Let there be light
December 6, 2019Using a spare bedroom as a sewing room has a few issues. The fitted furniture can be put to use, but the dim, great for preparing for bed, lighting is never going to work well for sewing. I have been managing with several lamps but that really isn’t a long term solution. As the ceiling is very low I have ordered some LED flat panels. They are bright daylight lights and will only come 2 inches from the ceiling.
To fit them the loft needed to be rewired and new junction boxes added. I am very impressed with some of the new junctions boxes. The wires just slot into them and the box is prewired and labeled. Once those were in place the power packs for the panels could be installed.
Then it was ready for the 4 mountings for the light panel. Which is more fiddly than it sounds. Not only to get it in the right place but also to make the smallest possible holes in the plaster board. At least the lights aren’t heavy. That’s a first for me, I usually have a talent for picking heavy light fittings.
Bear in mind that light is on, in daylight and the original light fitting is also on, and it still looks very bright. It is a massive improvement with just one of the new lights. I can’t wait to have all 6 in place. I think they should mean I can cut with no shadows at all from the ruler, well thats what I hope anyway. It will be a while before they are all in place but each one makes a huge difference.
An unusual customer
December 4, 2019I don’t have walk in customers, but this chap came to my door and stopped me working yesterday.
He (or she) came right up to the window and had a good look at me. The day we moved in there was a very bold fox wandering about the garden, I am wondering if this is the same one. He was limping and clearly looking for easy food. He did consider the bird table but decided against trying to push it over. I guess hunting is proving very tricky with only 3 good legs. It’s funny, I hate the urban foxes we had in London. They were very large and had lost all fear of people. We had them sneaking into the house, and believe me they smell terrible. This one on the other hand is smaller and usually a lot more cautious. I haven’t seen it since we moved in till today but I will keep an eye open for it. I am worried about that leg, but then again what can anyone do about it. Catching a fox will be tricky and releasing it back after treatment is also a problem. Fingers crossed the next time I see it, it has sorted itself out.
Homeownership = crawling under a bush in the rain
December 2, 2019When we talk about owning homes, or even renting a home there is a lot we gloss over. Things like cleaning all those bathrooms (does every bedroom really need one) and dusting all those architectural features. We also miss all those fun maintenance jobs that are really important, like keeping the downpipes clear on the gutters. It has been nice that most trades people I have dealt with since moving have been reliable, I am not so sure about my gutter cleaning service. About 6 weeks ago all my gutters and downpipes were cleaned but today in the heavy rain they started overflowing again. This could be a design issue, or the angle of the guttering having changed with wear (and potentially when cleaned) but the best time to see what’s going wrong where, is while it’s going wrong.
On investing one of my waterfalls I was suspicious that the downpipe was the issue, and of course that’s the downpipe behind the bushes. Peering in I could see the water doing something odd at the bottom of the pipe but not what. I am very pleased I decided to grab a trowel before crawling in, it was a tight fit and even harder to get out of. When I got a good look it seemed to be a few leaves blocking the top of the drain, until I started cleaning them. There must have been about a foot of leaves up inside the down pipe, and that’s assuming it all fell down all the way.
Now, this is the rather sad part, I then stood in the rain to admire the water not coming over the top of that gutter. Yup I got soaked, yes I was covered in mud and bush, but also smugly satisfied with a down pipe that for now seems to work.
A sneaky peek
November 30, 2019I have an idea for my next quilt project, but as I hope to show it i can only show sneaky peeks here. It does make blogging trickier, but we will see what we can do. I am going to do something based on the summer school I ran in July. We spent a week playing with New York Beauty blocks, and I had a lot of ideas on how to make new and different designs with them. One of those will become the new quilt I hope. Of course that means drafting a block pattern, which mostly needs me to draft polar graph paper. I do have printed polar graph paper but only in A4, and for this I want to have better detail so I want to work on A3.
This is my starting frame work, I think, I have a couple of proportions I am not quite sure about. Yes this is a lot more complex than the basic new york beauty, I am hoping it’s roots will still show when I am done with it. I guess it shows that I am really keen to do some curved checkerboard. It is something I have been considering for a while, and when I was playing with these blocks I totally fell in love with it in them.
I have been trying to do my drawing in the sitting room, and I have been reminded just how bad modern lighing is. There are 12 bulbs in here and yet I can only achive dim lighting whatever I do. Adding a couple of lamps means I can do some drawing but the precision is not what I would like. Once I get the new lights in the sewing room I can see that being my prefered place to draw for at least the forseable future.
I had a plan
November 27, 2019In the last post about the sewing room you may have noticed I was working on a quilt. It was a project I started years ago and I thought it was going to be a nice project for some fun quilting. I wanted to have a couple of quilts ready for the next show season. As it had good scope for quilting this project seemed ideal. It was also more than half pieced, double bonus. I have been working on it in my spare time (ha ha ha new house spare time what’s that ) and finally finished it. You know that niggly feeling that something isn’t quite right? I kept getting it and thinking the quilt seemed large, but I had my notes and they seemed OK and clear so I went on. Even when I was joining the 2 halves of the quilt I reassured myself that this quilt had been planned and all was well.
I am not sure if you can tell but this is a very oversize quilt. I usually aim for 100″ to 130″ wide and about 90″ long, though they are usually hung the other way around in shows. If I think the quilt will be shown I keep the width down to closer to 100″. The frames handle that far better. This quilt has come out 112″x116″ not only too big for quilt shows but also too big for my quilt frame or for quilt backings. This quilt will not be getting quilted over this winter, instead it will wait for me to get a larger frame. I know anyone can make a mistake, but this is the thrid quilt I have found ended up much bigger than expected. I have concluded my maths and design skills are lousy when I am stressed, and yes from here on I will be checking each design to see if it is the intended size BEFORE I complete it. This also means I need anothe project for next years shows. For safety I think it might be best to design something totally new.
Wendover makers market
November 25, 2019Wendover may only be a very small town but it has a lot of markets. Every Thursday there is a general market, with great fish vegetables and bread. There are also some Saturday markets with a lot of smaller local producers. It is amazing how much local produce there is available.
Friday had a market with more crafty things for Christmas. Starting at 4pm and going on till 9.30pm meant it felt very festive. Shopping in the dark is a sure sign of winter. I did feel for the trader though, standing in a little tent in the cold isn’t the most fun. I hope they all did well enough to make it worthwhile.
For me the crafts weren’t that interesting, just not my style, though well executed and very reasonable prices. The food and drink stands were very good, with smoked salmon tastings and the non alcoholic spirit company, hmm I wonder if that is made locally, there were also traders offering supper and mulled wine and cider. The absolute winner for me though was the hungarian baker. Amazing poppy seed cake and a rolled poppyseed, apple and walnut cake. She was also making fresh chimney cake, and it was so good. I just wish she had given out something with her details on, I would love to buy again from her, ideally before next winter.
Sewing room, done for now
November 18, 2019Done is a bit of a misnomer, there is work to do on the wardrobe, and the design wall (what design wall you say….exactly my point) and general reorganisation. For now though the room is usable and I can live with it and fine tune things.
As you can see I have set up the ironing board and iron. I can’t sew without these and I think this is where they will live most of the time. They can move to the other side of the room if I am using the overlocker or the PQ1500 or I suppose if someone was visiting and sewing. Ultimately the picture will probably find a space on the wall but I want to know what else is going on the walls before I hang pictures. That’s why there is one on the windowsill too.
As I have been sewing one of the under desk drawer units is out. This is a much safer space to put things like drinks and my small bin. Less likely to be knocked or have random tools falling in them. At the moment I have to have a lot of lamps on to be able to sew in here. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will get some more lights. I have bought large daylight LED flat panels. The ceiling is very low in here so I need the lights to be as close to it as possible. The flat panels will be about an inch in total from the ceiling. They will be bright and should give me true colour. I may need to hurry up and get some sort of window covering before I light up the countryside. I think I am going to have wide slat wood looking blinds, but I am not totally decided. I still want to make a faux stained glass window covering but that will take time and I will need something sooner.
The cutting table is set up and has been used in anger so to speak. As you can see more lamps just so I can see to cut. I am considering making a table top I can fold, so for really large cutting jobs I can pull the table to the middle of the room and extend the top. I just need to give more thought to the best way to engineer that. The messy corner needs work. I think it will get some shelving. Again, this isn’t urgent and doesn’t stop me using the room so I can leave it for now and give it more thought. Part of me would like some sort of part glazed cupboard but I am really not sure how practical that would be. I am a messy worker with aspirations of pictuesque working spaces. This is not the best combination. As soon as you really work or create in a space there will be mess, I should come to terms with that. The pile of fabric in the foreground on the table is for my second pass at a lampshade. I am using my prototype at the moment. It works but there is a lot I can do better. I now have at least most of the trims I want to use so maybe that should be my next project.
Sewing room part 5
November 14, 2019I think the room is really looking pretty good now. It has been a lot of work, and much of it heavy, hence it has taken a while.
I hadn’t realised how messy these boxes look. I guess I am becoming immune to boxes, I hear that is common when your house is full of them. I think repeatedly moving them also starts to make you blind to them. Self defence maybe. If you were too aware of them they would be so depressing and overwhelming.
This is my new main sewing table. It is a lot smaller than my last desk, which is a little worrying. The shape of this room won’t really work for anything bigger though so I will see how this goes. It is bigger than the table in my sewing cabinet which has been OK so maybe it will work out. I also have a dedicated cutting table now, which works when I need a larger surface (hmm I wonder if I can make a hinged top so I can double the space sometimes). I also have enough floor space now to pull the drawer cabinets out from under the table. These then give me quite a lot of extra workspace and it make a U shaped space which is usually more ergonomic than just a rectangle. Really only time will tell. I can update later.
The bookcase is now almost completely dug out. It isn’t sorted yet but at least I can see it. I think it will be used for my favourite magazines and middle size supplies. It will also be nice as a display space. I think the files and scrap boxes will be staying on top of it. Time will tell.
This unit is half new and half reused from the last sewing room. The grey drawer units are the storage I bought when I cleared and the old room. I had planned to have more of them to completely fill this room, but as they are discontinued that’s not an option. So they get to be the supports for my side desk. This is where my PQ1500 and overlocker will live. It used to rest on wire drawers, however these look about the right height and they did need somewhere to live. The desk top is the same as the one on my main desk. Above I decided to have more kallax. These units are taking over my house, they are so versatile and easy to work with. The bottom cabbies I will use for the project that I am doing on the machines or for their extra parts. There are a couple of sets of drawers of haberdashery that will tuck in there too.
The drawers above I am mostly going to use for haberdashery I think, one is overflow knitting, and the cupboard above it has the most likely to be used wool. I am sure the rest will evolve as I go along. Realistically once I have been in the room a while I will need to resort the storage, but first I need to use it.
Sewing room part 4
November 12, 2019Onwards with the storage for the sewing room. These cabinets are very heavy. Which is good I wanted something well built and solid, and IKEA is the best my budget stretches to. I don’t know how these will stand up over time, but as they are designed to be full of clothes, fabric can’t be that much heavier. I hope.
I do like the look of these drawers. Ultimately I will resort all the fabrics and add labels to the cut out handles. For now I just needed to get the boxes empty and the fabric sort of grouped. These are definately far better than the wire drawer units, which were cheap but not ideal. They do have good airflow around the fabric which I think in some climates might be very valuable.
The second drawer unit is 3 drawers high in each component making it a third higher than the first one. The capacity is great, although the drawers don’t go all the way to the back of the carcasse. Can a furniture maker tell me why there is now a 2″ to 3″ gap left behind drawers? Is it a stability thing?
On the subject of stability, these drawers will apparently eat children. That doesn’t worry me too much, why would there be children in my sewing room, shudder. The instructions say that if I don’t attach them to a wall children will appear and climb them. Also if I put a television on top of them children will just die. Bear in mind these are IKEA instructions. To be efficient they use no language just pictures, it’s a great idea but sometimes means I find them tricky to read. Yes I struggle to read pictures, including computer icons, they just don’t make sense to me. I decided I was pretty safe to ignore these warnings. The cabinet on top of my drawers is a piece from the old sewing room (yes I have been trying to reuse things) it’s one of my better cheap purchases as it not only brings the TV to a good height, and takes all the media items but it also has a space big enough to take two rows of DVDs. It’s a little thing but it makes life a lot easier. This is where sewing and quilting DVDs usually live. At the moment all DVDs are still in boxes in the room that one day will be the library.
This is the other side of the room. The boxes have been stacked here. Now I can open the door fully and see almost half of the bookcase. For me that was a big step forward. I forgot to count how many boxes I emptied into the drawers. Lots will have to be close enough. There is room to get a few more emptied into them, and I keep finding items in the boxes that just shouldn’t be in here, which is great. I love evicting something rather than having to find it a home. Is that cheating 
Sewing room part 3
November 10, 2019Back to the sewing room project. There are two things to know about this. Firstly a lot of the bigger boxes are heavy, really heavy so I knew sorting it out would take careful pacing. I don’t want to upset my joints too much. Also this poject had to fit in around the rest of life, it’s important long term but not really critical for day to day living.
The next stage in unpacking was to get more storage in. As I mentioned IKEA discontinued the Alex drawers I had been using so I needed an alternative that would fit in with them. I planned to have my side sewing table on this wall but once I saw what cabinets were available and which way the light came in I switched the room around. This will now be the main storage wall. The 2 grey Alex cabinets you can see and their 2 mates (image below) now need to move accross the room. This is unfortunate as they were moved full and the drawers are screwed in, you can’t readily pull them out. At least I don’t have carpet.
The new drawers are from the Nordli range. They are very clever and work somewhat like lego. The frame you see here is 4 units thaat are fitted together on a plinth with a full top. This means you can choose different drawer set ups and differnt unit heights. This has 2 deep drawers which I hope will work well for bulky fabrics. Fleece in one and faux fur in the other. The 4 longer shallower drawers will take fabrics that fold better. There is a second set I need to build, that will be a bit bigger. That’s another days problem, these things are heavy so is the fabric that goes in them.