Monday, April 7, 2014

How to go from Blahhh to Ba- Zing to your quilting room!

When I had my hand quilting business, I had a dedicated room with a Door! A MUST for all of us serious down-to-the-nitty gritty, leave me Alone quilters! Now, I'm posting some pix of my quilting room with some explanations. This was in the 1990's...NOT current, so please forgive the quality of the pix and the out-dated things in the pix. OHH my gosh, I noticed my old boom-box Much need for those books on tape, and my 13 inch tv! haha...well, I DID have cable then. Best $$ I've ever spent.

I watched tv (usually Court TV) while I hand quilted to keep my mind working as well as my fingers and to 'time' myself durning commercials. Got to have those important potty-breaks and such ya know!

So,...I took a look one day and it was...well, it was BORING. I had my totally necessary recliner and true light, that's about all I needed as far as furniture since I didn't have much time for piecing, just hand quilting for customers.
But, it was Still boring. Blah off-white walls, homespun curtains, mini blinds and hardwood floor. One Sunday afternoon, I took paint to brush. I dry brushed over the off-white with white tinted with a tad of black for a shaded gray and dry brushed horizontally on all 4 walls. Then, got the yard stick out and used that for guidelines for 'boards'....went back and added black 'squares' making it look like square nails in the boards.
That still wasn't enough. I just HAD to hand paint ivy, morning glories along and up the walls, Caladium near the baseboards....made the wall by the closet look like a separate room and a rail fence.....As they say....Ba-zinga, I had my quilting 'cabin' or quilting in a barn. I wasn't finished...as the Former dh gasped for air...I painted over the hardwood floor with barn red oil paint, outside grade....it was WONDERFUL!!!
Whenever I had people over and when 'word got out' I had quilt customers who were picking up their quilts wanting to see my 'quilting cabin'! LOL..

It served as a wonderful retreat for me as I spent a Lot of time in there and had 2 windows looking out at my terraced back yard and the bird feeders at the windows. Along the way, the Hallmart gift shop closed here in town. I managed to win the bid at the auction for 9 of her drawers that were used for storing gift cards. Great drawers. Deep and wide on nylon runners holding all of my quilt fabric, flats, fat quarters, even yardage.
Of course, I outgrew those as well and had to add an upright shelving, you can NEVER have enough fabric. That was my 'retirement' collection. To be used when I retired from hand quilting and actually had time to Make quilts.

 This is actually a flat wall.I started at the door frame and used what I learned in my high school art class on persepectve to 'shape' what looks like the wall goes into a corner with the rail fence and, of course Things growing on the fence.
So, you can always revive a boring room. Maybe I was nuts, but I was a Happy nut! I didn't stop there, either...you should have seen the REST of the house! LOL

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