Whole House Crafting

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Not a Tiny House, but a Smallish House

Terry “the Quilting Husband” and I live in a relatively small house. Not as small as the houses I looked at during my “tiny-house obsession” period (oh you should have seen my Pinterest board followings) but our house is around 1300 square feet.

A small house, means a small quilting studio space. I have in previous posts, such as “I will not be discarded” & studio refresh shared photos of my quilting studio.

I do not mind the small quilting studio but I do struggle occasionally with having a small design wall. It it not really a traditional “design wall” but more of a “design wall closet door” (see post Inside the Studio to see my mini design wall mounted on a sliding closet door).

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Wait a Minute, I Have Options

Last year, I moved my paper crafting supplies to our sunroom, to make my studio less cluttered. (Oh yes there are many other crafts in my life besides quilting: knitting, crochet, paper crafting, beading, etc.):

My rationale on this move was “why not” – why would anyone care that I have my paper crafting supplies in another room besides my studio?

Recently, the paper crafting supplies in the sunroom gave me an idea: why do I have to keep my quilting related activities confined to JUST ONE ROOM?

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Whole House Crafting

We have a long hallway. In the past I have hung quilts on both side of the hallway but recently one side was empty (I burned out on all those quilts hanging everywhere in the house). Why couldn’t that become a MEGA DESIGN WALL?

We have occasions in the past where Terry “the Quilting Husband” and I were battling for design wall space when working on separate quilts, and this would give us a very large space to work on quilt designs. (See the Postscript section below for the trial run I had on using this space to design a quilt).

A challenge might be that anyone coming over the house will think we are weird as we are designing quilts on our hallway wall, but then who cares – it is our house and if it disturbs them, well they can go back to their house – ha!

Ultimately I would like to have a professional made design wall/design wall sections (like my friend Betty Anne has in her lovely studio) but I need to save up for that to happen. So for now I have purchased a queen size Warm & Natural piece of pre-cut batting to mount on the wall myself.

I did not stop there with my ideas on using the whole house for crafting. I would like a bigger cutting area for working on large projects – what about using my dining room table?

So I did, I used my dining table this past weekend for a large scale quilt trimming project (see the Postscript section) and for other cutting projects such as trimming my Recycled Door quilt and creating the binding (I will discuss my finishing decisions on this piece in a future post) for the upcoming Central Oregon SAQA Doors Exhibit at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show July 2016 (see post Update: Recycled Door).

Note, I would not use my dining room table for everyday cutting as it is not ergonomically correct for cutting (not waist height). Also it is not convenient for when you are working on a piece and doing small batches of cutting as you progress on a piece.

I am not sure why I did not think of expanding my crafting areas before. I guess I was brainwashed by all those beautifully illustrated organizing your art studio magazines and books. These publications seem to insist that all your crafting items be confined to one highly organized space!

Now I am a rebel (or now I am just behaving like normal people who do not impose so many rules on them).

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Postscript

You may have noticed, if you have been following my blog for a while, that I had not post anything related to my What’s On the Design Wall Series. So it may look like I am not doing very much actual crafting these days.

Actually I have been doing MAJOR crafting. For the past couple months I have been working on a by invitation only exhibit I was honored to be invited to participate in. I cannot reveal any specifics the exhibit curator is ready to unveil the show. I am nearly done with the piece (putting on my label) and will send it off to the exhibit soon.

The parameters of this exhibit/show were very precise and I was required to create a quilt a specific size. Also I wanted this quilt to be a story quilt. In order to accomplish these two things I needed a bigger space than my little closet door design wall. So that was my first experience in using the hallway as a design wall. It worked very well!

Also I had to trim the quilt to a specific size and my cutting table in my studio would not work, so this was my first trial run as the dining table as a large cutting table.

Here is a little peek of the piece, and as soon as I am able to reveal the details and the full piece I will: