The Real Studio Tour -Week 3 - The Sewing Room

This is week 3 of the Real Studio Tour where we show our studios. Just as they are without cleaning and sprucing them up. 
Is my sewing room a STUDIO? Well................ sure, why not!
I have to be honest; I did a little bit of cleaning up the other day when I finished up some pillowcase gifts for my 3 youngest great grandsons. I needed  space to work.

 This is a layout of my 10 x 11.5 room that I worked out in Electric Quilt. Next to it is a shot from my doorway looking toward the window. Using EQ has certainly saved me a lot of work moving furniture only to find it doesn't fit.


Moving around the room to the right this first shot is what is behind my door. I keep some flannel covered design boards there with cutting mats clipped to them. It works well for keeping them safe. The next view  shows  the open door with my bookcase next to it and my Lifetime adjustable height folding table  next to it. The table  blocks the lower shelves on the bookcase but the table is light and easy to move. On top or the table there is a roll of bubble wrap from a package I just received. Under the table is a box of gifts I have to wrap and a rolling chair with a quilt on it that I have been hand quilting for years  (which I am ignoring at present).  Right next to the bookcase is my closet with metal shelves on one side and wall hangings and small quilts hanging on the half of the closet rod that I had to leave in the closet. Plastic see through boxes hold my fabric stash which doesn't amount to much any more. I do not have many large pieces of yardage, mostly smaller pieces and lots of scraps. My goal a few years ago was to whittle my stash down to nothing and only buy what I needed for each project. I have  modified that goal but I was still able to whittle  down the  amount of fabric to about half or what it was.
Moving around the corner to the next wall is a tall narrow chest that we bought at an estate sale when we were looking for a chest that would fit in our bedroom next to the window and still  leave space for the closet door to open.  I ended up with this chest recently when Jack took one of my folding tables for his desk (in the bedroom).
 I have a bulletin board above the tall chest and some of my little quilted pieces.Next is the little  blanket chest in front of the window. It is full of odds and ends  and is always piled up with stuff; today it holds pillows that I made from some excess pieces of fluffy poly batting that we were going to throw out from our  quilt closet at church. There is also a box of Christmas boxes and bags, none of them the sizes that I need now. The last shot is the other side of the window with my other bulletin board. It has a license plate that belonged to a friend and was given to me on a birthday. The little  Twister quilt was made by a friend from a zip lock bag of squares that I got rid of put together as a prize for last years annual Diva Jellyroll Race.

Once again moving around the corner, this is my computer desk and the wall above it. When we moved into this apartment from the one down the hall I stuck those quilted  pieces up on the wall with thumbtacks as a temporary solution. I intended to have Jack put Homasote or insulation boards on that whole wall so I could pin things to it and change them. That never happened and those two things are tacked up are there just as they were. Next to my computer desk is another countertop that I use for cutting, ironing, sorting etc. I have shelves above them that I original planned for placing my scissors, cutters, etc. while I was using them so they would stay easy to find. It is usually stacked up with other stuff. You can see where I hang my rulers. I just put  finishing nails right in the wall and it works well. I worked out the placement for the rulers in EQ

These lower two shots show my desk from below. You can see the little chests that my counter tops rest on and the plastic drawer units below. When Jack took my other table we replaced it with the second counter top and now I can fit things underneath that couldn't go under the table because of the corner folding braces. In back of my overflowing waste basket is one of my sewing machine totes. It is packed with zip lock bags of scraps sorted by color.. Under the shelf above the counter top, Jack put on of those under cabinet florescent stick lights and it is lights up that area well.

Below is my last wall with my design wall  that is covered with queen size Warm and Natural batting. It is stapled to a wooden lath strip that is secured with 3 nails at the top and thumbtacks at the sides and bottom to hold it taut. This wall was supposed to have insulation board on the wall covered with batting but that didn't happen either.

Whatever I am working on goes up on the wall;  between times I keep up an assortment of things that I am thinking about or just want to look at. On the wall right now are my Anvil blocks from the Friendship group and the red work Santa I just finished. In the center picture you see my Janome Gem lightweight traveling machine sitting in place of my Bernina. The Bernina which just seized up 2 days ago. I packed it up and it is ready to go to the Bernina doctor but not probably not till after Christmas. It is not too close by and the weather will  have to be good as well before we take it.

So........ that takes us around the room and back to the door. You can see by the assortment of old lamps every where that I do not have really good lighting. There is no overhead light and there are only 3 outlets; I use some heavy duty power strips. One of the down sides to this apartment is that we do not have any really good way to remedy my lighting problems.

Even though it is small

and it is not perfect 

and I have to move things around

 for different quilting tasks; 

  I feel fortunate to have a designated space for sewing. 

 

The Real Studio Tour - Storage

The Real Studio Tour week 2 is about our favorite storage systems. Mine is see through plastic; I use shoe boxes, the next size which is about 16L x 11Wx 6 or 7H, and the larger size 17 x 28 x  I like that size because it will fit under my bed or on the metal shelf unit. I have one large box to hold to hold the whole assortment of  my black and white fabrics and one for my odd leftover blocks.(I should probably make a quilt or two or something useful with those blocks). I like the older Sterilite boxes because they do not have so much taper and they are the ones that my metal shelves were adjusted to fit.

I have more of these with the white tops than I do the older Sterilite boxes which I really like better because they do not have that wide lip on the top to snap on the lid. These take up a little more space and are a little taller so they are a tight fit on my metal shelves, which were adjusted to fit three of the older boxes side by side. I hate to stack things on top of each other as I am less likely to put them back on the shelves.
 I like to organize smaller things in zip lock bags inside the boxes. Here  I have rolled  "Layer cake" size squares around a cardboard tube to keep them organized in this box of cut squares. You can see the wide lip on  this box compared to the small lip on the box on the right.


I recently acquired two 9 inch wide 4 drawer units from a friend who didn't need them and I use them to store all my tools. I liked them so well I added another wider one with wheels for all my thread and things that I use when I am sewing on the  machine.



I found some stackable boxes for thread that so far work out very well and fit nicely in the drawers. The center row is higher which makes a grove in the bottom and the lid is higher above it so that they stack without sliding around. I have pushed it to the left  a few inches for the photo to show how they fit together. I would buy more of these to replace some of my other thread containers but I am putting all purchases on hold. I plan on changing some things in a few months and it is my hope that I will be able to have all of the same kinds of boxes and shelves for the things that are stored together. I have a lot of stuff that would not be missed if it was gone. I believe that everything should have a place (even if I don't always have everything in it's place) and I find I no longer have a place for everything.

Check out the other storage ideas here. I already have a good idea about storage boxes from Lynn Taylor at the Patchery Menagerie and an idea from Vickie Walsh for a top to my drawer unit for my thread.