Finished! Basement Sewing Room Redo

Last year when I worked on the bead room I started on the sewing room.  I never really finished.  Over Christmas break Nathan helped me move some furniture that was not working in there, and hung some shelves.  I cleaned and sorted and now it is finished!!!  It was inspired by my Christmas present from Nathan.  So far I love this iron! just the fact that it can sit for more than 5 minutes without having to wait for it to reheat is soooo handy.  I have not had any trouble adjusting to not tipping it on end when I am finished. Another project for another day is a new ironing surface...

My sewing table has not changed that much.  I found the table at What Cheer Flea Market and it is very solid.  I do not get any shaking, even when I am sewing at full speed.  I did order an acrylic table and it works well.  I can do much more with quilting without having to fight the quilt the whole time.  Above my sewing area I have put index card with pictures of my WIPs and what I have left to do on them.  I think it is working.  I have finished most of the projects I posted.

In another part of the room, I had a large cabinet/counter.  It was the original cabinet that was in this room when we moved into the house.  It was too tall for me to use effectively and It collected junk.  There was another piece of cabinetry in the laundry room that was lower and I thought it would work better.  After examining it I believe that it is original to the house.  It was a free standing dry sink that someone put a piece of modern counter top on.  The back is traditional bead board and I can see where the hardware was attached.  It was HEAVY.  I put it in the room and it works much better.  It is now my cutting station.  I hung a pendant over it for some light and now have my scraps organized.  Under the counter I have all my batting and other large bulky items.

Scraps are so pretty

I also took my fabric out of bins.  Nathan hung these shelves and I think I will like having all my fabric out for me to see.  I am not worried about fading.  It is a basement after all and does not get very much sun.

Under my fabric I have all the WIPs that I plan on tackling this year as part of our guild challenge.
I still have the couch down in this room, because this room has to be able to function as a guest room when needed.  I am hanging some of my smaller projects on the wall above it.

This room is such a wonky shape.  There is a bump out for the bay window in the dining room.  I put an old dresser from mom and dad that I painted white in the bump out.  I put some organizational cubbies on top.  In the dresser I store part of the sewing machines and other supplies.

The pink Chandy might have to be moved.  In the cubbies I put my fabric groups that I want to keep separate from the general stash.  My favorite fabric right now is Etchings from moda.

All this sorting and cleaning I hope will make my time more productive.  It is nice to have a space of my own that I can do all this with.  I am making progress on finishing things that I have started.  "Finishing" is my theme of 2012.  Here is a quilt that I have finished lately.  It got quilted with pretty leaves and swirls. 

I do not have a "home" for it yet, but it is finished!

Chandelier Project

Well I think I am almost done with my chandelier. 

I bought this at the What Cheer Flea Market

a couple of weeks ago

I ordered several colors and sizes of cats eye beads. 

I decided not to use the pink ones, they just did not seem to go

well with the blue and green.

 

 My handy electrical engineer hubby rewired the cord 

with a plug, so I could use it as a swag lamp. 

 I used my handy-dandy screw punch and poked little holes where I wanted dangles.  

(I highly suggest one of these tools if you work with metal at all.  

It cuts through metal like butter.) 

 

 I made some dangles from the cat's eye tear drops 

and some links I had in my bead stash.  I then threaded

head pins through the holes I made with the 

screw punch and made wrapped loops.  

 

I then attached the dangles to these loops.

 

 I made all the beads into links and made strings of graduated sizes of beads.

I attached the chain of beads to the links that I used in the dangles.  

I added the center crystal and now I have a fun chandelier.  

I apologize for the quality of the pics.  The basement is dark.  

This is why I need a chandelier!!!

Basement Craft Redo 2

It has been a busy couple of days. I turned this...

into this (I like metallic spray paint)

We hosted small group and I made fresh peach crisp.


I think it went over well.

I also worked on decorating the craft room with some things that I had lying about the house. This was a rug that I got a Target about 5 years ago. The Z man at some point spilled about a quart of cherry koolaide on it. Cherry flavor, does not come out. I put that corner under the chair.


This is a chair that I had and was going to put in my bedroom, but it was not right for that space. It is not my favorite, but right now I have it and it is free.

This is a clock that I bought for the living room, but it is really heavy and I did not trust it on the plaster walls. Also I showed it to my hubby and he immediately noticed that it was a S & M clock. Soooo.... No living room clock. But what I do in my own craft room is my own business. (I am not that good with a soldering iron yet :)

Notice the lamp. I got that at What Cheer last weekend. The unique thing about it is that the shade is brass. It also has about the right amount of green patina.

Here is another shot of the buffet. I am not sure how all this will be arranged finally, but at least I got some stuff in here.


Most of the room still looks alot like this. Discordant piles of????? I see sorting (and some purging) in my future.

I have decided that this room is a little small to include all my quilting stuff, so I am going to use the other half finished basement room. Right now it looks like this...

This is tomorrow's project.... or maybe this will take a week or two.

Fabric Indecision

The basement is damp. I was going to paint the buffet today. The hubby was going to help me move it from the garage down to the basement where it is not 90 something degrees. But..... Rumble - Rumble - POURING rain again last night left the basement damp. Thankfully, I was working on the craft room and had everything moved away from the walls. Water filled the window wells and came in the window in the craft room. So one corner of the carpet in the room is wet. I have the fans and the dehumidifier down there now and it is drying out nicely. I feel really bad for the people in the area who are having water issues in their basements. (SOOOO Sorry Erin!!) Oh well, I probably needed to laundry today anyway.

I pulled out the fabrics that I am going to use as accents, such as a throw pillow on the chair, and was going to make some stuff tonight. But I CANNOT decide which fabric to use. Option number one is an Amy Butler pattern I have about 1/2 a yard of. Which is really nice or....

Option number two, a Michael Miller pattern that is equally pretty!

Mr. Nibbles cannot make a decision either. Which one hides cat hair better? Where I am, they are. (In fact Cleo is draped over an arm right now. Makes it very difficult to type.)

I also have a vintage table cloth that I picked up this weekend.

Decisions, decisions....

I also picked up other pretties that will go in the room.

This picture I picked up from a local shop called Best of Thymes. They have such pretty stuff. It is a picture of a bird, imagine that. (FYI I am going through a bird phase right now)

I also picked up some flower arrangements from Hobby Lobby. I think Heaven will look a bit like Hobby Lobby. That's a little sacrilegious isn't it?

Now if I only had some white pottery to put these in..... Oh wait! I collect that also! How handy.

This room is going to be soooooo girly. I do not know what has come over me. Well, time to go do something productive, like putting away all the laundry that I have washed and folded today. Boo, Hiss!!!

What do I do all day?

What have I been up to?

1. Made a bunch of earrings for a local store


(These are some of my favorites)


2. Worked on the dissertation


3. Chased cats off of quilt blocks



4. Finished a quilted gift for a friend who just had a baby


5. Made a yummy looking fruit platter for dinner one evening

6. Ate a lot of fresh picked sweet corn (this is Iowa of course). I think that this green is such a pretty color


7. Tortured the children by making them do their chore list

8. And worked on the basement craft room.
I am trying to make the walls of the basement less "yucky" by covering them with fabric. I am putting hooks into the ceiling and then eye bolts in the end of dowel.

I am then taking sheets and making them into curtain panels (cheapest source of fabric). I am then hanging them so they cover the walls.


I think that this will work well. I can move them aside when I want to vacuum the walls and if they get dirty I can throw them in the wash. My hubby says that being in the room will be like being inside a ghost. Well at least it will not be dark green any more. I also made some simple curtains for the windows, but they may be too simple. Have to think about those some more.


The room is awfully white. This is totally unlike me, but we will see if I can live with it.
Well off to do more things. I have more jewellery to finish, more dissertation to write, more house to clean, and more groceries to get.

Basement/Craft Room Redo 1

This weekend I worked on our basement. Currently I use it for storage for all my craft adventures. When I want to work on something, I go downstairs, get what I need and bring it upstairs. This results in our dining room table looking like this....


Not good for family dinners and results in us eating in front of the TV way too much. It also leaves our main part of the house a perpetual mess. I would like to work in the basement, but it is "creepy" as my kids put it. Our basement suffers from a couple of particularly bad ailments. One is efflorescence. The other is "man cave". Efflorescence is a nasty condition where the water in the soil leaches through the wall and reacts to the chemicals in the bricks and wicks to the surface. It leaves salt crystals on the outside of the walls. It looks really bad, but is just salt. The problem is that you should not paint the walls cause this can cause the crystals to form on the inside of the walls thus weakening the foundation. Yuk.


This is an actual picture of the wall, bad isn't it. It does not smell, it is not harmful, but who really wants to work in this kind of room. Also note the dark green walls. The previous owners painted the entire basement hunter green. With fish wall paper borders, dark light blocking curtains, and other assorted bachelor touches. Great choice for a one hundred year old basement. Not. (I really need a sarcasm button) Anyway, I want to lighten things up and have a couple of positive things to work with. The ceilings have been finished with pine, but that is okay and the floors have light tan carpet, again not my favorite, but okay. As you will find out, I HATE carpet. There are a few pot lights, but these do not really give enough light to actually work with. My husband installed shelving along one wall which I love, very functional, but not very pretty.



Here are some other pics. The roll top desk is staying. It was a gift from my parents for my high school graduation. I also have a couple of other desks and storage pieces to work with.

So, what did I do this weekend. The family went to go see Despicable Me. Fun movie. I also started on some painting. I painted out the windows, which already helps immensely with the light issue.


I also took some bi fold doors that we had laying around the garage, cut them down and painted them. These were the best kind of doors. Free. I love junk day.


Here they are painted. I had the paint left over from a previous project in another house. You will be seeing a lot of green. I love green. Green is my favorite color (all shades except the hunter green in my basement). Although I think that these will look nice, please someone stop me before painting bi fold doors again. Took forever.

And yes these are being propped up by a sports car on blocks. We are classy people. Why do we have a car in the garage that does not currently run and is so totally inappropriate for Iowa winters. Because I like shoveling the snow off my car to take the kids to school? Because it is a great collectible car and will be worth millions someday? No. It is because my husband is an engineer. Not a mechanic, an engineer. He believes that he should be able to fix any problem that an inferior piece of machinery like a car has. He is an engineer. So it sits. It is a bit of a sore spot between us.