Studio Clock

The shop where I bought my new sewing machine last October (Rocky Mountain Sewing) has a monthly event called "Sew Fun" where they show you different products, patterns and supplies that you can use. They show finished products as further enticement to buy the patterns, etc. Well I succumbed this past Wednesday when I saw this Quick Stitch Multi Square Clock and knew it would be great in my studio!

I printed off various pictures of my stitching, a picture of Miss Maddie and one from 1995 of my husband and I. You will recognize him as the gray blob - I am not mad at him, he just prefers to remain anonymous! Too bad the sun was in my eyes, but the picture was taken in front of the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego on one of our day trips and it brings back nice memories.

It was great fun and very fast and easy to do. I made a template out of clear plastic to lay over the pictures to decide what part to cut out and then slipped the cut photo into the clock slots as the package instructions suggested. It will be easy to change photos down the road too. Sorry I tossed out the packaging before I thought about blogging, but if you goolge "quick stitch clock" you should come up with at least two sources.

I just LOVE my studio clock!!!

New Studio Furniture!

I had been eyeing this 8 drawer flat file cabinet in the Home Decorators Collections catalog when low and behold it came on sale with free shipping AND they let me use a $50 off coupon so I ended up getting it for $185 less than normal price. So of course I had to get it!!!!!! The coupon came in Maddie’s name, so you could say it was a partial Christmas present from the dog!

The down side is it comes unassembled….in THREE, yes THREE boxes. One box weighed approximately 52 lbs, the second box was about 70 lbs and the third box was 104 lbs!!!! Did I tell you my studio is a converted upper floor bedroom??  Between my hubby and me we managed to get the 50 and 70 lb boxes up to the studio and the 104 monster into the living room. Miss Maddie, smarty pants dog that she is, hightailed it into another room!

The next day we assembled the cabinet. We opened the heavy box downstairs and carried the parts up to the studio. We opened the other boxes and took inventory. All there and then we proceeded to assemble. It took us most of the day, and my hands were sore from all the screws!!

Dividers came for the top two drawers and here is how I set up the very top drawer. My plan was to use this drawer to hold my rotary cutting rulers and tools with my big rotary mat on top of the cabinet. I think the top is 42” x 28” and it is 36 inches high (great height for cutting – I am 5’7”) and the top holds my big rotary mat just fine. I think the top will be nice for wrapping Christmas presents next year too. It is a very nice working height. I have it just about in the center of the room and it has worked out great. I even used the cutting mat this past weekend - I am in heaven.

Notice how the ENTIRE drawer comes out for easy access to the back? LOVE IT!! It was well worth the effort, but not sure I would want to do it again - we even had to put in all the drawer rail hardware. When they said unasembled they meant unassembled! I am extremely happy with it and believe it or not it has been up since Saturday and it is NOT filled yet!!

Studio Re-Do & First Finish

Today I thought I’d talk about my studio. At our other house I had California Closest make me a work area. It was removable, so I had them take it down and put it back up in our new house. It fit pretty well, except the wall with windows would not hold all the cabinets, so one cabinet is not over a desk surface any more, but I put a lateral file there to prevent head bumps, and the corner shelf had to be cut down in width also to accommodate the cupboard on the window wall.

Here are pictures of the room before:

 These are the walls the system is going on to.

Here are pictures of the room after:

     Still needs a bit of organizing, but I am getting there!

Below is the system installed. You can see where the cabinet on the left is no longer over the desk space. In the other house the right corner had two cabinets, but this new house has a window in the way! It all worked out though.

Note Miss Maddie has reclaimed her "cave" spot in the corner under the desk. This was her favorite hide away at the other house and I barely had the system up before she reclaimed it!

I got it all set up and about organized – still have a little to do on that – but was able to complete my first project in the new studio. It is a 2” square ornament that was the May ANG Chapter meeting project. It was a needlepoint freebie by Jean Hilton off the Rainbow Gallery (RG) site called Rainbow Gem #1 (side note -  on the RG website the pictures for Gems#1 and #2 are switched). But if you like the one I did it is Rainbow Gem #1. If you decide to do this it was easier to do step 3 before step 2, also this was an alternative colorway the presenter of the program worked up. She gave us two other colorways besides the one on the chart and suggested the change in order of the steps. This worked out real well.

ENJOY!!

Making Progress

This weekend was spent making room in the closet for the California Closet fellow to evaluate my current situation and make room for the workers when they come to install the system. The good news is that we will be able to use the system I had at my old house without any cutting or refitting. He is going to recheck measurements, because of the window on the back wall only the corner shelf and one cabinet will fit. The other three cabinets will fit on the side wall (which is the unseen wall at left of the picture).

I tried to stand in the same place I did for the previous post picture so you can see the progress. I think I did pretty good, you can still see the leaning surface pieces at the lower left of the photo (a bit less in this picture though).  I filled the bookshelves, which are now behind boxes. I think this will be enough room to put the system back up, but I am having them create a matching desk (it will be freestanding) and I think there may be a chair, box and a few plastic drawers in the way! This week the Closet fellow will call me with an estimate and possible install dates. Then the real organization work will start!!

I think that covers it for now, but I just noticed if you can enlarge the photo, you will see the baseboard on the back wall. It is still pink, just one of the colors of the walls. This room had two pink and two yellow walls - including baseboard. We plan to change all the upstairs baseboards to light wood. Also at the top middle, followers of this blog may notice the stuffed duck dog toy. After only three weeks, the brand new one sprung a leak at the neck!! We had the other duck over a year before it ripped a seam. But now I think I can get to my needles and thread to make repairs. I may have to buy duck from a different place next time.

Unpacking and My Studio

Things are going well at Colorado Stitcher's home base, but a little slowly sometimes. Darn day job gets in the way, but helps support the stash, so can't complain too much! The living room is about done and so is the family room and kitchen. Each needs something to finish up (a pantry for the kitchen would be nice, for example). I tackled the guest room the other night (since we will have some overnight guests May 1 I thought I'd better start it to get it done in time. It was not as bad as I thought it might be, but then there could be a stray box in the studio that should really be in the guest room. Either way the room is ready for guests even if not in it's final state.

This leaves the studio....

This was taken looking in from the doorway. The unseen area to the left is a wall I plan to have my California Closet office system put on (it will need some modifying I am sure and I may add a desk section since the desk that was in there at the other house will not fit in the room). The California Closet guy comes tomorrow afternoon and I hope he can get some stuff in since it will help unpacking, but I should probably try and make him some working room! So you can guess what I will be up to this evening and tomorrow morning!!

The wall to the right that is not shown is the bedroom double sliding door closet (I may convert these to accordion style for better access). Under the window and at the right I was able to snug in a dresser and on the wall the window wall joins to, I have four bookshelves - yes 4. Two can barely be seen behind the boxes and one of them has glass doors. Three are a matching set, two without doors and the one with. The fourth bookshelf was in the guest room at the old house (with my craft books) and I am glad they fit in the studio -especially since there is NO room for anything but the queen bed, dresser and two night stands in the guest room. Very cozy in there, but not tight. We will see what our guest think May 1. :)

Well, my lunch break is about over, so I best get back to work.