12 Days of Jennifer Paganelli Inspiration

I am excited to be Day 10 of 12 days of inspiration by Jennifer Paganelli! Seriously, we could go on forever on how Jennifer and her fabrics inspire us! Pictured above is my JP stash & I could come up with so many combinations using her fabrics. It's so distracting! I met Jennifer online through Flickr, I think. She had commented on something I made that had bits of her fabrics in it and I was blown away at her kindness. I soon discovered that her style was my style and we were fast friends. I love how she loves to mix color and pattern and everything she does is happy & colorful.

I designed my sewing room around her fabrics. Wait, that picture doesn't look lived in! See below for a true, working sewing room!

Anyway, you can see how much Jennifer inspires me. She is kind and generous to everyone and so supportive to the handmade community, I am truly amazed! For my inspiration piece, I decided I wanted to feature something I've been making lately. Mug rugs are not new items, but I really love finding colorful & artistic mugs and designing mugs rugs to match. They make great gifts as I don't think they have to match a person's home. They are a stand alone gift!  Here are some mugs I purchased from Anthropologie

and one from Cost Plus

And here are the mug rugs I made to match them

I used a West Indies print called Matilda and bordered it with Claudia and then Jane and made a binding out of Sally. All I need to do is pop some Starbucks Via packets or some tea bags and I have a cute gift set.

For this one I used Claudia in the center and then did a log cabin style around it in Dana, Maggie, Danielle, Matt's Tux, Nikki, Matilda and Velentina. The binding is Luca. I love how most of the fabric names are people's names! I still have 2 more mugs to match up, and I'm looking forward to it since there is only 7 days until Christmas! Yikes! The mug rugs take about a half hour if you're using scraps. The center square is approximately 3" & then I add 1 1/2 to 2 1/2" strips until I think it's done, around 8-9" finished size. Here is the list of bloggers and the days that they posted or will post:

December 09 Sew Pretty Dresses
December 10 Sweeter Than Cupcakes
December 11 Sweet Baby Jamie
December 12 Hickity Pickity  Handmade Dress Haven
December 13 Tabbo Designs 100 Billion Stars
December 14 Heavenlelgh Blessings Boutique
December 15 Scientific Seamstress
December 16 Sweet Baby Jamie
December 17 Hold It Right There
December 18 Sew Fun By Monique
December 19 Small Town Girls Clothier Marie Madeline Studio
December 20 Granny B's Clothesline Lilac Lane by Melissa Stramel

One Little Corner of My House

New throw and pillow for my bedroom couch

Carrie from Girls World Vibe curtain

entry into my sewing room from my bedroom

patchwork curtain on sewing room side

One thing leads to another in decorating, doesn't it?? We finished my sewing room addition about a year ago & have been undecided on the curtain I would put on the glass door going from my bedroom into the sewing room. Then came Girls World Vibe & I knew the Carrie fabric in either gold or brown would fit the bill from my bedroom side. I decided on the brown to contrast with the gold walls in my room. I added a small lumbar pillow with ball fringe to the couch to tie in the curtain. It's been really cold lately, so I've been wanting to make a minky throw for the couch in my bedroom. Do you see the chain reaction??? I finally got it together and used mostly chocolate and apple green with a tiny bit of pink and yellow with cream minky for the back. My Franciscan plates up to pull in more color and get 'stuff' on the walls! 

For the patchwork curtain, I originally thought of Carrie in the aqua, then, well maybe the brown. . . my husband said that having that door right next to the Wall of Wow called for a busy, colorful print, so I decided to use my fabric scraps that I have stored in baggies by size. I used 8x8, 6x8 & along the bottom 4x8. I LOVE how it came out, and it's like a quilt on a door. I think if I could write a book it would be called Living with Patchwork because anything I can do to make something made of multiple fabrics, I do it.  Now to do the other side of my room. . . and the lampshades... and my summer quilt that I hope will be using the Swoon pattern. . . stay tuned!

Please Read My Guest Post on Fabric Organization

You can read about how I organize my cut and uncut fabrics on this blog. Thank you Allison for asking me how I organize fabric! If you need to get your room or space organized, follow her blog as she will be posting about all aspects of craft room organization! She is also co~founder of seamedup another place you need to visit!

The Cutting Table and a Craft!

Voila! You have a message board!

Use 1.5" strips after you peel off sticky adhesive

start with a blank canvas

hot glue roofing nail to the back of a hexagon for hanging

I'm trying to get used to this new format on blogger and can't get the photos in the order I want them, but you get the general idea! Last fall I purchased this white board at Joann's and on both sides of the frame you can peel off a paper which reveals a sticky surface that you can apply things to. Naturally, I thought of fabric! I have a bag of 1.5" strips that I pulled from and just layered going down. On the reverse, I then peeled the back of that and stuck the fabric that was wrapped around to it and then used some packing tape to hold it. The green cardboard with the white board attached was trimmed so we don't see in then I used the package tape again to attach the white board to the fabric frame. I decided a cute hanger was in order, so I got a framing nail that has a large, flat head on it and hot glued one of my hexies to the head. Next, fuschia grosgrain ribbon was glued to the back and now I can keep track of the orders I'm working on that day, but a Bible verse or sentiment. Fun & functional!! I don't think I posted about my cutting table because I was waiting to make that as well as I wanted to skirt that table. The drawers were originally underneath my daughter's bed for under bed storage under a trundle, minus the mattress. My husband made a shell to fit it and my MIL made the faux painted top. I skirted it because its just 2x4's for the legs and so I can store stuff under it. What kind of stuff? Flat rate mailing boxes, my supply of in stock blankets and a huge green garbage bag of all the little bags my fabric purchases come in. I recycle those when I package up someone's orders. The top drawer contains grosgrain ribbon, mailing tape, pinking shears and safety pins. Middle drawer is miscellaneous sewing notions and the bottom has ziploc bags with fabric squares for my made to order blankets. The storage drawers to the left have fabric designer names on them with a color so if I need red Tanya Whelan fabric in 8" squares, I have a drawer for that. I have many of those all around the sewing room that you will see on later posts. I love being ultra organized and try to keep all my blankets with the same size squares so that I can cut down on the organization. I keep my rulers, rotary cutters and Melissa's cute pincushion next to my cutting mat. The bin on top of the selvedge dresser has scraps cut into specific sizes where I will file them by color later. I hope to list in my shop a precut destash. I have 4x4, 4x6, 4x8, 6x6, 6x8 squares & rectangles as well as 1 1/2", 2 1/2" and 3 1/2" strips. If you are interested in  purchasing anything before I list it, email me at sewfunbymonique@gmail.com.

Whats Going On Wednesday

Here's whats going on today! Top pic is soon to be 56x64 random patch & minky blanket for Angie's mom for Christmas. I figured out the tray method works for this kind of project. As I've mentioned before I don't use a 'pattern', just lay out the fabric patches in a pleasing combo in the length & width needed. I set up the top row and left row and then fill in the middle. I need to organize by size and color so when the next patch is needed, I have in my mind which color & size & then I can easily find it with this method. It will be waaaaaay easier when I have more space in my new sewing rm~ which brings us to the bottom pic. The gold walls are my family room~ obviously not currently in use! The framed room next to it will be the exercize/utility room. My new sewing room will be on top of these rooms. They think the framing of that room will be Thurs/Fri, so I just can't wait! BTW, it was so cold last night with that roof off of the family room. Our bedrooms are upstairs, so at least we had a buffer from the cold. The furnace turned on at 2am, so my husband had to run into the garage last night and unplug it!!!! Not much sleep. :( Hopefully, the sheeting will go up today!

Sewing Rm Construction Day 1

I can't believe we are finally starting! In the picture above, you can see my master bedroom balcony that will soon be my sewing rm. Downstairs, the future excercize rm will meet up with the garage wall (next to gate) & my sewing rm upstairs will be 3 ft short of that due to city restrictions on setbacks! To make up for that, the room will stick out 3 ft going the other way (towards us in the pic) for a finished size of 14' deep by 19' wide~ woo hoo!! My current sewing rm is 10x10, and is actually only used for storing fabric and supplies. I am currently in our dining rm and we can't have anyone over for dinner because I have too much stuff to just move it for a few hours. I hope to move into my new sewing rm by the end of the year!

New Sewing Room!!

I am so excited because we are adding on a larger sewing room for me!! You can see the plans in the first pic labeled 'new sitting room' because its off the master. Notice it will be bigger than our bedroom! :) I will be painting the walls the second color on the color chip based around Jennifer Paganelli's Loopy Vintage blue. I am also going to incorporate pink & green. I'm excited because my whole house is a dark red, olive & wheat. This will be a fun, creative area where I can use brights & vintage finds that are in my closet with no place to go (yet!).

Under that is half of my fabric closet in my old sewing room, then my unused old sewing room & then my dining room turned sewing room that drives everyone in my house nuts! I have been reading 'Studios' by Cloth, Paper, Scissors & would like to get 'Where Women Create' to get some ideas. Also, I have been favoriting sewing room pics on flickr. So far my wish list includes:

*Wall of cubbies for fabric organization

*Cutting table to fit my large 70x40 cutting mat

*Large 2'x5' ironing board

*Some sort of rod to hang ironed fabrics over

*Sewing table oriented towards back of room to look out the window

*12x12 laminated floor tiles to act as another measurement tool for laying out quilts & bumpers

(originally it was going to be wood, but loved the idea I saw about using the floor as a measuring tool!)

*Desk area with my computer, printer, etc.

*Fleece covered movable design board

*Counter space around half of the room to spread out & work on multiple projects

Sooo, what are your favorite things in your sewing room that you think I could incorporate in my 14X19 room?? I would love to hear any and all. If you have a link to a well organized sewing room I would love to see that, too! We are starting in October, most likely. Can't wait!!!!