my studio

Today I'm going to give you a little tour of my studio....also known as my basement. We have been having lots of house showings, so we have to keep things pretty clean. It's not fun, but we are ALL getting good at cleaning. My kids included!

My craft area is not exempt from the constant cleaning. I took these photos today without tidying! It has never been cleaner...or larger, for that matter. My husband may or may not be giving me grief for the sprawl that is happening... :)  Oh! I should mention the tile floor. It's where I baste all my quilts. It's handy to have a built-in grid on the floor. It allows me to line up quilt fronts and pieced backs easily. Almost effortlessly!

Over spring break I spent some time folding my stash neatly. It was a great time to take stock of what I had and organize it. The colored bins on the top shelf are full of scraps. (The pattern for the boxes can be found in Sunday Morning Quilts.) There is plenty of depth on the shelves for books AND fabric. Sweet! I love dual function.

It was no surprise that pink and aqua are nearly tied for the tallest stacks. I have a lot of pink and aqua in my world, and my fabric stash is no exception! Look at that pitiful stack in the middle...I'm not sure if you can tell-it's purple and brown combined.

Lots of light fabrics...I could make another low volume quilt or two. The red is under control only because I use it ALL. the. Time. Not much orange, either, because I keep using it faster than I can stash it.

These stacks aren't allowed to mingle. I've got Sherbet Pips, and Ruby on the right. Chicopee and Flea Market Fancy in the middle. Batiks and a few solids on the left. (Yes! I have batiks!)

These are fabric pulls that I've done in the past and just can't break up. SOMEday I will have time to get to these.

I've been sewing on a 6' banquet table. It's not the prettiest, but it is so nice to have both machines set up all the time. I've been using both machines with regularity. Someday I'll have to do a run down on the strengths of each machine. I think that could be an entire post.

Here's my little computer station, complete with a pillow on the wall. (What? You don't store pillows on the wall at your house???)

Here's my cutting station, ironing stuff (which travels all over the room, as needed) and then my buffet. I've NEVER had the top cleaned off. It's hard to not pile crap on there. I'm still loving my thread storage! I bought the shelf at a thrift store a few years ago. It's quite handy and quite full! I love having every color of thread on hand. And notice the quilt overflow under the table. I don't quite know where else to stash quilts anymore. (The problems I have...I know....)

Here's where it gets embarrassing....

.....my closet. Ugh. I think I need to take a closet cleaning course. I can get organized to a point and this is the rest of the story. It makes me cringe. But then again, it's a closet, right? There is a lot of fabric stashed in there...pre-cuts, flat folds, stacks for charity quilts, and other misc stacks. Batting scraps, walnut shells, interfacing, vintage fabric, WIP's...what have you!

And my one last dirty little secret....

....my washtub. I've been considering blogging about this for a year or more. Maybe if I "out" myself, I can get working on it? :) I've completely filled it with zip loc bags full of scraps, each one representing a project. Last count I had 28 bags of goodies in there. I'm afraid I may have hit the point of no return in my scrap hoarding. Or else I can look at it as unlimited potential? Yeah, I think I'll go with the potential thing......

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my studio in it's current state. I'd love to hear what you think. (Please be gentle.) :)

I've dug back in my archives to show you what it used to look like.... Nov 2007. Jan 2008. July 2009. August 2011. Sept 2011. Jan 2012. April 2012. Here's how it looked when I first moved downstairs last fall. It's good to see progress!

Happy Monday to you!