Organizing your sewing room

Re: Re: Organizing your sewing room "Is what you call a torchiere what I'd call an uplighter? I have one in the sewing room - a big 250 watter - and it's doing just what you suggested," One word of warning. I have a new sewing room because the torchiere light I was using with a 250W bulb burned down the old one. Then I found out the fire code in this country has banned these fixtures. I had 10 ft plaster ceilings but they still combusted.

the light is used for more than 5-6 hours, all it took to ignite the ceiling and walls of my 23 x 15 foot room. Check the temp on that light sometime and you will be surprised at how hot it gets. One Firefighter told me they have fried bacon on them as a demonstration. I took 9 minutes for the meat to cook and start to burn and this was on a fixture with the saftey grid.

snip

The only torchiere/uplighter lamp we have left takes weird circular florescent bulbs. It does not heat up the room.

liz young

Rose said,

Rose, I found the 4 shelf for $19.97 and the 5 shelf was about $28 at Wal-Mart. I bought one 5 shelf and two 4 shelf units. I'm vertically challenged, so the 5 shelf was a little too high :) I've already filled these up and need to buy one, maybe two more. My husband is also very impressed with them.

organizational

You are very welcome!

Another good idea. My sewing books and magazines have become scattered throughout the house and are hard to track down.

I usually order the precut stabilizer. But if I'm running short on a particular type I run to the fabric store and pick up several yards. So, there's a combination of many different kinds and sizes. There's also the scraps of stabilizer, which I've been putting in labeled plastic baggies. I finally decided to use an underbed storage container and lay the stabilizer flat in that. This long container is under the sewing table, as well as plastic pull drawer type thingies that hold all my hoops, sewing machine manuals, embroidery design cards, etc. I'm trying to think of a better way to store the stabilizer, but that's going to do it for now. I like your idea and may go with that.

I'm almost finished! There's an old china hutch to clean out and I plan to store most of my art supplies in that.

I just vacuumed and am waiting on DH to scold me for getting the long threads wrapped around the brushes on the vac. Last week, he took it apart and removed all the thread after I started smelling this burning odor. He says electronics run away screaming when I walk into the room.

Cindy

Re: Organizing your sewing room Group: alt.sewing Date: Sat, Feb 7, 2004, 7:15pm (EST+5) From: snipped-for-privacy@fenris.net (Elizabeth=A0Young) snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net wrote: Hanna wrote: Re: Re: Organizing your sewing room "Is what you call a torchiere what I'd call an uplighter? I have one in the sewing room - a big 250 watter - and it's doing just what you suggested," One word of warning. I have a new sewing room because the torchiere light I was using with a 250W bulb burned down the old one. Then I found out the fire code in this country has banned these fixtures. I had 10 ft plaster ceilings but they still combusted.

Thanks for posting this warning, Hannah. I was going to post about how dangerous those light fixtures are. snip These lamps make any ac system work twice as hard, too. The only torchiere/uplighter lamp we have left takes weird circular florescent bulbs. It does not heat up the room. liz young

The bulb in mine was incandescent 250w. I had noticed a ring on the ceiling about a week earlier and moved the lamp, and my son had suggested getting it out of the corner of the room. It was almost 3 feet from the wall. This is an older house and we had re done the ceiling plaster and all about 5 years before the fire. If anything the lamp was over 5 ft from the ceiling. It is just too intense. They are banned here except for the ones with a flourescent bulb and now insurance companies will NOT pay if one of these is involved in fire. Even the second hand stores just throw them out because to re-sell is an offence. Yes it was a total loss, machines and all. Most have been replaced but the treasures will never be. I had a lot of sewing collectibles in the room. Thankfully the wall between the sewing room and kitchen was only charred. Smoke and water damage was extensive.

Thanks for the warnings. This lamp takes a long-life twisty fluorescent, but the old halogen one we had downstairs used to give off so much heat, it also killed bees that flew over it even from several inches away. So in the end we stopped using it, as the smell of burning bee became overpowering in summer. We were careful never to leave it on when we weren't actually using it (too expensive) but I never thought of a fire risk - yikes.

:) Trish

What an interesting discussion. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the torchiere.

I wasn't planning to use either a 250 watt bulb or a halogen bulb, as we have an older home--which includes an older electrical system. And I hate halogen lighting, frankly. It gets too hot, and my new room is small enough that that would make a difference.

Actually, I put a table lamp in there, and put it up high, which has made a considerable difference. There are now enough additional task lights in the room that, unless I'm doing hand work on black, it's pretty well-lit. Karen Maslowski in Cincinnati

Cindy,

In my opinion, that is what the beater bar (brush) is there for on the vacuum cleaner - to collect all the threads on the floor, dropped hair (mine is waist length) and cat hair......

All you need to do (without involving your DH) is to (a) turn off the vacuum and DICONNECT from the power, then (b) lay the vacuum on the floor and turn it over so you can look at thatr brush (c) using some old scissors cut through the threads along the brush, and then pull them all out.

Removing the bottom cover of the vacuum can make the job go easier - just look for 3 or 4 screws holding it on, whip these out, and clean out the grunge.

It is *amazing* how much suction increase you get if you (i) clean all the cack out the bottom of the vacuum (ii) clean out the brush, (iii)make sure all the suction paths are clear and (iv) clean out the filters of replace them!

Go on - try it! You'll think you'll have a new vacuum cleaner!

Sarah (can you tell I clean my vacuuum cleaner brush out at least once a month?)

Sarah says,

It's funny you should talk about that, cause that's precisely what DH did. (Removed the bottom of the cleaner and cut all the thread and removed the other gunk.) Actually, what caused the smoking was a piece of wire that I accidently hit while vacuuming under the bed :(

I should know better!!

Cindy in WV

OT Vacuum cleaners WAS Re: Organizing your sewing room Better option: buy a small industrial vac, ($25.00--$35.00), and keep it in the sewing room. No screws, no beater bars to clean, no bags to replace. Cea

Hi Cindy,

Oops! I've not managed to vacuum up wire yet! To be honest, sorting out your vacuum is really quite easy.

One word of warning - you really should clean your beater bar/brush out on a semi-regular basis. If it gets full of thread and hair, a number of nasty things can happen (1) reduded brush action (2) reduced suction (3) extra wear and tear on the motor caused by having to work harder and (4) if it all gets really hot, and that thread / hair gets caught in the wrong place - you could have a fire on your hands!

HTH, Sarah

Kate,

I'm with you on Yahoo. Can't get them to answer an email so I could consolidate my various usernames under one email address (subscribed initially while I was working overseas). I try to stay away from them.

They are also affiliated with my ISP, they want me to sign up with the ISP that logs onto me. No thanks, I still want to be in control thank you.

Pirate_Dave

Dave Cannell retorted :

did you-all miss the info on alt.binaries.pictures.crafts? If you ISP /newserver doesn't carry it, you can request it. Best of all, no login required.

Penny S

On my newsserver it's named alt.binaries.crafts.pictures .

Ann Knight retorted :

how odd, are there two different ones?

PS

There are two different ones listed on my ISP's news server.

Sarah

--=20

There are two different ones listed on my ISP's news server.

Correct. One is has much more traffic than the other. If anyone is interested, there is a Yahoo Group called SewingGiftsOnTime. Sewers plan/project their sewing activities and post the pictures when they are done for that month.

RLK retorted :

the whole point of this disscussion of a binary ng is that some folks are unable to log onto yahoo, some of us choose not to have to login to a group. A binary ng seems like the obvious choice to me.

Penny S