Indigo Dye Pot…Looks nasty, ayh?

Some of Annie’s handiwork with block resists

This is some of my day’s designs

Barb’s pants got a little spot on them

For all practical purposes, which means I can go play and deal with the rest of the boxes later….the new workspace is done. To look at it you would think I do only traditional quilts. I love my baskets and antiques, this is the only room in the house decorated this way. I use the treadle machine and the quilt above it is the only surviving quilt my grandmother made. These two things were the deciding factor on the wall paint color. I will use some of the other colors I looked at in the guest room that is behind the folding screen.

The painting behind my chair is one of mine, and the orchid painting on the right bar of my blog is mine. Both of these were painted while I lived in Sarasota, Florida and were inspired by the flowers in my garden. I have a closet full of paintings and prints from those paintings that I used to sell at art shows. Let me know if you are interested in any of the paper prints…I will sell them inexpensively. I didn’t know there were so many of them left until I moved this room.

There is room in front of the thread shelves to put an easy chair when I find the right one, another shelf goes to the right of the sewing table Ron made for me, and there is a small cabinet that holds bottles of ‘stuff’ to be hung. We are making a large design wall to sit in front of the closet door for larger pieces. The one sitting on top of the Koala cutting table can be carried over to the machine.  Behind the closet doors are shelves for batting, hanging tops and finished pieces and painting art supplies.

The floors are ceramic tile so all the pins and snips and strings can easily be swept up. I found the two brass and milk glass lights at the local Salvation Army for $8 each. Ron added the brass chains and hung them in opposite corners for great lighting. I think these must have come from a commercial building because they will take up to 250W bulbs! When we looked at new lighting at the home stores, everything had a max wattage of 60W….not good.

Hope you enjoyed looking! Would love to hear what you think.

Fabric shelves…SOME of it….

Cutting and pressing here

Space for a Chair to reverse sew.

Command Central Wireless stuff

My Treadle and Grandma’s quilt

The studio is getting it’s fresh coat of paint! I’m so excited to be moving along on this. Ron got one wall painted yesterday so he could move some of the shelves into the room. He also hung the wall shelves and got one light up on that half of the room.

I may have mentioned before that I collect split white oak baskets….handmade only, please. I use  them to hold supplies instead of plastic bins. You might see a few odd baskets on my shelves; like a bark basket that stores my safety pins, a Nantucket Lightship basket with Little Red peaking out, a square bamboo that is a little sewing basket and a Victorian bamboo that came from my great aunt’s estate hanging on the wall.  The largest basket is my grandmother’s split oak picnic basket. Then there is the Algonquin Indian antique basket that is too fragile to use.

Today’s activities while you all are picnicking and spending the last summer days on the beach, will be to sort, fold and organize the fabrics that will go on this 8 ft. bank of shelves. Then we can move on to the rest of the painting and shelving. More pictures as more gets done.

I have received requests to show this full quilt. Since it won’t be entered in anything that forbids public posting ahead of time, I’ve decided to go ahead and show it.

I hope you like it as much as I do. The finished size is apx. 34 inches square.

It started as a 5 mummy habotai silk scarf. I took a class from Celia Buchanan from Dharma to learn about Jacquard’s textile paints. For this sheer look I used Dye-na-flo after first free hand drawing my design with permanent gold gutta.

The quilting is all free hand. I love to “draw” my quilting lines and fit them instinctively to the positive or negative space.