Um...Surprise?

So this is a thing that is happening now:

I'm moving house! Disassembling my sewing room and packing it all up was one of the first "Holy cow, this is REAL" moments.  I feel like an arm's been cut off.  (I feel the same way about having packed up my guitars and music, actually. Thank goodness my bikes are still out and ride-able!)

So what's next? All the stress. All the worry. Tons of work, in my old house and the new place. And as soon as I get landed and set up, I have a dress to make in a BIG hurry for Bjornsborg's Tournament of Lions on October 21st.  (Back up plan: attend the event in jeans and/or naked?)

Hopefully this will all go smoothly, and I'll have new craft room pictures for you in a couple of weeks.

Wish me luck!


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Re-Organizing the Sewing Room A Bit

Playing the sliding-tiles game with furniture in my house again:  

Problem: 

• a giant armoire full of towels and sheets in my bedroom, which was in my way, and was also inaccessible to my roommate when I was asleep in there
• a mostly-empty hall closet
• some slapdash shelves on a corner wall in my craft room, full of boxes of fabric and supplies, and  surrounded by piles of same on the floor

Solution: 

1. I removed the shelves in the craft room and put them up in the hall closet, and moved all the linens into the hall closet where they're accessible to everyone
2. I moved the armoire to that corner of the craft room, and re-organized the boxes and supplies into it

And then...

A friend and I swapped dressers over the weekend - my small one for her large one (she wanted to use two smaller dressers in her daughter's room instead of one huge one).  And so this came home with me on Saturday: 

Ikea HEMNES

Most of my fabric stash had been stored in sixteen of those white plastic Ikea (SNALIS, discontinued) boxes (like the two on top of this dresser in the pic), stacked in/on top of that long, low, black shelving unit under the window in the pic (it'll be re-homed soon).  The contents of all but those two boxes fit neatly into the four main drawers in this dresser, and I got all of my small scraps into the smaller drawers at the top.  

So, what do I do with fourteen 5-gal plastic boxes?  I'm not sure yet.  They'll probably end up holding craft supplies in the closet in this room, or full of small tools and things in the garage.  

Cross-posted from my house/furniture blog at pushingfurniture.blogspot.com

BWAHAHA Oops.

You know, I was looking over my blog(s) the other day, and realized that I never actually posted finished pics of the new craft room (aka "Room of Requirement")!

Okay, so, you've seen the old version:

Which is now my bedroom:  

And my old bedroom, which in this picture is filled with stuff from the old sewing room, during the room swap. I haven't been a "hang out in my room" person since I was a teenager, and really, who needs all this room to just sleep?

At first, Sylvan and I thought we'd put our work tables in the center of the room, like this: 

Before she'd even moved in, I realized how very, very much that was NOT going to work.  My sewing machine vibrated both tables so much that she'd never have been able to work like that; and also, since all my sewing stuff was jammed up against the wall behind me, but my cutting table was on the opposite side of the room, I kept having to get up and walk around while I was working.  

So we drew up a new floor plan that worked better for both of us, with each of us with a work table against a wall, storage around, and my cutting table in the center, which is easier for me to get to without having to stand up if I don't need to, and also so that we can BOTH use the cutting table as a large, open work surface if needed: 

(made with Icovia Floor Planner) 

And here is the finished Room of Requirement, and folks, this is about as tidy as it gets.

CAUTION:  WOMEN AT WORK!

It works great.  We both love it, and we're both enjoying spending time in there crafting together.  When she moved in, we put her TV in the living room, and put my [smaller] one in the craft room, so we frequently have a movie on in the background while we work (usually a Disney animated flick; though my go-to when I'm working alone is Pride and Prejudice, in case you're wondering.  When it's just me and just music, I listen to a lot of Chinese flute, for some reason. It's calming).  

Also, in case anyone cares, and because I love paint, the colors in these rooms are: 

• Old sewing room:  Glidden's "Pale Red Dust"
• New bedroom:  Sherwin Williams' "Distance"
• Room of Requirement: Sherwin Williams' "Palladian Blue" 
• All the ceilings are Sherwin Williams' "White Clay" 

This post is also up on my house-stuff blog, which is here, if you're interested.  I've been going hell-bent-for-leather on SCA stuff for several months running now, though, so there isn't much going on over there lately.  But now that war is over, there'll be a LOT of house and garden stuff going on! 

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Short Hiatus

In just over thirty days, my BFF will become my roomate.  Having finished the major crush of SCA projects for the fall event season, I now turn my focus to getting my house ready to accomodate two occupants once again.

Part of that is swapping out my master bedroom and my craft/sewing room.  My bestie is also a huge crafter and maker, and between the two of us, a gigantic workspace was definitely needed.  While my sewing room is a measly 9x11', my master bedroom is 16x18' - it only makes sense that one space was essentially wasted on sleep, while the other was too small for just me, and wouldn't remotely outfit a pair of crafters.

Yesterday, I begun the process, by swapping out the two closets. If you're interested in following the process, you can see the posts about this at my home/DIY blog, here.

In the meantime, any sewing that needs to occur right now will likely take place in the living room, as soon as I start moving furniture, and I'll be posting about those things  (Bordermarch Autumn Melees is in two weeks, and I have a couple of small things I'd like to get done, but which aren't a huge priority, so no loss if I don't get to them).

I will, of course, post final results once the giant craft room - hereafter referred to as The Room of Requirement - on this blog once I'm finished.  :)

Recipe for Organiztion

Organized Sewing Patterns (serves 1)

1 file cabinet with broken wheels and lock, free from friend

1 package legal-size hanging file folders

1 package letter-size hanging file folders

1 box of sewing patterns, already organized into manila folders

1 box homemade costume patterns, on various bits of paper and fabric

leftover adhesive-backed door insulation strip

screwdriver

1.   Remove wheels and lock from cabinet.  Use insulation stripping to pad the bottom of the file cabinet edges so it won't scratch the floor. 

2.  Carefully fold and sort SCA and costume patterns into folders in top drawer. 

3.  Adjust lower drawer file rack to fit letter-sized folders sideways, and insert mundane patterns already in manila folders. 

4.  Recycle empty cardboard boxes, and enjoy your new organized pattern cabinet AND the extra space in the craft room closet! 

And because someone is always curious about this, here's what I do with my store-bought patterns: 

Slice open the pattern jacket, and glue the front to the outside of a folder, and the back to the inside. Label the folder tab, unfold the pattern pieces to fit inside the folder. Done.  Much easier to store and locate them, I feel.  

Yay! 

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DIY In Mundania, and This Week's Projects

Look, I made over my sewing room over Christmas weekend!!

Most of the work I did was in re-painting the room, the furniture, the shelves, and the closet; and in re-making my loooong sewing table.

Before + After, and lots more pics and info over at my other blog, where I keep all the DIY stuff.  :) 








Meanwhile, turns out, I loved the beige linen I used in the sewing room for the curtains so much, and had so much left over, that I'm working on a new shirt for Vasilii:

And I've been working on a plain gown for myself, in a really pretty, soft, aubergine linen (which is going to be the undergown for my outfit for Candlemas, though it can be worn on its own).  It's nearly done; all I have left to do is finish the embroidery on one sleeve and attach it, and it'll be ready to wear.  

hee. 

And I'm still working on the embroidery on that bag, and I'm still working on the scroll I'm making for the competition in January, which I started nearly two weeks ago.  Eek!  

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