Organization Rocks!

Well, I intended to show the horrifying "before" pics of my quilting space, but it appears I've lost them. However, I can say that, after spending weeks cleaning and organizing, it's a thrill to be in that room now!

Here's the basic organizing scheme: small scraps in plastic bins, sorted by color; fat quarters in storage boxes; anything between a small scrap and a fat quarter rolled and tied and standing in a storage box; anything larger than a fat quarter made into a "mini bolt" (find out how to make your own mini bolts here!):

I've always folded and stacked my fabric on the shelves, and that was a huge pain because every time I pulled a piece out, everything on top of it got a little more disorganized. Now I can slide a "mini bolt" out and back in with no problem, plus I STILL get to see (most) of what I have available.

At some point I will move all that fabric into a closed-shelving system to protect it from sun damage, but for now I'm inspired by it, and it's not in direct sunlight so it should be ok for a little while.

Reconfiguring the Studio

This is my small sewing space; as you can see by the packages at the bottom of the pic, I have to squeeze in a Sweet 16 mid-arm machine in a 36x30 ft. table:



I did have a little extra time to move everything around, since UPS managed to damage the table for my Sweet 16 and I have to wait for a new one. I can't imagine how that happened; even if they can't read "this side up," you would think the pointing arrows might give them a clue:

My stash is stored in the wooden armoire and some of the drawers of the chests; things like interfacing and fusible and spray baste and transfer paper are stored in the tall shelving unit on the right; and WIPs and scraps and miscellaneous “stuff” is stored on the wire shelves.
So, I unloaded the wire shelves, moved them over to the left side (against the back side of the bookcases that face the tiny living room that’s left), added another wire shelving unit from another part of the house, and stacked all of my stash onto these units.



That’s all my fabric! Everything! (Ok, except for fabrics other than cotton, such as silk, sheers, wool, etc.) It’s not as much as I would have imagined, and I was a little worried about my sweetie expressing shock at all the fabric I had accumulated. She glanced at it and said, “oh that looks nice.” Woo hoo!

THEN, I moved everything all the WIPs into drawers, all the interfacing, etc. into the armoire, and all the scraps into the scrap bins in the bottom of the armoire.

That leaves this space available for the Sweet 16 (once we carry that heavy tall shelving unit into another room):



And aside from getting my Sweet 16 (woo hoo #2!), the best part about fondling all that fabric—and getting it out in the open and right in front of me—inspires me to do lots of amazing things.




Gotta go work!

Odds and Ends

Playing catch-up, both with projects and blogging . . .

The shelves are repaired and refilled!

Notice the absence of books . . . those are now stored closer to the floor so that they next time they hurl themselves down they won’t have as far to fall.

Here’s some fabric I dyed last week using the “color parfait” method from Ann Johnston’s Color by Accident (can you believe all these pieces were dyed in the same bucket at the same time?):

And two new weekly 6x6” journal squares; the first one is for the week of Oct. 25-31. This was the week before I went back to work, and so this square reflects anxiety and a lot of other complex emotions I was feeling at the time, as well as feeling a little frantic to get my projects wrapped up while I still had time:

The next journal square is from last week, and is influenced by my efforts to find balance and peace of mind, stay calm and unruffled, and develop a routine, as well as to work mindfully and carefully (i.e., with care):

I finished adding the border to my latest quilt top tonight, and I started cleaning off my worktable in preparation for the next project. I ran across a stack of WIPs, so I’m going to try to work on some of those—and finish a crocheted Christmas afghan I’m working—before starting anything else.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I’ll be making my usual sweet potatoes, along with cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes, and a marbled butterscotch bundt cake, then hauling it all over to my daughter’s house. It probably would have made more sense for her just to bring the turkey here, but she was excited about having us come to her place, so there you are.

Weekly Journal Squares & A Quilt Top

A couple of new 6x6" weekly journal squares; the first is a catch-up from the week we were in Florida for vacation. I created a fish appliqué from hand-dyed fabric and metallic and rayon threads, then sewed it onto a background of commercial fabric enhanced with Dynaflow paints and FMQed with circles:

Next is this week’s journal square. Influences: trying to achieve balance between work and home activities, and my aspiration to remain calm and Zen-like regardless of what my back-to-work experience entailed; beautiful sunny and cool days, and that sense that this might be the final breath of fall before winter sets in (sure enough, the weather has now turned gray and overcast, and we have a cold front coming in); and most importantly, reconnecting with my long-time friend Karla, who years ago introduced me to ceramics (the cup-like vase is in honor of you, Karla!):

The flower is white-on-white fabric painted with Tsukineko inks and appliquéd onto the background; the vase is appliquéd over that. I added some free-motion zigzag stitching around the flower, to create the stem, and around the vase, then some FM straight-stitching on the vase. Then I used some fabric markers to add some varied colors to the vase.

I thought I was caught up with the weekly journal squares, but when I was looking at my log I realized I missed one a couple of weeks ago. I still have my notes from that week, so I'll have to catch up as soon as I have a chance.

The craft room “rebuilding” is going slowly; my formerly-clean worktable is now a wreck, since I had to have a place for most of what was on the shelves (except for the books, which I moved permanently to the bookcases in the living room):

My sweetie did a great job of removing the shelf brackets, repairing the sheet rock, and adding new texture:

and then painting (how awesome is it that we still had the original paint for this room, and that it was still GOOD after 8 years?):

Fortunately, my sewing room is still intact, so I’ve almost finished another quilt top. Once I add the borders, this one will be queen-sized, and will go on our bed:

I’m having a hard time getting the colors correct in the pics of this quilt top, so I’m including pics of the Amy Butler fabric I used:

Whew. I guess that’s enough blogging for now, especially since I justified sitting at the computer all this time by catching up on this week’s episode of “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!” Now that it’s over, I’m off to find something else to do before my weekend is completely gone.

EARTHQUAKE!!!???

Remember a couple of months ago when I spent 3 days cleaning and organizing my craft room? It’s been a real pleasure being able to walk in and work whenever the mood struck, without having to clean up first. So this morning I got up extra early, intending to paint some fabric.

As a reminder, here’s a pic I took a couple of months ago:

See those two shelves above my work table? Here they are this morning:

Wait, where are they? OH! There they are! On the freaking floor!

When I walked in and saw this, the first thing my befuddled brain thought was, “I’ve been robbed!” Then I realized that, as valuable as all my “stuff” is, that’s probably not what happened.

Earthquake? I wondered; but no, it’s pretty rare to experience one of those here in Central Texas. I guess that the wall anchors just finally gave out after 5 years of holding up tons of books, equipment, and supplies.

Once I started digging through the mess, I realized that, fortunately, there were very few casualties; a plastic container holding my markers:

and the latch on a case:

And some debris (vermiculite from a crock pot that was sitting on the top shelf):

But all in all, it could have been much worse.

Needless to say, I didn’t get any fabric painted.

Craft Spaces Tour, Part Two

Yesterday I said I would post pics of my quilting space, so here they are. My quilting room is our former dining room. The front entry door opens onto a large combination living and dining room, so when I decided to take over the dining half, we put bookshelves up to divide the room and hide “the mess.” Our guests still have to walk past the quilting room, but it’s not the first thing they see when they walk in the door.

I’m really happy to have a whole room for my quilting endeavors, but I miss our pretty living and dining room combination. It’s a classic case of beauty v. practicality, and it really is silly to have a formal dining room that we never used. Otoh, I really dislike the bookshelves that divide the living room from the quilting room; they’re big and dark and make the living part of the room seem even smaller and cut off, so I’m still working on a more aesthetic solution to the problem.

At any rate, here’s the view of quilting room after entering the front door and passing the bookshelves (note the entire bookcase filled with quilting and craft books and magazines; I TOLD you I had too much stuff):

The sewing table is made from four inexpensive dressers from IKEA, covered with a 4’x8’ piece of painted and sanded plywood. The dressers each have 3 drawers, so I have tons of storage space for fabric, thread, etc. In fact, most of my fabric is in these drawers, divided by type (commercial/printed, batiks, hand-dyes, sheers, painted, etc.) and sorted by color.

Large pieces of fabric, along with a bin for scraps, are stored in an old armoire:

The bins on the floor are just temporary and need to be relocated. They used to hold fabric until my sweetie made the nifty sewing table. The bags and boxes under the table are also temporary :-) The wood strips on the floor will eventually be used under the table to form a frame and drop the sewing machine down level with the tabletop.

The tabletop is not usually this cluttered, but when I cleaned the craft room I moved anything sewing related into this room and set it on the table (and, I’m in the middle of several small projects). In fact, here’s a better shot of the table I took a few weeks ago, when I cleaned it off in order to create a quilt sandwich:

My “pressing space” (currently an ironing board) is the next project I want to tackle. I want to buy or build some low shelves or, ideally, metal frames and baskets, if there’s enough room, then lay a pressing board across the top.

We covered the laminate floor with those spongy tiles from Sam’s (they’re colored blue, red, and yellow on the opposite side, but I like the black). These have been great for both protecting the floor and giving me a little cushion to walk and stand on.

Moving to the right, here’s my design wall, which, as you can tell, is too small (is it EVER big enough?):

I just put this pic in to show off the quilt top I’m currently working on :-)

Finally, here’s a view of my sewing space from the center of the house:

I’ve taken advantage of the backs of the bookcases (and lightened up the darkness a little) by covering them with a flannel-backed plastic tablecloth that I cut in two and now use as additional design-wall spaces.

So, that concludes the tour; I hope you’ve enjoyed it!

There’s a Floor in My Craft Room!

Whew—I’m beat. I spent the last three days cleaning and reorganizing my craft room. It’s the most energy I’ve expended since before I got sick!

Now, I know that people love “before” and “after” pictures, but I have to tell you: I am SO embarrassed by the (previous) state of my craft room that I decided not to take “before” pics. Let me sum it up in words: I literally could not see the floor or any flat surface. Everything was covered with piles of projects, craft supplies. scraps, paper, brushes, pens, and bags and bags of stuff I had bought and never put up (I would literally open the door, throw the stuff in, and close the door before I had to look at the room).

Clearly, what I had was a mess of a storage room, rather than a creative place to work. One reason I’m so embarrassed about this is because I’m so blessed to have this room all to myself, and to have more craft supplies than I’ll probably ever be able to use in my lifetime. All of that was being wasted and unused because this room was such a mess.

So, with very little money and a whole lot of work, I tackled the mess and, once I got rolling, just kept going until it was done (mostly—I still have some shelves that need to be reorganized and straightened up).

One of the problems I have with organizing is that I need to be able to see my stuff; not only does visibility help with creativity, but I don’t forget that I have things until they go bad (paints, for example) or until I go buy duplicates (tools and pens! most people can’t find one; I’m inundated with them!).

Here’s the view of my craft room from the entry door:

In the foreground is my 4’x4’ worktable that my sweetie built me. It sits in the center of the room. I LOVE it, but it can hold A LOT of junk if I’m not vigilant about cleaning up after myself. One of my favorite storage ideas is on the back wall. We had put pegboard up, so I got some long hooks that stuck straight out, laid little shelves over them, then put all my little stuff (beads, shells, glass gobs, buttons, charms, etc.) into canning jars and set them on the shelves. I love that I can see all that stuff now that it’s not stuck in drawers.

Moving clockwise, here’s the shelving unit that holds acrylic paints, brushes, foam stamps, and, on the bottom two shelves, all my fabric dyeing supplies:

Continuing to the right, there’s a worktable against the wall (also built by my sweetie) with shelves above it:

I bought that bar and the yellow cups that hang from it in the kitchen section at IKEA; the whole thing cost about $12. I also got the magnetic bar and magnetized metal canisters at IKEA (to the right of the clock). I already had the small white shelf units on the wall, but I cleaned those up. I bought the clear plastic “shoeboxes” on the shelf above the worktable at Home Depot for $.99 each. I need to do a little more work on straightening up the pegboard to the right.

Here’s a pic of the room looking back toward the door:

That over-the-door white shelving system has been wonderful for holding all kinds of things were I can see them.

Here’s another new addition (or a combination of old and new):

I needed something for all my paper—scrapbooking paper, painted paper towels, paper I use to make journals, cardstock, etc. This little unit is perfect for that. Those bottom storage units are from IKEA. The frames were very cheap but sturdy, and the metal baskets were $3 each. The plastic drawers were a little more. We bought two units and my sweetie cut boards to go on top to create a flat surface. I already had the top plastic units; before, they sat on the floor, so we just moved them up. If you can’t go out, go up, right?

For some people, the “clean” version of my craft room is probably what they would consider a mess, but I am THRILLED that there’s nothing on the floor (except under the table and the workbench, which is just added storage space, IMHO), that everything has a place, and that I have two work surfaces that are clean and ready for projects.

Now, I know some of you are probably wondering, “where’s the sewing machine and all the fabric???” Fortunately (?), I have a whole OTHER room for my quilting interests. I’ll show pictures of that tomorrow even though (fair warning!) it’s not very clean :-)

What's On My Design Wall

Katy on the Quiltart list asked what was on our design walls. My first thought was, "which one?"

So far, people have shown clean and neat design boards with one lovely WIP hanging on them.

I, otoh, am embarrassed to admit that

1) I use my design walls (3 of them) as catch-alls for WIPs, small finished pieces that I don't know what to do with, pieces of fabric I want to do something with (someday), and assorted other bits and pieces. It makes it hard to actually design anything on them. And

2) I have a bajillion projects going on at any one time, because I never know what I might want to work on (and because, I'll admit it, I'm much better at starting projects than finishing them).


My primary design wall, in my sewing studio, has so much stuff on it that I've taken to pinning pieces on top of other pieces.

I guess it's time to finish some of these, put some pieces away (or hang them throughout the house, or give them away), and generally clean up.

Making a Nest

There's been a lot of talk on the quiltart list about tidying up, reorganizing, cleaning out the stash, etc. This might explain why, even though I was exhausted Saturday night after sweating and selling glass all day, all I could think and dream about was cleaning my craft room. I got up early Sunday and proceeded to do just that. But it wasn't just cleaning the room needed, since I was out of space. I needed more shelves, better organization, more places to put my STUFF. And as you can see, I have a ton of stuff.

All of my glass supplies have always been in the garage, which is now my workshop (even though my DP occasionally still MISTAKES it for a garage and stores bug killer there, or plugs her electric edger in, or uses the compressor to air up a tire. I'm a patient person, so I try not to complain. Plus, she doesn't say a word when I haul home more glass, fabric, paints, and books, so it seems like an even trade).

The one area of glass-making that managed to make it into my craft room has been the torch, because I thought I could get away with running that in the house, and thus getting the benefit of air conditioning while working inches away from a flame hot enough to melt glass. My lovely DP built me the big, beautiful, tiled table for the torch and my lampworking supplies. Unfortunately, my torch uses a mixture of oxygen and propane, and I could always smell propane in the house after lampworking. I've decided to relocate it to the glass workshop (once I clean and reorganize and make enough space for it out there; gosh, does it ever end?). The good news is, this frees up my big beautiful table for all sorts of other projects. The only other workspace in the room is the countertop-desk against the wall (which my lovely DP also built), and it's typically buried under piles of paper, paints, brushes, and other crafty stuff.

Now, I know seasoned quilters are thinking, "but where's all the fabric?" Well, remember, I've only been quilting for a couple of months now. I only have 50 or so fat quarters, and another 15 or 20 yards of assorted batiks, backing fabrics, and painted whole cloths. Those are all stuffed in the little 4-drawer plastic chests. It's not a long-term solution, of course, because I already know that in another few months I'll have fabric piled and stacked and stashed everywhere. But it works for now, and it gives my lovely DH the comforting impression that I'm not going nuts buying fabric I might not use for years (if ever). I like to be considerate and provide her with a little hope, especially when she starts eyeing all my stuff and I begin to see the dollar signs whirling in the little calculator in her head as she ponders how we'll live when we're old and broke. I like to remind her at those times that even if we have to eat cat food, at least it will be served on beautiful fused-glass dinnerware, atop fabulous quilted placemats. For some reason, that doesn't seem to reassure her.

At any rate, it may not look as if my craft room is clean, but I can see the floor and two work surfaces. That's beyond clean--it's close to miraculous. Oh, and don't worry--I don't have to make space for the sewing machine in this room. We weren't using the dining room anyway . . . and if occasionally my DP gets confused and tries to eat in there, I'll pull out the fused-glass dinnerware and the quilted placemats, and I won't say a word.