Monday, March 18, 2013

And Sew Forth: The Continuing Saga of the Making of a Sewing Room


Perhaps some Before and After shots would be in order. In the last post - And Sew On - I included photos of my sewing room from the Concrete Block Age, through to the Plywood Era. In this next segment, I will include pics from both those 'eras' through to the current look of my sewing room. Here we go.....


Looking North: my sewing room shortly after the walls were covered and the washer and dryer hidden by a partition. The shelving units faced toward the room, back then.
I eventually reoriented the book cases so that the shelves faced that north wall. I covered the once-fronts of the shelves with a board and covered the boards with fabric as a sort of design board. The new ceiling made the room look more polished. The new fluorescent lights provide a lot of light - 28 feet of fluorescence. The tables are covered with black and white floor tiles. The half wall to the right in this picture, above, is now covered with barn wood. I never did much like the orangey tones - seem om the former photo.
This shot, above, shows the sewing room after I put old barn wood on the bottom half of the walls in the main part of the room. The watermelon green paint remained on the walls at the ends of the room, however, later to be covered with taupe paint (just recently, early 2013). Above the wood I wallpapered bible pages and old photographs left over from another project.
This is a more recent shot (above, March 2013). The curtain has changed. the one hanging as a divider between the main room and the storage area behind the shelving units.

The air mattress under the old ping pong table is used when our granddaughters spend the night.


The older wall treatment - green walls with photographic trim - is seen in the photo above. 
March 2013: The room has been cleared in preparation for painting the floor in the basement. The green wall will not survive this latest remodel: I covered it with taupe paint.

Above: Before
After....
New floor color
Looking from the office area in the sewing room into the ping pong room
Beyond the beaded curtain is my sewing room.

Another Before shot - still looking north
And an After shot of the same area



The washer and dryer and water softener, etc, behind their barn wood partition.


Office area - barn wood partition wall hides water softener
'Watermelon wall' will soon be beige


The same area after the March 2013 painting frenzy! Notice the green wall is now beige, in the office area, to the right in this shot. I also covered the green that covered the wall behind the appliances.

The storage area behind the bookcases, at the north end of my sewing room
Before shot of sewing room, looking south, toward appliances and office area and doorway to ping pong room  (Spring 2005)
After shot of same area


During the painting of the basement floor

Before shot: Washer and dryer area to the right

Washer and dryer area now (March 2013)
Before shot, looking south

After shot, looking south

The End (Yeh, right.)
To see even more (older) pics of sewing room make-over, click on this link: 
Link
And another thing: We recently wall-papered the walls in the sewing room, AND added Formica to the top of the old ping pong table....

Sorry about the mess; this table redo is a work in progress. The old yard sticks will be tacked around the edge of the table, to finish the edge and to be used for measuring as I sew.

4 comments:

  1. I do have one question, other than to say how impressed I am with your porch, and bath, and basement improvements.

    But here's the question: why all the sewing machines? I think I saw two sergers, no blind stitcher, but lord have mercy, all the regular stitch machines. Do you collect machines, or do you have a color thread for a particular machine, and cam quilt for different patterns? Holy Cow, I thought I was a hoarder...............

    I'm a self-employed jack of all trades, and I make beautiful things for the interior design business, where I wholesale to the designers. I make pretty much anything, including cornices, padded headboards, custom hand guided spreads/comforters, and yes draperies and window treatments. Now, other than my compressor, table saw, and all sorts of tools that go along with it, I also have a Gammill quilter, Consew blind stitcher, 1950s Singer, and an earlier Union Special self oiler. Oh, and a serger, which I don't use all that much. That's about all I need.

    I'm just racking my brain, trying to think of what all those sewing machines are for. I'm not in to making clothes, so I am completely stumped on the number of regular stitching machines. Oh, I do have an old cream colored Morse 4400 Fotomatic. Its a beauty I picked up off of eBay. It was so shiny and new looking, I couldn't resist. Other than that, that's all I have.

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    Replies
    1. So . . . . I went to my blog - Redo Redux - to access pics there, from all those years ago, and I stumbled across your comments in the post about my sewing room. I know, I know: it's been, like, nine years since you made the comments, but I quit checking for comments to my blog a long time ago because every comment seemed to be by someone who wanted to sell me something. I apologize for taking so long to respond, and I hope you get this . . . .
      I really enjoyed your comments! Recently I met someone who has as many sewing machines as I do, so I am not offended that you might think I am a hoarder. The simple truth is that I buy orphan sewing machines at yard sales. Most of them cost $5.00, and most of them are a 'pig in a poke,' as the saying goes; I have no idea whether they work, so I don't pay a lot for them.
      Years and years ago (I've been sewing for almost 60 years), I was working on a quilt for someone, really hustling to get it done, and my sewing machine broke down. I had to stop and have my mom send me my grandmother's old sewing machine via UPS. It was then that I decided I would never find myself in that situation again if I could help it.
      I am really, really hard on sewing machines. Yes, I do maintenance on them regularly, but for some reason I tend to trash machines.
      Oh, and I give sewing machines away. Here's how it goes: Someone will ask me to sew something for them, and I usually say No, then add that I can give them a machine and they can teach themselves to sew the sane way I did, by trial and error.
      I am happy for you if you have never had to stop a project mid-stride because of a broken machine! Really happy for you; I am not being facetious. I wish things would go like that for me. I recently found out that there are 7-thousand dollar machines. When I heard that, I was, like, 'Well maybe if I paid that much money for a machine, it wouldn't poop out on me.' On the heels of that thought, I realized that, no, those expensive machines would not last any longer than my orphan machines, and,. whoa!, I would not only be trashing a machine, but trashing one that cost me a lot of money.
      I've actually considered contacting the makers of those high-end machines, to see if they'll let me try one of their machines to find out if they really are worth that much mney.
      I hope this answers your questions. Happy Sewing! Sincerely (belatedly), Susan Hirneise Moore

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  2. Quit racking! Quit racking! (I'm worried about you!)
    A question for you: Do you have final say in all design decisions?
    I'm asking because I do NOT like sewing for others – too many times people choose ugly fabrics and/or designs. I like to sew my own designs and if others don't like them, fine; I go on with my life. I have tried to sew for others, mind you, but I don't like it. And I don't like mending, either.....
    So! When someone says, 'Can you make this for me,' or, worse, 'Can you fix this for me,’ I give them a sewing machine so they can do it themselves.
    How can I afford to do that, to give away sewing machines? In a word (or 2): yard sales. I usually get them for 5.00 each, and I’ve found new and virtually new ones for just 20.00. My husband has gotten into the act, encouraging my habit of taking in orphan sewing machines.
    Family and friends use my sewing machines, too – our two (soon to be 4) granddaughters love to sew. Our three sons also sew; I was able to give our son Bob a machine recently when he had some sewing projects to do. It’s nice to be able to do this for people. I also give away many of the things I sew.
    Oh, and don’t forget perhaps the coolest thing of all, in re to my nearly-free sewing machines: I have plenty of machine parts. I am able to fix most problems with sewing machines, but not all, so when a machine is beyond hope, I take the parts off that I can use and my husband takes the carcasses to the junk yard and makes money off the metal.
    Thank you for your comments. And now I am going to go re-read those comments and enjoy them all over again…..
    Susan Hirneise Moore – Please find me on FB and I can share some photos with you there.
    PS: Your comments made me realize that I need to add some photos to my blog, of some of my creations.
    PPS: I can’t help adding that I used to sew professionally, but the death knell rang on that venture after I finished a huge, beautiful quilt and we spread it on the bed and the client/customer said, “Oh, oh! It’s wonderful! Just like store-bought!’ She, of course, thought that was the highest praise, but I did not.

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