Sweet! 16

Ok, so I finally quilted something other than circles and stipples, thanks to my HQ Sweet 16. It’s SO much easier to focus on FMQing when you’re not wrestling the quilt around a domestic sewing-machine needle. Here’s the quilt (awful pic, I know; more on that later):


And here are close-ups of the quilting:





I did an all-over leaf pattern, with a flower pattern on the borders. It was fun (ok, yes, I’m a dork).
I’m still having problems taking full-length pics of my quilts. I can get the close-ups to represent the colors just fine, but there are problems with lighting when I have to back up for the wider-angle pics. We’ve had rain in Central Texas (hallelujah! finally!) for the past few days, so no outdoor pics are possible. I’ll keep working on it, though.

Back to work now!

SWEET!

I just finished this scrappy quilt top; maybe it will be the first thing I FMQ! Woo hoo!

Reconfiguring the Studio

This is my small sewing space; as you can see by the packages at the bottom of the pic, I have to squeeze in a Sweet 16 mid-arm machine in a 36x30 ft. table:



I did have a little extra time to move everything around, since UPS managed to damage the table for my Sweet 16 and I have to wait for a new one. I can't imagine how that happened; even if they can't read "this side up," you would think the pointing arrows might give them a clue:

My stash is stored in the wooden armoire and some of the drawers of the chests; things like interfacing and fusible and spray baste and transfer paper are stored in the tall shelving unit on the right; and WIPs and scraps and miscellaneous “stuff” is stored on the wire shelves.
So, I unloaded the wire shelves, moved them over to the left side (against the back side of the bookcases that face the tiny living room that’s left), added another wire shelving unit from another part of the house, and stacked all of my stash onto these units.



That’s all my fabric! Everything! (Ok, except for fabrics other than cotton, such as silk, sheers, wool, etc.) It’s not as much as I would have imagined, and I was a little worried about my sweetie expressing shock at all the fabric I had accumulated. She glanced at it and said, “oh that looks nice.” Woo hoo!

THEN, I moved everything all the WIPs into drawers, all the interfacing, etc. into the armoire, and all the scraps into the scrap bins in the bottom of the armoire.

That leaves this space available for the Sweet 16 (once we carry that heavy tall shelving unit into another room):



And aside from getting my Sweet 16 (woo hoo #2!), the best part about fondling all that fabric—and getting it out in the open and right in front of me—inspires me to do lots of amazing things.




Gotta go work!