Here in Crete, we have two seasons, Winter and Summer. Yes, we get hints of Spring and Fall, but once either of those mellow seasons begins, the harsher one is ready to take over. This week, we are seeing Winter coming upon us quite a few weeks earlier than normal. I don’t like the cold, but I love the rainy season that marks my Winters here. I absolutely adore rain! The harder the better, and if thunder and lightning are involved, I am in complete bliss!
When the weather is gloomy, I love to be in my sewing room, preferably making quilts. Something about creating in my snug space while the weather rages outside is so comforting to me! I’ve made some of my best quilts during bad weather.
This year, now that my sewing room is ready for all the messes I can conceive of to create, I am anxious to get in there! Patchwork for making quilts. Long-arm quilting. Machine embroidery. There are so many things to choose from!
I used to not like to do machine embroidery during the storms because we lose power a lot. Now that I am fully immersed in embroidery quilting, which can be very in-depth and tricky, it would be a shame if the power went out in the middle of something. So, like my computer, I now have my embroidery machine plugged into a UPS (universal power supply). This gives me 10 minutes to get my stuff done or saved. Lovely!
The wind is blowing and storm clouds are in the sky, making the blue that is still visible even more vivid. The white, puffy clouds are standing their ground, trying to hold on for another week or so. This is a time when I hope that the dark wins out over the light!
It’s funny that I hope for the dark, rainy season. I suffer from SAD (seasonal affective disorder), which is when a person’s moods and health are affected by a lack of sunlight. If I spend too much time in the rest of the house, the weather does affect me. But, in the sewing room, all is right with the world.
When making quilts, it is important to have good light for choosing our colors and fabrics. There are full-spectrum lamps out there that do a good job of recreating natural light in the small scale. Unfortunately, I don’t work in the small scale, so I needed a whole-room solution. For a total of $20, I bought a cheap 4’ shop light and two fluorescent bulbs. I chose one cool tube (burns in a blue or pink hue) and one warm bulb (burns in a yellow hue). The mixture of these two bulbs creates a facsimile of natural light. And the 4’ shop light on my ceiling spreads this light all over my largish sewing room. Fantastic!
So, when the weather is gloomy outside, I can make an excuse for my health and escape to my sewing room for hours of blissful quilting and machine embroidery! No one bothers me for several hours, and I come out happy and peaceful.
So, rain, rain, don’t go away. Come again. Today!
Ohh…That's really very nice idea doing embroidery while raining outside. I saw very lovely designs of Custom Embroidery Digitizing and i think cloths with embroidery designs gives a royal look to one's personality.
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