Adventures in Furniture Restoration

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I love vintage school desks and bought this one about a year ago. I was drawn to its silly little basket. Deluded by TikTok DIYers, I thought it would be a piece of cake to fix up. It was not.

These are the listing images. I was probably also swayed by that beautiful flat file in the picture. At some point the original top had been replaced with these rustic floor boards (?) that were gross, warped, and generally stupid looking, so with the help of my husband and his tools, we made a new tabletop out of plywood.

The paint on the frame was chipped and the saddest of school beiges, so I decided to try stripping it off, which in hindsight, was a really bad move. There are so many crevices in that silly little basket. The paint easily came off of the bottom portion of the legs, but the rest of it was pretty stubborn and I set the whole thing aside for months.

Well I learned that unpainted metal likes to rust, and rust it did. So after scrubbing with WD-40 and sanding off the remaining paint, I was finally able to prime and paint. I picked a color that ended up being more vibrant than I wanted (why are the cap colors so different from the actual paint?), but overall I’m pretty happy with it and the extra surface it’s providing me in my art making space.

Studio | part 2

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11.5 months later, I’m back with part 2 of my studio update! If you saw part 1, you’ll notice quite a few changes. The main update is, like a lot of people, home is now where I work. And my work involves a lot of filming equipment. Equipment that takes up a lot of physical space… and mental space. Anyway, all of the extra stuff and well, *gestures broadly at everything* I just didn’t feel inspired to share. But I want to now!

This corner is no longer home to my horrible exercise bike, but instead a bunch of plants, UFOs, and occasionally a yoga mat.

Artwork (upper left corner) by Avery Williamson.
Artwork by my mom!

I’ve wanted to sew curtains inspired by this artist for ages, but decided to purchase some simple shades. I’ll eventually finish those curtains, but flashing my neighbors was getting old and I was having to tape paper over the windows to film.

There’s a lot more stuff on the walls now too. I hung IKEA pegboards, art, and made two bulletin boards out of homasote and canvas. The board pictured here is holding a project that will one day be a quilted jacket. The top shelf of my cutting table stores a bunch of tripods and lights (hidden by other stuff), batting, yarn, and fabric scraps.

Large woven scraps are folded and stored on one of the open desk shelves and the small pieces live in these baskets. I can easily pull them out when I’m working on one of my two long-term quilt projects. You can see how I store my fabric stash in this blog post.

This dress form is from my vintage selling days. She’s definitely not my size, but it’s fun to hang an in-progress project on her. The baskets hold printed patterns and fabric on rolls. I went with Husky workbenches to hold my sewing machines. They’re really sturdy, easy to move around, height adjustable, and have two drawers for storage. I didn’t really think through the drawers and the free hand system of my machines, but whatever.

I love this old banker’s chair. I thrifted it for a cool $15 in Tulsa, OK and it’s the best for rolling back and forth between my sewing machine and serger. The machine pictured here is a Bernina 475 and it’s from work. My personal sewing machine is a Bernina 770 QE (hasn’t arrived yet, upgrading from a B 530) and my serger is a Bernina L 460 (currently getting serviced), which is why they aren’t pictured.

Oil paintings are from my graduate program. I’m hoping if they’re in my face, I’ll pick painting back up.

This board is the second homasote and canvas board and I’m using it to plan projects. Once a project is finished, I’ve been trying to add both the drawing and swatch to a notebook with a few notes about it. More plans can be found here.

The IKEA cart holds distilled water for my iron, spray bottle, lint rollers, a handful of Pyrex saucers I sometimes use as pattern weights, hand sewing supplies, and supplies for the quilted jacket project.

I recently bought this ironing board. I had to upgrade because the one I bought from Target 12 years ago was completely rusted and started staining anything I pressed. Really happy with this upgrade! It’s wider, has a special place for my iron, and a handy shelf, which I’m using to hold WIPs and pressing tools. Can you spot Otis?

Here’s a closer look at the big board. The little light and Herman Miller chair used to be my grandfather’s. The block printed bag holds scraps that are too tiny to be turned into anything and are destined for the trash.

Artwork by Marsha Robinson.

This IKEA cart holds a bunch of stuff. Top shelf has tools, a Gutermann thread chart (highly recommend getting a thread chart during quarantine), an RK Kona cotton swatch book, my classwork from GarmentWorks, and my button stash. Middle shelf has rolls of elastic, muslin scraps, and mask making supplies. Bottom shelf has fat quarters for that previously mentioned curtain project, more elastic, and a bowl of Petoskey stones! This section of pegboard is home to my block printing supplies. The closed cabinets hide a mess of random stuff and more filming equipment.

Artwork by my mom!

This is another quilt project and it lives in this IKEA drawer thing. Whenever I cut out a woven garment project, I also cut out as many 2 x 2 inch squares as I can to reduce waste. Here’s an idea of what it’ll look like once it’s assembled.

Thrifted artwork.

I love this space and I’m super grateful to have it. Anything else you want to see? Have any questions? Let me know in the comments!

Digital Organization

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I’m a pretty organized person. When it comes to physical things like my home and classroom, have I got systems. But when it comes to digital stuff, I’m just okay. I know which PDF sewing patterns I own and when I’m inspired to sew a pattern, I use my sketchbook to plan most of it out. But I was lacking in a system for collecting inspiration.

Instagram lets you save posts and organize them with collections, but you can only access those through the app. I’ve had a Pinterest account since it first came out, but it felt a little limited in what it could do (and the ads are annoying). Then a couple of days ago I realized Pinterest added a “Sections” feature to its boards and I ended up spending my Friday night re-organizing my whole account.

Since I’d had this account for years, it had quite a few pins that were no longer my style and entire boards that just didn’t make sense for how I wanted to use it now. As far as my making-related boards go, I pared things down to the following categories:

2018 Make Plans – I’m going to make a board for each year of the patterns I want to make (sewing and knitting). It’s divided into sections by pattern and will include RTW inspiration as well as others’ makes.

Fabric + Fabric Inspiration – This board has links to fabric I’d like to purchase (or just look at because they’re pretty) and a section of surface design inspiration for future blocking printing projects. Or if I ever figure out Adobe Creative Suite, my own fabric designs.

Knitting Patterns – This board consists of knitting patterns I don’t currently own, but might want to purchase in the future.

Sewing Patterns – This board also consists of patterns I don’t currently own, but might want to purchase in the future.

Fashion + Style – I’m quite excited about this board. I made sections for each type of garment. I’m planning to use this board to help my design process for my patternmaking class and for future making plans.

Fiber Arts – I also have an Art + Design board with media-based sections, but decided to make a separate Fiber Arts board. It includes weaving, punch needle/rug hooking, and quilt inspiration.

Sewing Tutorials – This board is a collection of links that help me sew french inseam pockets, bind a quilt, thread my serger, and etc.

All of my boards are linked if you’re inclined to check them out. How do you organize your inspiration and plan projects?