Sewing Room Lighting Upgrade

Not much sewing got done this week as we had the electrician in and also have my mother-in-law staying with us.  Its her first stay with us since we moved and now we have a nice new sofa bed for her in the sewing room.  Apparently its quite comfy and she's enjoying her stay with us.  We're having a family sewing weekend away next weekend so Mum has her machine with her and I was able to set her up to sew on my cutting table so that will give her something to do on the days when we're at work.

I was happy to see the electrician as his most important job (as far as I was concerned) was to put in some lovely bright LED downlights in the sewing room, so now I'm all set to sew!

Here is the lighting before - just a central light with not so bright globes. They were some sort of energy saving fluoro globe.  I had to turn them on 15 minutes before I went into the room as they took ages to get to full brightness (which wasn't that bright!).

Here is the new and improved lighting (along with newly installed hard wired smoke alarm) and ceiling fan for when I get too hot when I'm quilting.

The photo above is taken with a flash and the one below without one. These are super bright LED downlights. I've also had a dimmer installed for the days when I don't want the lights quite so bright!

My only sewing done this week was to make some more yo-yo's for my hand stitched quilt.  I'm getting there - 57 out of 132 done.  Now I just need to get back to doing some more on putting the quilt together!

To finish I thought I'd share some photos of some of the lovely garden in our new house. We came back after being away for a week in our caravan to find lots of flowers had come out. They are tucked away in the garden everywhere and add a splash of colour amongst the green.

Most of them are this colour:

but there is one which is a much brighter shade of orange.

Its an even nicer colour in real life!

The other reason I haven't got much sewing done is that I've been helping my hubby and his friend Craig to rebuild his aviary. We had a really large aviary and this smaller one at our old place and my husband had to compromise and downsize to just this one. In the end we kept the covered section and rebuilt the front part using all new steel to fit the shape of the garden bed.

Its mostly finished but needs a bit of fine tuning including painting the wire black so you can actually see the birds but I think it fits the space very well. We've designed it so that we can build a second smaller one next to it in the future if necessary, using the small garden shed to the left of this photo for a covered section.

Once its been painted and we get it planted out with some grasses and a shrub or two I think it will look really nice (nicer than the old one at the other house in any case!).  Brian's just itching to get his birds back from his friend Tony who's been babysitting them for the last 2 1/2 months. I'll be glad too because then he'll be busy with them and I can get more quilting done!  A big thanks to Craig for all his work building it and Tony for looking after the birds for us for so long - you're both lovely guys.

Thanks for visiting my blog today,

September UFO Project - Scrappy String Blocks

I started making string blocks out of my scraps a while ago and that is my UFO project for September. Up until now I've been making my blocks all in the one colour but I decided to make a small lap quilt to donate to a local hospice and wanted to experiment with specific colour placement.

These are the blocks I started with and I do love the colourful random look but I wanted to try something different.

This is the centre round I started with:

Now I've added another round, can you see where I'm going with it?

I didn't think about losing the points on my black diamonds though. Never mind, I'm sure I'll work something out!

The Unveiling of My New Sewing Room!

With the delivery of a new sofa bed this week my sewing room is finally complete - other than an upgrade to the lighting which happens in two weeks.

My sewing room is in what was the lounge in our new house but as we have a really large family room we don't need a formal lounge as well. My room will also have to serve as a spare room when my mother in law comes to visit, hence the sofa bed!  That's fine with me though as we get along really well!

So as a reminder, this was my old sewing space:

Anyway here are some happy snaps of my new favourite room!

This is the sewing side of the room, with a pressing board on top of the drawers and my rulers stored neatly hanging on the end of the shelf units.  The drawers were in my son's room until we got our built ins put in this week. They are a great height for when you're standing up so sometimes I use them as a pressing station and at others to use my laptop standing up to give my backside a break! I have a small design board up on the wall but really need a larger one down the track.

This is the cutting station on the other side of my sewing machine. I've had this old desk for years and even though it was really too large for our old place I kept it as I have always thought it would make a perfect place for cutting fabric. It has a handy cupboard on the side too.

Looking the other way you can see the lovely old chest of drawers which came from my hubby's grandmother's house and the double doors which close the room off from the hallway for when my mum in law comes to stay. You can also see the quilt inspector with the glowing eyes keeping an eye on me!

A close up of the chest of drawers. I've covered the top as it has a large, deep scorch/burn mark on top but it serves the purpose of hiding all my UFO's!

Our new sofa bed, with matching cushions (which I didn't know we were getting as part of the deal). We picked this one in particular as its made in Australia and has a great quality mattress - only down side was the name of it: 'Collingwood'! Aussies will know what I mean but Collingwood is the name of a much despised football team here in our AFL competition! Anyway hopefully Mum will be comfy when she comes to visit.

There are a couple of special items in my room too.

This is a cushion made from a tapestry made by my hubby's Aunty Joan (now aged in her 90's). She's a lovely person and we spent many happy fishing trips with her at Goolwa where she is now in a nursing home and not in the best of health.

This old tin might not look much but I think of my Mum everytime I see it! My Mum passed away nearly 24 years ago and this tin contains some old projects of hers which she never finished including some tatting and crochet motifs for a doily.  I don't crochet or do tatting so I have left them as they are for now.  I might have to applique them into a project down the track. There's also an envelope addressed to her twin brother during the war (and never sent obviously). It has her writing on it and contains old patterns of embroideries I assume she must have made at some stage.

I also have a tapestry she made which isn't quite finished but I need to match cottons to that before I can finish it.  Anyway this way my Mum is here with me when I'm sewing!

To finish here are some of my favourite places in our new house.

I do love our lovely leadlight front door!  Even looks pretty on a grey, rainy day!

Well there you have it! I can't tell you how happy my new room makes me, I just love being able to pop in and out and just pick up where I left off whenever I feel like it instead of having to pack everything up each day. Mind you the whole house makes me pretty happy too. Best decision we ever made!

Thanks so much for visiting my blog today,