Photos: New Quilting Studio

Today Larry wrote out a check to one of my favorite quilting shops, Country Traditions, in Fremont ------ for a 'new' (to me) longarm quilting machine and frame for me for Christmas:  an 18" Avanté by HandiQuilter, on a 12' studio frame.  The people will bring the machine and frame and set it up for me on Thursday.

We will put it in Victoria's old room, which I will now try to call 'my sewing/quilting studio'.  Victoria painted it about a year before she got married, and it still looks nice.  

After the Avanté and frame are in place, we'll bring my cutting table and sewing machines, and serger upstairs -- that is, up two flights of stairs, all the way from the walk-out basement.

Larry just helped me -------- uh, let me rephrase that:  I mostly watched (and pointed and gave directions and acted all helpful and stuff), while Larry carried eight very large, very heavy totes completely full of photo albums from the new sewing studio into the little room I used to use as a combination office and sewing room.  He stacked them in corners, and one of these days I'll begin working my way through those albums, scanning all my old pictures.

Here's the quilting studio, almost empty except for the bookcase full of quilting, sewing, embroidery, and smocking books.  The bookcase and the filing cabinets on either side are in the area that used to be the closet.  Larry is filling in the area where an old wall used to be with pieces of oak flooring, which he will later stain to match.  See his tools on the floor?  The trim around the closet needs to be painted... and I'll hang some valances in there, too.

I have a lot of pictures and decorations to hang on the walls -- a little tricky, since the walls are plaster.  That picture above is temporarily hanging on the the one and only nail that happened to already be there.

The picture was taken by Hester at the eastern edge of Rocky Mountain National Park, and it's printed on canvas.  She gave it to me for Mother's Day.  Don't worry; I'll move it to a better place!

Here's my rolltop desk in the little office.  (Notice Teensy, following me around everywhere I go?)

Here's the upstairs hallway and the stairs to the main floor.  Larry has put new wood on the banister; it still needs to be finished and a few more pieces of trim put back on underneath.  The plaster walls have been patched and need to be finished.

The door to the right opens into the quilting studio.  The door straight ahead opens into the room that used to be Caleb's, now a library.

The door to the left leads into the little office, and our very large not-yet-finished new bedroom.

Here's the library:

I made the Lone Star quilt in about 1992, I think, from a stack of squares I found in my mother's basement.  Each square was just big enough to cut two diamonds from.

Hannah made that beautiful crocheted rug.

The door on the left opens into a fairly long closet; I'm using it for my winter clothes.  The door on the right opens to the upper landing.  My quilting studio, is on the other side of the far wall.  The little office is on the other side of the wall on the right.