Moving right along—transitions; life and studio

There are many reasons why I only had 3 blog posts last year. I posted a few times on Instagram, but not much more than here. 

Even without the pandemic, life took some crazy turns for us in 2020. Hubs and I made decisions regarding our future, and I had to make some decisions regarding my work life. 

Due to work life, school took a back seat. I dropped the classes I had enrolled in that would have started mid-January 2020; the workload ramped up that same week. Over a year later, I’m working from home 11-12 hours per day and some weekends in an attempt to catch up. School will happen again, but not soon. Actually...school this year means online quilting and sewing classes. That is a good thing.

So, I've mentioned in a previous post that we moved. Three years ago, the Hubs and I made the decision to downsize, and after repairs, painting, dethatching and donating of stuff, we finally put the house on the market on Memorial Day...and we accepted an offer 30 days later. 

We packed nonstop for a month and spent the weekend after closing finishing up. I think we moved more stuff than the movers did (lessons learned). I went up and down the stairs 47 times that Saturday:

And then we attempted to squeeze (almost) everything we own into a 1,073 square foot apartment. 

That was 8 months ago, and we are still figuring it out. While I have the studio organized, it’s always a work in progress. Because no matter how much we worked it out on paper, everything for the studio would not necessarily fit in the studio. And that’s when we decided there would be a sacrificial lamb.

My Tonka Toy. The longarm.

This may be hard to fathom, but I decided to take one for the team and part ways with my longarm machine. I started thinking about it in May when we put the house on the market, and Hubs raised an eyebrow when I mentioned it. 

But wait; there’s more.

So another sacrificial lamb was my beautiful sewing table top the Hubs made for me after I purchased The Beast, my Bernina 770 QEE. 

We decided that we would remove the top of one of the cutting tables and replace it with the top he made to give me a larger workspace surface. But it was 4’ x 8’, and in the living room in our apartment, it just was too big. He took it off the cutting table to cut it down. Which reminds me of yet another sacrificial lamb...

My old sewing cabinet. Another item custom built by the Hubs several years ago. I loved that cabinet. It fit me like a glove.

The Hubs disassembling my
(sob!) custom sewing cabinet

I hosted a lot of Stitch and B!tch sessions at that cabinet, and I enjoyed many hours sewing there. We both almost cried as he disassembled it the week before we moved, but it was too big to get out the door and we would have a hard time reassembling it at the apartment. 

So now I have two tall tables for work surfaces. I have 2 drafting style chairs that allow me to sit at the tables, but due to my height, it's hard to lift The Beast from the recessed area where it sits when I need a flatbed surface. Hubs to the rescue: he installed an electric lift for my machine, enabling me to lift and lower it with ease from flatbed surface to raised for machine embroidery or to change the bobbin. It’s heavenly. 

Then when I mentioned I needed to invest in overhead lighting, he decked out the studio with a new lighting system (there is no overhead lighting in the new studio), as well as a quilt suspension system to hold the extra weight of the quilt while I'm free-motion quilting. That man is something else. 

A couple of weeks ago I told the Hubs I needed to rearrange the studio. The previous layout had me facing a wall while sewing and having all of the light against that wall made for a much darker space on the opposite wall. Now the lighting is centered in the room and it feels more open (if that can be said for this tiny space) and I am ecstatic with the results. Current layout:

View from one side

View from the other side; the lighting system makes me so happy!

Remember my pegboards? Hubs hung them on the wall with hinges; 
now I get to use both sides of each pegboard.

Ironing station--the only thing in the room not on wheels; also,
the view on my right from where I sit.

The view straight ahead from where I sit

So back to the longarm: In the preceding 2 years I barely touched it. One of my quilts sat in limbo on it for months. While the situation behind my absence from the longarm will finally go away sometime this year (fingers crossed), I realized that I honestly hadn’t missed it. Within a few days of discussing it with the Hubs, I was talking about it to Katrina and she said, “I’ll buy it.” I must confess that the idea moving that quickly made it a lot easier for me.

A couple of weeks later it was set up in her garage. She’s probably used it more in the last 9 months than I did for 2 years prior to selling it to her, and that gives me great joy! The bonus is that she will let me use it whenever I want. I don’t know when I will unless it’s a king-sized quilt (which is a part of this year’s plan).

Hubs, Katrina and Tom assembling the frame

Katrina surveying her new toy with her fur babies in tow

So what’s the plan for quilting my quilts if I’m not using Tonk? I bought a second machine, a Bernina 790 Plus. I decided that I could go back to free motion quilting on a domestic machine, but I can also do edge-to-edge quilting with the embroidery module. She is The Beaut.

...and I kept The Beast, my Bernina 770 QEE. With two Berninas from their 7 Series, I can interchange feet, bobbins, hoops, etc. The Beaut will be my go-to for machine embroidery, including edge-to-edge quilting; The Beast will be for general sewing, piecing, etc. Just the idea of having one machine embroidering while I’m sewing on the other makes me giddy. 

In celebration of the lighting system, I signed up for a FMQ class with Jenny Lyon. I like her style because it reminds me so much of the style of Diane Gaudynski, who has since retired from teaching. While it had been a long time since I had done any quilting whether on the longarm or my domestics, the muscle memory quickly returned and I was off and running. I'm excited again about the possibilities. 

So after more logistical planning and moving and tugging and improvising, the new version of the Bottoms Up! Studio is up and running and I can't tell you what a joy it is to be in here. It's amazing that I'm able to work in 154 square feet as opposed to 1,000 square feet. I've learned that I had to inventory everything in here along with where it resides so I can find it, but the joys outweigh the cons.

As far as my mood for the last year--let's say I'm extremely grateful to family and friends who listened to me barf up a lot of garbage. My frustration really showed. The Hubs has been phenomenal, and my special friends know who they are. Thanks, y'all. I love you. 

I told my sister last March that I would make lemonade over the time we were sequestered, quarantined, whatever you call it—something good had to come from all this. Spring and vaccines have brought the breath of hope and being able to enjoy my new studio adds to that hope. Quilting helps bring my breathing pattern closer to normal. I say, "Let's quilt more."

Who’s ready for some lemonade? Go make!