Quilting Studio...Coming Along

I'm psyched. It's just about ready to go. Welcome to my sunny, fresh new quilting studio:

Let's take a tour...

New bright white trestle desk. Nice shelf space, lovely work area, not sure about the comfort factor on the chair, but don't want to bring in the black one and disturb the Chi.

Note the colorfully coordinating scrap bag. (Shh...don't tell Jenifer, but I whipped that up one evening when I should have been working on her quilt).

It's always nice to have a little white noise distraction, not to mention hoooking up the DVD player allows me to watch instructional videos (or sappy romances on Saturday afternoons).

No more ugly magazines stacked in piles. A few recovered plain cardboard containers from the office supply store, and wah-la, colorful storage.

Big ol' vase, toss in the extra spools of thread (lots are wooden spools) and you've got a pretty solution for holding rolls of Wonder-Under, template plastic and plastic rulers.

This is my favorite part of the room...the cutting table. It's not finished. There's a white finished top being cut for it that measures 30 x 48, should be here tomorrow. It's counter height, and the legs are 25-cubby shoe organizers from Lowes. Love, love, love them...look at all the fat quarters and half yards they hold. (Yes, I spent the weekend refolding fabric) Colorful, functional, pure joy. (See my South African indigos on the top left?)

Wow! Who knew I had that many fat quarters.

I almost hate to keep the closet doors closed:

There is an elephant in the room though.....

This is the sewing armoire with the electric machine lift I was given a couple years ago.

It's a marvelous piece of furniture and worked well in the cramped craft room. Kept the machine out of sight, away from dust and paint. But you couldn't quilt anything large on it as you ran your quilt into the cabinet as you were sewing. Quite awkward.

But, oh my, look at the storage. I really tried to bring it into the room, but then I was using up the desk trestles and the closet shelves to keep the thread and the little drawers full of pins, needles, seam rippers and the like. While you see 6 HUGE thread boxes there, that are all full (and arranged by color..."can you say 'obsessive-compulsive' boys and girls?"), I would have needed to buy more for the whites, beiges, blacks, metallics and invisibles housed on the door racks.

So I decided to drag it into the new studio space, just to see if I could work it in somehow (I shortened the cutting table by 2 inches to accommodate). If I decide to keep it, I can set the serger up on it, or when I get a new machine, the old one can go here...IF I KEEP IT. In order to keep it, I must paint it white, and in order to paint it white I must sand it, use one paint on the outside (it's lovely oak), one on the inside (the mechanical housing for the lift is metal, the door racks are plastic...I'm thinking spray paint for that). It just seems like a major undertaking.

I've got another white 30 x 60 tabletop cut which would get a custom machine cut out (the machine shelf would be suspended below the top with brackets. I could always use small cabinets for the legs to that table...maybe ones with glass doors. In that case, the armoire goes. I'll figure it out.

In the meantime, instead of worrying about painting, I'm spending my evenings in there soaking up the ambiance and working on:

And I'm loving it!