New Sewing Room

We have lived in our house for over 10 years now and have an unfinished basement.  Well, last winter we decided that we wanted to finish our basement.  We planned to get started the 1st of April but didn't get started until June and so we got a little behind on the plan.  This is a picture of my Quilt room just after we got the framing done, the electrical has been started at this point and the plumbing has been started also.

In this project there will be a Man Cave and a Quilt Studio.  Boy, doesn't that sound impressive.

I sure don't want to ever do insulation work again.  It is a miserable job.

We now have the sheet rocking and texturing done. This picture only shows the sheet rock up but not the texturing. I forgot to take pictures before we started the painting. I will have my HQ along this wall.

This is the wall the HQ will be in front of.

This wall will be my design wall. I am really looking forward to having such a large one.

We have the painting 90% done and we finally feel like we are really going to get our basement finished.

We will not officially have bedrooms downstairs but will take back the old sewing room for a bedroom upstairs.

I am getting pretty excited about this whole thing.  I am just showing my room in the basement but we will have a large family room and kitchette besides my husband's room and the storage areas.  This will increase our finished floor space by almost double the amount we originally had in our home.  We are not completely finishing the storage areas but the large storage area is sheet rocked, textured and painted.

No flooring.

We really want to have more room for our kids and grand children when they come over for dinner and parties.  This will provide areas for everyone to enjoy each others company.

Quilts of Valor

I have been making Quilts of Valor for several years now.  I was very excited about doing these special qults from the very beginning. Our son spent 1 year in Iraq and I have let him pick out two different guys to receive Quilts of Valor.  It is a very rewarding feeling to say thank you to some very giving people.

These are some of the qults I have made over the years.  This is the first one I made and it was sent by the Quilts of Valor organization to Afganistan to a nurse working there.

This is the second one I made and my son picked out a local guy to receive this one.
I made another one just like this for my husband.  My husband was in the Army for 11 years and we lived all over the world and all over the United States.  He is a disabled veteran.

I made my son a Qult of Valor for his birthday this year and he is thrilled.  He requested a lap size quilt that he could have to wrap up in when he was feeling down.

I have made another one for a  friend of my son but for the life of me I can't find the pictures I know I took of that quilt.  This guy is a Marine Vietnam Veteran and when he got the qullt he called my son and cried.  He says this is the first time anyone has told him thank you for his service.  I think he served 2 or 3 tours in Vietnam. He claims that he will be buried in this quilt.  I wasn't sure how to take that but I am honored by his gratitude.  Apparently he is coming to visit my son soon and wants to meet me and my husband.

Freedom is not free!

My Double Wedding Ring

I have finaly finished my Double Wedding Ring quilt.  I started the piecing on this quilt last winter.  This was a very tedious quilt and it felt like I was never going to finish it.
I completed the piecing and put the top together in August and finished the qulting on it last week.
The quilting itself was custom quilted but since I am not too good at custom quilting yet I really stressed myself on it.

I must say though that I am very happy with this quilt and look forwarrd to having it on my bed.

I love scrappy!

St. Patrick's Day Quilt

I have thought for years that I would like to make a bed quilt for different holidays or seasons of the year.
I have been making a few of them over the last few years and I am making good progress now on my St. Patirck's Day quilt.  My favorite color is green and I have tons of green in my stash.
I visit SuBee Sews Quilts blog quite often and last spring she made a two block quilt (9 patch and hour glass) with green and blue.
I fell in love with this quilt. She called hers "King of Green".
I have finished quillting and binding this quilt and can hardly wait until March rolls around.

I have also been practicing taking pictures of my quilts.

I think I am getting better but I need more practice to show off the quilting more.

The quilting certainly shows up better on the back side.
I love Scrappy!

My Many Ideas for a Valentine Quilt

I have wanted to make a Valentine quilt for some time now and I am now working on it.
I am not too fond of pink so I have chosen red to be the main color of this quilt.
I was looking online for red and white quilt ideas when I came  across Joanna S. Rose's exhibition in New York in 2011 displaying 650 quilts.  While looking at this exhibition I also came across the Cupcakes N Daises website  
So I got thinking about a what I want to try out.
I wanted to make a Valentine quilt and I wanted to try my hand at mini quilts. So because of this tutorial I have decided that this quilt can be a number of things for me to explore.

I have made a mini red-work embriodery quilt.

I have an embroidery machine and these lovely little girls in my files.

 A mini log cabin quilt.  I am not sure about how I want to border it.

I have some churn dash blocks.

I also have my first hand appliqué heart blocks.

I am thinking of putting this quilt together like the tutorial but I may still just border each individual quilt and fill in with 4 patches.  It is hard to say right now without putting them all on a design wall.  I don't have a very big design wall yet so it makes it kinda hard to lay it out.  I plan for this quilt to be queen size.

My Sewing Room

We have three bedrooms in our home.  We have lived in our house for over 10 years. When our youngest moved out I made his room into my sewing room. It is a large room and at first I had plenty of room to work in there.  As time went on I added more and more fabric and other quilting supplies and then in 2007 I added a very big item, my HQ Sixteen.  Wow, the room shrunk dramatically.

Here are a few pictures of the room as it looks right now.  Of course some months it looks worse and other months it doesn't look too bad.  But as you can see it is very cramped and most of the time it is best to have only me in there. 

This picture is from the doorway looking in.

This picture is after stepping into the sewing eoom and standing next to the HQ.

This picture is from behind my HQ and looking towards the door and closet.

I have had three grand daughters over at one time sewing on blocks to make pot holders but that was very tight.  Unfortunately, I did not take pictures of that.  I will remember to take pics next time.

Well all of this is about to change.  We are finishing our basement and I will now have a quilt studio.
I am getting so excited about it especially since we are finally making some good progress.

I am taking pictures of the many stages of progress and will write a post about that in a couple of weeks.