created his paintings. With a few political shows thrown in for good measure once in awhile. If you are craving thought provoking radio, you can live stream WPR on your computer anywhere in the world. Give it a try. Again, I'm not associated with WPR in any way--I just love what they have to offer.
I hope you enjoyed seeing my sewing room. If I ever get my fabric stash sorted out, I'll post pics of that as well. but don't hold your breath!
Today, I take our cat, Clem, to the vet for his yearly outing, and oh does he hate that! After that, I'll work on the key rings until it's time to get ready to go out to dinner for the my husband's annual golf banquet. It's always a fun thing to do--and very good food as well!
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