Throwing a Little Light on the Subject

A little light on lighting, anyway. In my little studio I have a lovely window that faces South and another that faces West. Even though the westward one looks out on the covered porch, I have pretty good natural light during the day for general uses. Plus, there's a decent ceiling light in the middle of the 9x12 foot space.

But I work on many of my projects at night after the kids go to bed. Daylight is best for taking pictures for the blog and stuff. It would be such a boring blog without pictures. The other main time I work on my quilting and sewing is during our "Quiet Time". Blessed, wonderful, quiet time. Then there is fabulous light in my room unless the weather is awful or very sunny.

That southern exposure can be too bright, especially bouncing off my white, high gloss sewing table. Blinding! So the shade is pulled down and then the lighting isn't so great. Today I bought a 3 light floor lamp at Wally World (Walmart) for $25 and a few bulbs. I'm hoping it will help with the photography, at which my skills are awfully basic.

I'm not sure about the bulbs yet. I bought 2 'daylight' fluorescent bulbs and used an incandescent that I had sitting around the house. Bulbs have gotten spendy and I need to research what I need before buying any more.

I started this project at the shop, so I used the Janome 8200 that is on display. Nice machine!

I also worked on a project for the shop. The owner doesn't have an actual "open" sign. He prefers the subtle opening of the window blinds as his 'we're here!' statement. When I mention an open sign, he keeps talking about getting one of those programmable digital signs. I think they're kind of tacky unless it's an electronics store or something. So I made a quilted sign to use for now.

I got it halfway quilted, and realized I didn't do the blanket stitch inside the 'P'. I'll fix when I'm up at the shop next. I did finish quilting it. I decided I'd use clear thread to quilt over the decorative stitches I used to machine applique the letters. That didn't work so well with these satin-stitch ovals.

But it worked quite well with the star stitch below and the blanket stitch. I loved the blanket stitch I used on this machine. I echo quilted the letters in black and quilted the rest with a variation of the open-S shape design from Monday's post. More linear, with a swirl thrown in here and there.

If this was to be a wall hanging, with a child's name instead of OPEN, for instance, I would probably line the letters so the background fabric wouldn't show through. That means to use a double layer of fabric for the applique. Cutting the background fabric is an option, but I fused these letters, so that wasn't going to work here. But this is fine for the purpose.

Now that I have some better lighting, I'm looking forward to working on a new project and taking plenty of pictures! I am looking forward to some extra stitching time this weekend. How about you?