Design wall

Hey everyone!  Just a small update on the sewing room.  No stitching yet (sadness!) but a major step forward-- I now have a design wall!  Whoo-hoo!  Odd how that can make me so danged happy.  Here it is:

Well, I wasn't going to take a picture of a blank wall, was I?  I put up the Grandma's blocks just to have something good looking and inspirational in there.  They're really lifting my spirits.  Plus it lets me rearrange them every time I walk by, which may or may not be a good thing.

This project cost me about $25 or so.  It's constructed of some styrofoam panels covered with an old--but clean and still useful!--flannel sheet. I used these panels, which I found at Home Depot:

I got these because they were the cheapest ones I could find, they were fairly thin, and they were easy for me to get in the car and to wrestle upstairs and hang.  I got two packages, which was 12 panels, and I used all of them except for a little bit that I had to trim from a couple of panels because of the way I arranged them.  I hung the panels on the wall with these Command hangers:

I used these in case I ever want to take it down or arrange it differently, but you could use small nails, or screws or maybe even hot glue.  (Just kidding!  Do *not* hot glue your wall!)  My wall ended up about 8 feet high and 7-1/2 feet wide.  I'll need to get a small step stool or something if I want to put blocks at the top since I'm not 6 feet tall, but I'm okay with that.

After I got everything up, which was really easy to do by myself, I hung the flannel by pinning it into the styrofoam around all of the edges.  Here's my advice for this step--enlist the help of a supportive friend.  The flannel gets heavy and it helps a lot to have someone hold it so it won't fall while you're trying to pin.  Note that I said "friend" and not  "spouse,"  because that person is likely to say something silly like "what you really need to do is. . ."  after you have done hard work and have everything the way you want it.  That never turns out well, does it?

Flower picture to add a little color!

Anyway, another step forward!  I put together the new sewing table today, so let's hope that I've used the machine by Friday.  Starting to get itchy without it, even though the work we've been doing is exhausting.  Hope you're all having a good, non-itchy week with lots of stitching!

Sharing at Linky Tuesday and Let's Bee Social.

Leaves of fabric

Hi everyone!  How was your week?  Mine was very, very busy, but now the sewing room is painted.  Yay!  Today I am planning to put up the design wall in there, and maybe, if I am very ambitious, put together the new storage unit.  After that the boxes get emptied!  I probably won't be that ambitious until next weekend, but you have to have goals, right?

You may have noticed that it is no longer summer; it has actually become autumn.  You may have missed this because the temperatures are still in the 80s and 90s, but really--it's fall.  It happens that I love the fall, maybe because my birthday is the first day of autumn.  Really!  So today I wanted to show off some great fall-themed fabric I recently got for a special project coming up at the end of October: 

Don't those look yummy?  Don't know why this looks like night time, because it wasn't, but those fabrics shine anyway.  These are from the Into the Woods line from Paint Brush Studios, which is a sponsor of this special project.

The camera doesn't really capture how pretty these fabrics are.  The leaf print on top has very rich colors and I wish I had gotten more of it.  The others are also really rich and remind me a lot of the colors we'll soon be seeing on the leaves if it ever cools down.

These are great fabrics, but for my project I also added in a few of the Paint Brush solids, just to add a little dash of spice:

This is the print I'm going to use the most of, along with the solids.  Two golds and a purple!  Purple adds so much to fall prints and quilts, although many lines of fall fabric leave out purple.  Most leaves don't turn purple, but check out how the purple mums enhance the yellow and maroon ones:

Okay, the maroon ones aren't quite open yet, but don't the purple, yellow, and green look nice together?  These are on my new deck and are making me insanely happy.  I have flowers again!

So that's the sneak peek at an upcoming project!  Look for the completion of this coming up the week of October 24th. There are some other people involved too, and I've heard a rumor that there *may* be some giveaways. Everybody loves those, right? 

Hope you're all getting in some fun stitching and getting to pet some pretty fabric.  If we all make things from fall prints, will the weather get the hint?

Sharing at Sunday Stash with Molli Sparkles.

Unpacking

Hey, guess what?  We moved!  We've had a few hiccups (getting my name wrong on every single closing document) and a few big surprises (not a single appliance worked, leaving us with 40 gallons of water on the floor at one point), but altogether we are really happy to be here!

I haven't even come close to finishing unpacking, but there are a few things to show you.  First, the view from the new place:

I love it!  There will be a lot of leaves to rake, but there are also a lot of really cool backgrounds for quilty pictures.  Here's the other side of the house:

Sadly, the inside is not as great right now!  This room will be my sewing room very soon:

I'm planning to paint it this weekend and then there is some furniture to move in.  I'm thinking of painting it a pale yellow.  Or maybe green.  And yesterday I went and got some big construction foam panels for a design wall, which has me really, really excited.

So where is the fabric now?  Well:

If you said "garage" you were correct!  It's not as bad as it looks and there is a lot already upstairs.  I even started opening some boxes:

Backings!

Seriously, I could weep.  Can't wait to get this on the shelves!  I also found some notions I haven't see in a long time, some specialty rulers, a bunch of batting, and a box of books. 

Just so you don't think I'm slacking off, there has been some hand sewing happening:

More to come on this one!

Don't know if anyone was interested in this status report, but I feel good being back online.  Hope you're all feeling just as good, and that everyone has spelled your name correctly, and that all of your appliances work.  We're going tonight to buy some new ones, which I'm sure will not be as much fun as it sounds!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social.

Framed in

Hi everyone!  I hope your week is going well!  As you read this, we are actually moving at long last.  It's amazing, but a lot of work.

While my sewing room is disassembled, I thought I'd share some beauty shots of the Framed quilt, which is now all quilted and finished:

It turned out so great!  Hard to get a picture of the whole thing because it's so big! (About 87 by 103.) For those who don't know, Framed was one of my projects for last year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  It was quilted by Alycia, who did an amazing job. (Email her and maybe she'll quilt one for you too!)  So much great texture on this one. 

I used this batting in the summer weight, which is so soft and turned out really well.  (I bought this when we were in Maine, so I don't know how easy it is to get anywhere else.)  I think the thinner batting kept the quilt from getting too heavy.

This quilt has a scrappy binding, which I almost never do, but should do more often.  You know how something always gets broken when you move?  Well:

Yep, I broke the jar where I keep the leftover bits of binding.  Nothing to do but use them, right?  They're already cut and just need to be seamed together, so why not?  I'm sad to tell you that I had enough binding pieces here for at least 3 quilts.

I love how this binding came out!  I don't usually do the "rolled quilt" picture, but this shows off the binding really nicely.  Yep, there were some short pieces in there, but I like them!  And it used them up, so it's a win all around.

Framed is destined for the bed in the guest room, since it will fit and will be nice to sleep under.  I confess that I spent a little time snuggled under it and can certify it as extra cozy.

As I said, the moving truck is coming!  Keep your fingers crossed for us, and I'll see you soon from the new sewing room!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finish it Up Friday, and Finished or Not Friday.   (If we have Internet by then--who can tell?)