And Sew Forth: My Sewing Room

When we first moved here at the tail end of 2004, the walls of the east side of the two-room basement were green. That's my brother Mike helping Bill put together a satellite dish.

Bill used the sewing room as a sort of staging area for cutting boards when he covered the bottom part of the ping pong room wall with barn wood. What a mess!

We painted the walls of-white and I moved my sewing supplies into that room.

This shot, above, was taken looking north. The washer and dryer are now to the right in this picture. I want to get the orientation right, and have chosen the washer and dryer as a sort of fulcrum for orientation. 

The doorway to the right in this shot leads to the other room in the basement, what shall from henceforth be known as the ping pong room. This area, seen in this shot, would eventually become an office area. The washer and dryer - though not seen in this shot - are to the left of this view.

Looking north again, you can see the window. I changed my sewing stuff around willy nilly for months, trying to get happy and satisfied with my new sewing area, but that washer and dryer were still visible to me as I sewed. I finally decided to ask Bill to build a half-wall to cover my view of the appliances. An artist has to have a nice place to work, right? I use the word 'artist' advisedly: I've been called an artist before but I'll let you decide that for your own self!

After Bill put barn wood in the ping pong room, he had some wood left over, so we build a wall to hide the appliances from the ping pong room. That half-wall is visible in the far reaches of this shot, above.

There's that barn wood half-all....

and below you'll see that half-wall from the ping pong room:

Beautiful barn wood....

The half-wall is peeking out on the right side of this shot, above. Notice that the washer and dryer were still in sight as I sat to sew. (The stove eventtually went into the other, ping pong room, where we have a full kitchen.)

When someone gave my husband a bunch of plywood, he quickly added it to the walls, covering the cement block in my sewing room. The ceiling would be our next project. But in the meantime, I continued to lobby for a half-wall that would hide the washer and dryer...

Ahhh. That's better! Half wall in place . . . .to hide the appliances from view as I work in my sewing room

Paint! Those walls needed some paint! And my thoughts were never far from my latest obsession to-date: lighting. I had to have better lighting in my sewing room......

But first, paint on the plywood would be nice, eh?!

I called these my 'watermelon walls,' and you can see why! I hated that painted trim, and soon came up with a better look for that part of the wall. But back to the watermelon effect: That was accomplished by putting two colors of green in the same roller pan, and rolling them both at the same time. The top part of the wall was painted in an up and down fashion, while the lower part of the wall was scrumbled - I moved the roller in all directions to get the mottled look.

We eventually added two bookcases at the northern end of the room, with room behind them for storage. I eventually, attached fabric-covered wood to the fronts of those bookcases, effectively turning them backwards, so as to hide my fabric stash.

This shot, above, shows the second bookcase. Also seen in these last two shots is the flower border, one I fashioned from copies of a real flower from our garden.

The fabric room divider hides the area behind the bookcases, an area used for storage. 

Somewhere along the line, we added ceiling tiles to cover the joists. During this time, too, I put the word out that I was looking for fluorescent lights. Our son Bob came through: He called one day to let me know he'd seen an ad in his work newsletter; someone had light for sale. Our sons Bob and Allen helped their dad install 28 feet of fluorescent lights along one wall of my sewing room. The tables, seen in the shot above, were covered with floor tiles, to match the black-white-and-color color scheme that was slowly gaining ascendancy in my sewing room.

I think I'll stop here, for this post. I plan to post a second installment of my sewing room metamorphosis. I think I'll call the second portion: And Sew On: More Shots from My Sewing Room.  

For Part II of the sewing room remodel, click on the link below.

http://redoredux-faywray.blogspot.com/2013/03/and-sew-forth-continuing-saga-of-making.html

Bible Pages On the Wall

My sewing room has gone through many metamorphoses in the past seven years. Since I don’t have a lot of time this morning I think I’ll share just one photo: This is the way the wall in my sewing room looks now; it is covered with pages from bibles. After those pages went on the wall, I thought to also add some photos I had left over from another project.

Drapes - Revisited, and Revisited, and Revisited Again

There are two large windows in the living area of our home. This picture shows what the front window looked like when we moved in - droopy old drapes and now cornice covering the traverse rod.

I made new drapes out of natural-colored muslin. This pic shows the second, dining area window, with the new muslin drapes.

This photo shows the front window with its new muslin drapes . . . . and a cornice. I got two cornices at a yard sale for FREE. The second cornice was too short for the top of the dining room window, so I lengthened it 68" with plywood. The tricky part was matching the birch stain: I ended up mixing all sorts of paint to get it right.

Then, one morning, I awoke with an idea buzzing around in my brain: Tea-dye the muslin drapes. This was some years after I made the original drapes. I was tired of the off-white, you see, by then. So I threw 400 tea bags in the washing machine, let them 'steep' in hot water, then pulled them out. Then I added the muslin drapes. As they were agitating in the tea, I thought to add some green Rit dye, so that's what I did. The resultant drapes turned out the EXACT color of the newly-painted wall. I'm not kidding; it was a perfect match. This photo also shows the copper-clad blind I got at a second-hand store for @ $4.00; I brought it home to find that it just fit our dining room window. Whoo Hoo!

Then, some time later - after yet another wall-color change - I dyed the drapes brown. Then I dyed them with black dye. Then I added a black striped to each set of drapes. Then I lined them, using old white sheets for the liner. This photo shows the front window, with a black stripe on the drapes, and the new brown color. 

This pic shows the back window when the drapes were still green/tea-dyed. This window was replaced with a sliding glass door just recently - Fall of 2011.....

In this photo, you can see the new door that replaced the back window. You can also see, in this picture, that the drapes have been lengthened to accommodate the new, bigger opening. 

[Note: you can also see the new wood floor in this photo - another story for another time...]

It took me @ 8 hours to lengthen those drapes. I added 7 new stripes to make them long enough. Hm. I wonder if those drapes will go through any more changes in the future! 

Thanks for reading this, thanks for letting me ramble on about our chameleon-like drapes!!!!