Thursday, April 2, 2015

New Quilting Space in the Works - Part 1

I made my wonderful husband very nervous. I didn't mean to do it at all but it sure is funny.

Last year, right around this time, I took a long arm course with Judy Madsen from Green Fairy Quilts. I had already taken two courses in the months prior. The first course taught me the basics of the machine and how to panto a quilt. The next one taught me to free motion quilt on the long arm. Prior to this I was a topper. I enjoyed making the quilt tops but HATED quilting them on my domestic machine. After these two courses I was hooked on long arming.

Mom came up and stayed here for a couple of days for me so that I could take the more intensive course from Judy. The two introductory ones I was able to start and finish while the kids were in school but this one was two full days and I wasn't able to get home for picking up the kids. I really only got home in time to see my younger one for half an hour before it was her bedtime. I loved the course though and got pricing and the specs on getting my own machine.

By then I already had Trinity Quilts incorporated by a lawyer and we could look at moving forward to getting TQ actually established as a business and Quinn was all for it. Then he saw the measurements of a long arm (and the price) and although he was still all for it, he knew we had to do some thinking on how to manage it.

The long arm I want is one of the APQS systems called the Millennium. And it is 14 feet long. We got to thinking how we could manage it since it is the most use to me if it is in the house because I have childcare to consider and it is much more limiting if it is located elsewhere. Quinn came up with a GREAT idea. We would take out the back wall of my quilting room and extend my room into the family room behind it and make that room much smaller since the other half of the family room doesn't really get used anyway. The kids aren't jumping for joy about it since all they see is that their playroom is getting cut in half but I they will live.

The bullet points of where things are at now and what has occurred recently to get us to the rest of the story:

  • Almost a year later and the wall is still in place.
  • The kids are off school for Spring Break and I can't really sew because of that.
  • We were at Home Depot for something two weekends ago now and I saw an organization type magazine with sewing room ideas on the cover that we bought.
  • It gave me a great idea for a peg board so we went to Home Depot this weekend to get one.
  • Weird for us, we couldn't find the paint chip for the room which we needed to paint the pegboard.
  • While there, I figured we would get the pink board to make a solid design wall since the one Quinn tried so hard on wasn't working for me.
  • In order to paint match, I now had to cut a chunk out of the wall to take to Home Depot.
  • The place I had to install the design wall for now isn't where I want it when the room is complete but where I want it to go is the wall that hasn't been built yet.

Does anyone else see where all this is going?

On Monday, since I couldn't sew, I started doing measurements and the math for putting up the wall. I only went as far as putting up the stud wall and drywalling the kids side of the wall. I was almost done when Quinn phoned just as a mid-day check in while having lunch with his client (and someone we have known for quite a while). So I asked him if you have to put in double studs at the ends of walls for confirmation of whether I had done things right.

Well, apparently the colour drained from my poor man's face (according to his client who ended up nearly splitting himself laughing so hard). He thought that I had already done the demolition on the wall and had the stud wall partially built. Considering he left at about 7:30 am and it was only about noon, apparently I had been really busy since we haven't bought any of the materials either.

So, I reassured him that the only tool of his that I had used was a tape measure and that the sharpest tools I had used was a pencil unless you count a needle and scissors since I had done some hand stitching and that the walls looked no different than when he left that morning. He felt much better after that.

Many of the people that he works with have joked that I must be a patient woman and I am very much a go with the flow kind of person who loves her husband with all that I am and wouldn't have my life any other way. With all of that, Quinn knows when to just give in gracefully and do what I want since I don't push that hard most of the time and when it gets to the point of me basically drawing up blueprints, he knows that it is time to get it done.

So, our Easter is pretty secular and because it is Easter weekend in a couple of days, he has four days off in a row.

Can anyone guess what we will be doing?

This is the first corner of my quilting room as is it right now:




The blue on the walls is the paint we were looking for the chip for. When it was painted that colour, I was aiming for the colour of the Caribbean Ocean. There aren't any windows in this room at the moment so I was looking for something bright and cheerful. The next corner is:




The plan with the pegboard was to paint it the same blue as the walls so that it blended in nicely. The corkboard/whiteboard combination was going to come down and go somewhere else and the pegboard was going in landscape style, the top butted up against that ledge thing at the ceiling and coming down the full four feet and going from the corner behind the TV to the corner where I have the shelving (seen in the first photo). The big board on the right wall is a big ironing board when it is flipped down. It is hinged on the bottom edge and clips up out of the way with big "I" bolts and carbiners. It covers the whole of my cutting table and is great when ironing large pieces of fabric or quilt tops.




The corner here shows where I set my regular ironing board up. When I am cutting a bit, ironing a bit like I have been for my sampler, this board works much better since I have to have the cutting table clear to use the big board. You can also see the edge of my design wall. Quinn tried really hard to make me a retractable design wall. He got a projector screen, took off the screen and installed a large flannel sheet where the screen used to be. Unfortunately it keeps warping weird and without a solid backing, things don't stay on it very well. It was a really good idea but it just didn't work the way we had hoped.




This is the last corner. The wall where the window is and the design wall hangs is the wall we want to remove altogether. The window is not a window to the outside. It is just a window  of frosted glass to the family room on the other side. You can also see the fabric laid out for the sampler we are working on.




These are the double doors with a shelf over top that we installed. I currently have a hundred year old sewing box that was my great-great-great-grandmother's (I think I have the right number of greats in there). I also have the blocks for two HST UFOs. They will eventually be two twin sized quilts but I only recently figured out what I was going to do for sashing since I didn't have as much fabric as I needed for my original plan.




This is the other side of the wall where the design wall hangs. You can see the little frosted window that I mentioned that shows through to the family room. The wall will be extended from the corner between the bookshelf and the couch. The inside of this new wall is where I want the new design wall to be installed.




I will acquire most of this space. The TV will be moved from here and a new cable outlet will be installed in the opposite corner of this space. The kids will lose about a third of the room which is super long but really they only use this space and they will have the same effective space, just at the other end of the room instead.

So, that is where we are for the moment. We will be getting supplies and things and getting going on the weekend. The TV will be moved for the kids first and then the demolition of the wall. With it being the long weekend, we have to watch when the EcoStation is open so that we can get rid of the garbage. That is the plan for now and I am looking forward to posting pictures along the way. Watch for part 2 but there will be more parts than that.

Tara