Quilts and Thoughts…

Posted By margaret on April 10, 2009

The inspiration hits, the design follows, fabric is auditioned, pieces are cut and sewn, a sandwich is created, the perfect stitching design is applied, and binding is secured; but where will it reside? Where will this work, created by loving hands, find a home? On a bed? On a stand? Folded on the couch? On the wall?

 Logical places, indeed. By my quilts are on the ceiling. That’s right, the ceiling!

Have you ever heard of a gambrel roof? This particular roof has three slopes on each side, the lower slope is steeper than the upper two slopes. When one stands inside an area close to the ceiling and the walls (an upstairs room), the angles force one to bend, rather than maintain an upright stance. While the gambrel roof has personality, it lacks for wall space.

Sometimes we just give up one thing for another. What is more important, personality or wall space? I chose personality, so much for the east and west walls of my upstairs studio.

 Since we built our own home, we could decide how many lights, outlets, switches, doors, windows…wait, lights and windows. I like plenty of light. When we were deciding how many lights a room needed and where to place the lights I walked around the room and squatted (like sitting in a chair to quilt) to determine if I would ever sit there to quilt. This would go on for some time until I figured out all the possibilities of furniture placement. The bedroom ended up with 15 recessed lights in the ceiling alone! We don’t have a single light switch in any room; we have bays of multiple switches. To this day, I still can’t go in a room and select the correct switch. It is trial and error for me.

 The studio has 27 lights on tracts, and eight sets of fluorescent lights which just about cover the flat part of the ceiling, but that wasn’t enough light. No, I needed lots of windows for the natural light to shine into the room.

 A studio of twenty-six by twenty was just enough space for four windows on the north and four windows on the south sides of the room. It was just perfect, or so I thought.

 Because the home is rustic, the studio closet is made from rough cedar planks and the closet doors looking like gates; little did I realize, at the time, that these gates would become my design wall. Once again, I had chosen personality over practicality.

 When furniture was placed in the room the lower angles of the gambrel roof were overtaken, which left the upper angles of the roof, ahh…perfect for quilts.

 I prefer working with small art quilts and the ceiling is just the right spot.

 One area of the studio has a ten-foot quilting frame with a Voyager 17 ready for quilting large quilts, but they won’t have the honor of adorning the ceiling.

 Opposite corners of the room are design areas, complete with computers. I design patterns, the website and blog on my MAC and my husband creates and produces many of the videos found on the website and all the movies on the blog from his PC.

 All and all, I’d say the view alone from this second floor studio more than makes up for my flawed idea of no wall space. Having the studio upstairs away from general traffic means I can follow the saying, “creative minds are rarely tidy”, as witnessed by this photo.

 If you would like to read more about my adventures of a quilter learning to be country, read the first blog entry, “A quilter’s introduction to country life”. Click on the February archives to locate the post.

The ceilings look a bit bare in these photos because some of the quilts travel with me to guild lectures and workshops.

Thanks for stopping by the studio and enjoy your “hop” to the next designer’s studio. Click on the design tour logo links to travel to another studio.

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