The great sewing room reno

Right after the Christmas holidays my husband and work-for-free contractor started working on my sewing space.   I have been perching on this makeshift sewing surface for years and it wasn't really working well for me. If it was left up to me, I would've perched, makeshift-style, for decades because I'm a go-with-the-flow kind of chick. He decided that I needed a new desk.  Who was I to refuse?  I'll sacrifice.  Ha!

So I gave him my list of must-have features, and he started a design.  We decided that it sometimes needed to be a large work surface for when I'm quilting those really big quilts.  But since it's a small room we wanted it to be retractable because there isn't room for an 8 ft table most of the time.  I also wanted to stow away the machines when not in use.  I used to do a lot of garment sewing, so I have a several different kinds of machines, most of those don't get used daily, so they don't need to be around collecting dust.  So he built a huge set of drawers to contain the machines and provide storage for other things as well.

Since I was getting new furniture, I decided that a new wall color was in order. I had been wanting to update to blue anyway, so this was the motivation I needed. Change the trim out from brown to white and voila!  I love this shade of deep teal blue.


The table itself is pretty cool. The retractable desktop pulls out when needed to a full length of over 8'  but is tucked away when not in use! Handy no?



Those 2 giant drawers are actually big enough and strong enough to hold my machines when not in use.


And the upper cabinet holds all my supplies. I'm not big on clutter, so I like to have everything neatly stored away when not in used.


The new surface is fantastic to work at! I'm so pleased with my new space. The hubs is pretty handy with the tools which makes me one lucky lady indeed. He even added an handy little notions drawer for all my machine feet and oft-used notions all stowed away neatly.

 Here's an iPhone pano of the whole space. It definitely still needs some work, but it's getting there. I feel so much more productive already.


The room used to be an office and reading space. So we had these handy drawers for CD storage.  Well let's face it, since the invention of the iPod who uses CD's anymore? We packed them off to storage and low-and-behold the drawers work perfectly for fat quarters! Woot!  Bonus! And best part is that they are out of the light and packed away when not needed. Love that.



The new space still needs some tweaks.  I need to tackle some big piles that need to be destashed and relocated.  It needs some sewing baskets, some new wall art (that poor old Matisse print is faded beyond recognition) and I need to redo my sewing chair.  All in good time. Well, I'm off to tackle that gigantic pile of knits I need to destash.

Happy Sewing!
 

And the Whovian Winner is...

…. Drumroll for …..Julianne!

Julianne, you will be receiving this lovely collection of spoonflower Doctor Who fabrics ( and a couple others when they finally arrive)




 Congrats Julianne!


Meanwhile I have been working on the back of the Doctor Who Quilt.
A sneek peek



Happy Sewing!

Doctor Who Along ~ And that's a wrap!

After 10 (sometimes) long months, and 20 blocks, the Doctor Who along is rapidly approaching the finishing line.  Some of you are probably still working on your blocks and that's totally fine.   Good for anyone who is dedicated to getting it done! It's a lot of work, believe me I know!

Soma and I thought it would be a good time to show you some layout ideas for your blocks so you can begin to think about assembling a top.

Here is my final quilt top.



Pretty basic layout. Admittedly it was so big it was hard to get a decent picture of it. Even 2 of the worlds tallest children on a wall aren't tall enough to get it off the ground.  Well ok, they aren't really that tall. And of course it was dreary and rainy outside because it's March and this is Oregon.

First off, I trimmed each and every one of my blocks to 12" square.  That allowed me to cut off some of the uneven edges and get everything nice and square.  Then I sashed each block with 1.5" white sashing to trim out the blocks and highlight them before adding the 5.5" wide blue sashing in between the blocks.

Why so large? I needed to create a Queen sized quilt as this is intended for my son who keeps getting taller and taller.  I'm planning ahead.  I like the spacing as it gives a nice showcase for each of the blocks and keeps the blocks from getting too busy and converging on one another.  I added an even wider 12" border around the edge again to get that Queen size quilt of 90x94". Yikes that's big!

I am still piecing the back, so I'll show you that one in my next post. 

Meanwhile there are some awesome layouts showing up on the Flickr group.  I particularly like this shadow-box version by Tammy, Kuseta. But there are plenty more options. Head on over to Soma's blog to see her layout.

While this quilt isn't quite done the QAL is officially over.  However, Soma and I will still maintain the Flickr group and we always love to see pictures of your finished work.  I will be posting my finished quilt back over there as well as the final quilt once it's all quilted up.  Got some fun plans for that.  I might just throw in a couple more paper-pieced block patterns from time to time. You never know!  ;) The patterns will also stay up on Craftsy for as long as they'll let us.  Hopefully forever.

Also a huge shout-out to Soma, without whom I could not have carried off this enormous QAL.  It was a lot of work to design just half the patterns and Soma's help was huge and so appreciated.  Turns out she and I have become quite good friends through this past year and hopefully one day I might be able to say thanks in person! ;)

To celebrate the end of the QAL we thought a little giveaway was in order.

So I'll be giving away a few fat-eighths of, what else, Doctor Who inspired fabric from Spoonflower.

These fabrics are also available for sale if you just can't wait.  They were not designed by me. Head on over to Spoonflower to check them out along with many other fantastic Whovian prints.
In addition, I'll throw in a free pattern from my Craftsy shop. 

Please comment here for a chance to win this little stack.  I might just throw in some Whovian-inspired Kona solids to go with.  For additional chances to win you can tweet, facebook or IG post this giveaway but be sure and come back here to comment and let me know you did. If you post on Instagram, please tag me @trilliumdesign so I can see the post and count it!  Also, if you are a no-reply blogger please leave your email address in the comments (you can use spaces and spell out the dot com to avoid the spam-bots) so I can contact you if you win. Winner will be chosen on March 12th, open to international entrants.

And for another chance to win something, head on over to Soma's blog.  She is also giving away some Doctor Who goodies.

Allons-y my fellow Whovians.