Ready to Make a Mess

I finally got around to finding a place for everything that belongs in my new (temporary) sewing room.

There is *just* enough room in here for the basics, barely. In fact I have to crawl under the machine to get to the back side if I want to do any pantos. Good thing I'm in such good shape right now!

The custom shelf set up under the machine is perfect for storage. My husband put that together for me when I first bought the machine.

On the opposite wall I have my Brother 1300 which is my preferred machine for piecing and sometimes I quilt on it. The other desk is for my laptop where I will, hopefully, spend lots of time designing and writing patterns.

The closet is pretty full. I'm thinking we could probably add another shelf in there. As you can see I did not paint the closet. The paint was actually in perfect condition. I didn't have any aqua left anyway. I really like it with the blue though, it looks very cottagey.

For now if I want to cut and press I can set up a folding table in front of the closet or do that in another room. I guess it will depend on the project and whether my 3 year old is home at the time.

Well now it's ready to be broken in and made into a mess! First up on my list is that cute and colorful baby quilt hang in on the right side of the frame.

~ Norma
blog.petitdesignco.com

Paused

I had to put my quilting on hold for a few days for an exciting home project. I was chatting with my husband the other day and one conversation led to another which resulted in a game of musical rooms and musical furniture!

This game really isn't nearly as fun as it sounds. It involves several days of messiness and general chaos. You may have noticed a trend around here and that is that I really do NOT know how to work on only one project at a time. In case you are wondering no, I have not finished the slipcover for the couch, no we have not finished the board and batten in the kitchen and no, we have not finished canning because the garden keeps producing!

As if that wasn't enough to keep me busy for weeks we decided to play the aforementioned game. We moved our 3 kids into one bedroom. This is a temporary 3-4 month arrangement while hubby gets busy and builds the office/sewing room upstairs (our home has an unfinished second story.)

So in the meantime the now empty bedroom will be my sewing space. Once I move upstairs it will become my daughter's bedroom. It just so happened that my long arm will only fit in one of the kid's bedrooms and it happened to be the boy's room. I'm glad it worked out that way because that was the room that really needed a new paint job.

I finally finished painting yesterday, trim and all! It feels airy and fresh in there. I picked a very light barely there aqua which also happens to be one of my daughter's favorite colors. It is a hard color to photograph since it tends to read as white in pictures but it is slightly more minty than I had anticipated but I think furniture and accessories will help with that.

I have to take a minute and love on my family. Each family member, including my hubby, was asked their opinion before making the switch. Each one of them not only gave me their full support to start focusing on my business but they also demonstrated excitement! The kids were excited to share a room, my hubby was excited for me to get back into quilting and my littlest one is excited to be with his siblings but is even more excited to be starting "school."

He's not really going to school but he is so cute and super excited to be a big kid. Here in the south a lot of churches do part time preschools called "Mother's Day Out" programs. It is usually twice a week and is commonly 3-5 hours. I really had no intention of him going anywhere this year but the thought was put into our minds as parents recently (nothing to do with the musical rooms but with his general well being, namely being bored to death at home with mom.) I was really surprised when I found him a spot in such a program yesterday. Most of the programs start registration in May and were already full. I was surprised when I got a call yesterday and was told they had one spot left and that the program starts today!

I'm not going to lie, I'm probably going to cry when I drop him off. I almost started crying in the school supply section of Target last night when he was so adorably and excitedly trying on backpacks and picking out a lunch box!

Have any of you figured out how to stop time yet?
~ Norma

blog.petitdesignco.com

Super Secret Project

Many of you have noticed my long gaps between posts and I have a really good excuse. I just can't tell you about it, yet. I'm working on a super top secret project that is taking up a lot of time and a lot of energy. The deadline for said project was moved up by a whole month! This caught me by surprise but I've come to terms with it. I still have almost 6 months til the deadline but loosing 30 days has changed my priorities and focus. I know, it's so mean of me leave you hanging but I promise I will let you know more soon :)  {maybe we can play the hot cold game and I'll let you know when you are getting hotter}

Here some stuff I can share:

A few days ago I got my new quilting frame. After I set it up I was no longer "feeling" my creative mojo. The sewing room felt cramped and messy, it got to the point that I didn't even want to come in here. *gasp* So I decided to do something about that which resulted in an even bigger mess, lots of furniture moving and rearranging. I finally arrived at this layout and it feels so much more open.







I now have two separate work spaces. One for sewing and pressing, and one for cutting and general crafting (brown desk.)





I did have to perform minor surgery on my polka dot ironing board to have it fit the other table. I still have a few more things to put away (pile of stuff on the brown desk) and some minor changes to make like moving the design wall over by the brown desk. I'm loving the space so much more now. I only wish it were warmer. As you can see I have to make do with the little heater on the ironing board {it's usually pointed right at me! brr} but I know come summer I'm going to enjoy being in the coolest room in the house. Good thing the winters aren't long in the south.

Now for some general showing off:

The dog finally got bathed and brushed, courtesy of Pet's Mart :)





Let's just say that when he decides to go digging in the red southern dirt $21 is totally worth it. I didn't take a before picture but he ends up looking very orange. ALL OVER. The dirt just sticks to his fur like a magnet, think of a shaggy microfiber floor mop, that's what his fur does. He was pretty bad this time. His whole face was many shades of orange. The down side to him being all clean is that he's so fluffy and cute everyone calls him a girl! I can't wait for warmer weather so I can shave him down.

My new bag:




I'm not a bag type of girl. I have one cause it's handy. I'm the type of girl who buys one bag and uses it until it's falling apart and it's time to get another. I spotted this one at TJ Maxx and I just fell in love with the fabric print. That print would be right at home in my stash. Yummy! Right now it's serving as my church bag and holds my scriptures and small notebooks for Primary.

And last:





I made this cute towel earlier today for the little boy in our ward who is getting baptized this Friday night. He'd probably get mad that I called him little, but 8 is still little in my mind. CTR is an acronym we use in my church to remind the kids (and adults!) to always Choose The Right.

well that's all for now!

~Norma


Linking up to Sew Darn Crafty

Efficiency

Did you notice I have been missing for a few weeks? Two to be exact, well not including yesterday's post.

Do you ever hit that slump, whether it's in your life, your sewing , or blogging where you just feel unmotivated? Not because you don't have anything to do/share but mainly because the thought of accomplishing the task seems like such a battle. I've come to realize that when I get into this "funk" I can trace the root of my problem to one thing: organization, or rather a lack thereof.

I've been in a sewing funk lately. Mainly it was because of the state of my sewing room:

Well as you can see it was a mess. For some reason the space wasn't working for me. In fact it was working against me! {treason!} I would walk in and just set my new fabrics or projects right near the desk and skedaddle on out of there as fast as I could! I was that unmotivated!

So a few nights ago I was going to do some "light" cleaning in here and it evolved into an epic rearranging of furniture, stashing of fabric, vacuuming, dusting, and more moving of furniture. The result is a more open less crowded feel to the room, even though I added an extra table!
*aah*, much better:

Those small bookcases will be replaced soon with 2 tall bookcases from storage in TN. Hopefully those book cases will give me the extra storage so I can pull out the remainder of my fabric from those boxes you see under the tables and under the frame.

I also made a list of UFO's (unfinished objects) in order of importance. I even posted them over on my left hand side bar {so you guys can keep me on track!} I have 16 UFO's that made the list. 16! That doesn't include at least one more that I found later. I didn't even realize that I had 16 works in progress. Ok well three (#2,8,9) of the 16 have not been started but need to get started.

The other thing that has hit a slump is my blogging. I was having a hard time with how long it took to write a post. Most of the time is spent {or is it wasted?} on the images! I edit 99% of the images before posting them here. I actually love editing images so that's not a big deal, but blogger only lets you upload one image at a time and each one of those images takes forever to load! I finally decided to do some research on the free Picasa account that we get as part of blogger. I'm still learning the ins and outs of Picasa but I think that it will enable me to more efficiently upload my images without taking up so much of my time. i still have much to learn and kinks to work out but I think I'll enjoy using Picasa

So here is to being efficient!

Creative space

Here's a peek at a little corner of my sewing room.


Can I just give a big shout out to my wonderful husband who supports my need to be creative!!! I know I'm so lucky that he indulges me with my own room, that he very politely listens to me when I'm raving like a lunatic about the newest fabric line, or when he gives me a color suggestion (when I ask) knowing that I'll probably ignore his choice anyway! I love my Mr. PD!


Remember this picture frame I posted a while ago? Well my made some itsy bitsy teeny weeny little red and aqua yo yo's. They measure about 3/4". Tiny! and super duper cute!

I used the Clover yo yo maker {xs I think.} I have one more frame so I'll be making another one of these.

Organized!

I spent most of last weekend enjoying General Conference from the comfort of my sewing room/office/guestroom {trust me it gets cozy!} Well it was comfortable until I decided to finally clean the room. So while I was being spiritually fed for 2 days I cleaned, organized and finally unpacked the last 2 Rubbermaid containers that I had put off unpacking! Believe me it took both full days to get organized!

The results are so worth it! Now I know where everything is because "I" put it away! I bought a bunch of school boxes ($0.50 on clearance) pencil boxes ($0.25 on clearance) and a pack of 12 quart sized Ball jars ($8) to help me get organized. I also labeled every box so now I have no excuses for not having a clean room. Being organized will also save me $$! Now that I have put everything away I have a mental inventory of what I have. Having everything labeled and in a proper place will help me do a quick search before I head out to the store and end up buying something I already own!

My favorite organizing tool ended up being the Ball Jars. I love walking in and seeing the pretty colors of the items inside. Being made of clear glass, I can see exactly what is in each jar without having to open it. Now I just need to make some cute labels for them.


So here is a 360 tour of my crafty room:
(click on any picture to enlarge and see the captions, use your browser's back button to come back here)







Now if only I could convince my landlord to do something about that paneling. Apparently she thinks it's a "good" thing!