Red is my favorite color!

I'm back!

What do you suppose my first project would be upon returning?  Sharing the great fabric finds I made while away... no.  Sharing pictures from the places I've been... um, maybe tomorrow.  Honey decided we should go to IKEA yesterday.  I have been wanting to update my sewing machine space, so we took a couple quick measurements and off we went.

Here is what I started with.  A student desk, made by my father, that I've been working at for... about twenty years (that's just the time I've been sewing at it, in high school I did my homework at that desk).  It isn't big, but it has worked for me for a long time.  The biggest drawback was that I had to come up with creative ways to hold the work on my left side.  In Montana, I slid the ironing board over next to the desk for that job.  Since moving to Maryland, I've kind of just been winging it, which means occasionally, the work was not as easy to move through the machine as it should have been.

Step one, move that desk to the other side of the sewing suite to make room for the new.  The moving about of stuff made me do a little organization, but just a little.  Piles and piles of fabric, batting and projects in various stages still litter the space.

At IKEA, we picked up two tabletops, six legs and a drawer unit.  The upside is that neither Honey or I yelled or cursed when the other smashed a finger, or two during assembly.  A pretty good IKEA project for that alone.

The unit where the machine sits only used two legs (in case you were worried that I couldn't do maths) with the other end supported by the drawer unit. Here it is, in its final configuration.  Plenty of room to work and for the work to be supported.

I couldn't resist taking another shot of it, isn't that red worktop amazing!  Have I mentioned that red is my favorite color?

Today, I put that new workspace to some use by piecing up the backing for a quilt.  A coworker of mine made a couple quilt tops and has commissioned me to quilt them.  I hope to have pictures of that in the next few days.  Along with any other crafty mischief I can manage to get myself into.