New Design Wall

I don't know if any of the rest of you have experienced this when you moved.  It seems to me that the craft/sewing area is always the last area to get set up or unpacked.  Other people wanted coffee cups and cereal bowls (sigh), clean sheets and towels (really?), and curtains (gasp!), more than they wanted fabric and yarn unpacked.  Go figure.

Main blocks and setting triangles

My sewing studio is very slowly coming together.  At our last address I had two areas for quilting: one corner/half of the dining room and a closet in the back bedroom.  This meant I had supplies, tools, and fabric in two areas.  (I won't tell you how many places I had stashed yarn.)  Since I have a dedicated studio now, everything is reunited again.  Which is both good and bad.   I have a door now and I'm not in a "public" area, so it's easier to hide the mess, which is good.  All my fabric is in one room again, also good.  The fabric has been unpacked and sorted by color which is good and bad.  For some reason, the two fullest to overflowing bins are polka dots and civil war reproductions.  If you skim through my blog, you'll see that I really don't make reproduction quilts.  I have two 9 patch quilts in repro fabrics that are both 30" square or smaller.  I have enough fabric to make a couple of bed-size quilts. Where did it all come from??  Why don't the Amy Butler prints do that?  I must not have a size-able enough breeding colony yet.  

Detail 1

My biggest achievement in tackling the mess is remaking and putting up my design wall.  I've had parts of this at three addresses now.  It's sheets of styrofoam with a layer of batting and a layer of cotton fabric.  I added another section, so now it's about 8' square.  The white fabric is two or three different kinds.  It's what i had on hand.  I stripped the outer layers off the old sections, washed them, then replaced them.  I had to get additional foam for the new section and all they had at the hardware store was pink.  It actually has a layer of fabric, then batting, then more fabric and it still looks gray.  Oh well.   I chose foam so it would be pin-able.  

I used screws to attach the sections to the wall.  I should have used longer screws, but it seems to be holding well enough.  Pretty much once you use a power screw driver, those screws are now permanently part of your foam.  Screws get hot; foam melts.  Of course the screws looked ugly, so I decided I would hot glue a button on each one.  So, yeaaaah.  I mentioned that it's 8' square?  And it's 18" off the floor so I don't cover up outlets. So the top is 9 1/2 feet high.  I have to have a step ladder to reach the top.  So I'm climbing a 6' step ladder one-handed while carrying a slippery button covered in volcanic hot glue.  I'm proud that I only glued one button to the carpet, and none to my fingers or the ladder.

Here's what's on my fabulous, new design wall right now:

This is Bonnie Hunter's mystery Easy Street from last year.  I got overwhelmed around step 3, so set it aside.  I was looking at the pile recently and realized I really loved the fabrics.  I blew through steps 3-7 last week and over the weekend.  I'm piecing the blocks now. I switched out her dark purple for navy because i have  a lot more of that.  Pretty much the entire quilt is out of stash. 

Stay tuned for more posts.  I'm getting caught up!

 

Detail 2