My Quilt Studio

My boyfriend and I just moved in together, yay!  So exciting!!!

We have a beautiful house in Glendale, CA that we are renting.  It's the absolute perfect place for us.  It has a beautiful yard with a pool that is perfect for entertaining.  

Here is the view from our patio:

There is a second bedroom big enough for his workout studio (he is a personal trainer, www.corekineticstrength.com in case you are interested. Shameless plug ;) ) and there is a nook off of the living room that was perfect for my sewing area.  It has windows, accordion doors that I can close for privacy, and a closet with built in storage.  Can it be any more perfect?!

The layout it great.  I have my sewing machine at the end on a desk. My cutting table in the middle with two cutting mats held in place by those rubber pads you put under your rugs so they don't slip. And then I usually set up the ironing board just inside the door frame so that I can turn around from the cutting table and iron.  It creates the triangle aspect that they recommend for increased efficiency and productivity.  

I made some "art" using fabric and embroidery hoops.  I made my white boards by purchasing pictures frames with glass and turned the picture it came with around to show the white side and then hot glued some iron embellishment to the frame.  

I wanted to make my tools more accessible while maintaining organization so I bought this rail and the buckets from Ikea and hung it on the wall by my cutting mats.  Small rulers are in the cage, scissors and rotary cutter are in the right bucket, pens and templates in the other buckets.

Ikea is an inexpensive way to create a space that is functional and cute.  The desk, cutting table and this storage unit are all Ikea.  I bought the colored boxes from Ikea as well to help keep my various projects organized and in one place. 

And some more decorations to add to the beauty of my room.  :)  Bigger rules are in my ruler shelf.  The picture frame says "Do one thing everyday that makes you happy".  My mom bought it for me awhile ago to remind me that I deserve to be happy too.  I love my little room and look forward to everything I am going to create in this wonderful space.

Auction quilt

The friend I gave the wedding guestbook quilt to had given my information to a friend of hers who loved the quilt I had made and wanted me to make one for her as well.  She contacted me and said she was looking for a quilt to be made for her granddaughters school that was having it's 50th anniversary and this quilt would be auctioned off at their anniversary event.  And she was going to pay me for it!  Eeek!!

I was so flattered that she loved the other quilt I had made and had specifically sought me out to make a quilt for her.  It was a bit overwhelming.  But I accepted because it sounded like a cool idea and I like making other people happy.  Who doesn't right?

She wanted squares that the kids in her granddaughters class could draw pictures on and then I would piece it all together.  The school is a catholic school so the kids would write something about what faith means to them or something.  She then wanted to incorporate catholic symbols of some kind into the quilt.  I got to work on designing the pattern and picking the colors. And since I'm not religious (meaning I don't go to church and only know the basics about religion), I had to do some research on the Saint for the school, St Rose of Lima, and other religious symbols that I could use.  It was a lot of work looking back on it now.  It wasn't just pick out the fabric and go, there was so much more to it than that.  I knew this quilt needed to be as meaningful as possible since it was for a 50th anniversary of a school.

I learned from doing the wedding quilt that giving the "artists" boundaries with which to write or draw in is important.  Since I was working with 4th graders I wanted to give them room to be creative but also create the boundary so the seam allowance was protected as was their art.  I went with white squares bordered with either blue or gold fabric, which are the school colors.

The squares ended up being 12x12.  When I got the squares back (40 total) from the kids and started to lay it out on my floor I realized the squares were too big so I ended up trimming the borders down so that the squares were 10x10 instead and it was more manageable.

For the religious symbols I chose to put them in the four corners of the quilt.  I used red roses for the Saint, a gold cross, white doves and a trinity symbol.  I used a T shirt from the school as a center piece for the quilt as well.

For the quilting I did straight lines through out the top with alternating blue and yellow thread.  On the border I used a gold sulky thread to go with the golden rose fabric I chose for the border.

This was such an amazing quilt to work on and a crazy experience.  I wanted it to be absolutely perfect for her and the school.   I have to learn to forgive myself for every little mistake that I see.  "Mistake that I see" is important to point out because we, the quilters, are our own worst critics and will know every thing we mess up on but we have to remember that just because we know its a mistake doesn't mean the general public will.  It was a learning experience beyond words and was incredibly gratifying.  

And I need to take some photography classes.  :p