Showing posts with label organization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organization. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

WIP Wednesday 9-25-13

I'm sad to say that I have no #SelfishSewing to report for yesterday.  I didn't get any "me" time until after 8PM and when I finally did have time to myself I edited photos instead of sitting down at the sewing machine.  But I am happy to say that I went through all of my photos from 2012 and 2013 and discovered that I have photos of over 40 projects that haven't been blogged about.  I edited photos for ALL of these projects so hopefully there will be many many blog posts from me in the future.

In the meantime, going back to my WIP blog post from last week, I spent the remainder of last week organizing my sewing room.  It always ends up being a MUCH bigger task than I imagine it will be.

It went from this:




 to this:





Have you had the urge to organize anything lately?


***disclaimer: these photos do not represent the entirety of my sewing room.  To see photos of my whole sewing room check out this post

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

WIP Wednesday 9-18-13

If you saw my post from Monday you would know that I was almost done with my Japanese + and x quilt when I realized that I had messed up on the binding at one point and would have to go back and fix it.  Well, I finally got around to doing that yesterday, so now I'm happy to say that I'm 100% done with the quilt.  Of course, today of all days it's overcast outside so I'll have to take photos of the quilt later this week.


In the meantime the overcast weather seems to have put me into a cleaning and organizing mood because I've decided to re-organize my fabric storage.  Of course I have no before photos (I'm never that organized), but I do have a few photos of how it all looks mid-organizing.

These shelves are the shelves that inspired me to re-organize.  This space in my sewing room used to have a dresser that held all of my "other" fabric (all the non quilters cotton), but when we did the nursery we moved the dresser into the nursery and my sewing room got this cabinet that we found on the side of the road in our neighborhood.

Before the reorganization started the bottom two shelves looked like the way the bottom shelf does now, and the second shelf had a few large folds of quilters cotton cotton in it, and the top shelf housed all of my fat quarter stacks and precuts.  I've pretty much left the top shelf alone, but I put all of my "special collection" quilters cotton from my other fabric shelves on the second shelf where they can be a little more on display and are less likely to get dusty since they're behind glass.  I also put all of my garment making fabric onto boards to make mini bolts and put all of those on the third shelf down.  They go: linens, flannel, cotton, voile, corduroy, jersey knit.  I still haven't decided what I'm going to do about the bottom shelf.


Once I moved my "special collection" fabrics off of these shelves I cleared up quite a bit of room so I was able to add some new fabric I've bought recently (I'll show photos later), as well as give my stash a bit more wiggle room.  Before they had been so tightly jammed in there that you couldn't pull anything out without pulling a bunch of boards out at the same time.  While I was in the precess of moving the mini bolts around I decided to make it prettier by putting them in rainbow order (they were already grouped by color, but the colors were on the shelves in a random order based on how they could fit), and now they look much better.


Now it's a lot easier for me to see what fabrics are where, and hopefully it will inspire me to make more projects using my stash.

My goal for the rest of the week is to finish organizing that bottom shelf and to get started again on my WIP list from the beginning of the year.  I definitely got sidetracked a bit from the list and only got a few of the things off of the top of the list done.  Since many of the items are Christmas-themed items I really want to get back to them and get them done before the holiday season starts.

I also have a quilt to make for my sister's first baby who's due in December.  She's having a monster themed nursery in lilac and green and I think the Giggle and Squeak pattern from SUCH Designs is going to look great in the colors she chose.


What's on your WIP list this week?


Thursday, October 4, 2012

My Sewing Room + Birthday Fabric

Today I thought we'd take a look into my sewing room!

I'm super lucky to have my own space in our home for sewing.  When my husband and I moved a little over a year ago we knew that we would need 3 bedrooms: one for us, one for an office for him (he's in the process of writing his PhD dissertation so he's in there a lot) and one for a sewing room for me.  Last week was my 27th birthday and as a gift he made me a new sewing table, so I thought I'd show it off, and while I was at it, why not show off the while room?

My Sewing Room: Sewing Table and Ironing Dresser
New Sewing Table and Ironing Dresser

My Sewing Room: The Tables
Sewing Tables

The table on the right is the new table and it measures 8'x3', the table on the left was a graduation gift from my husband and it measures 7'x2'.  He hasn't had time to do it yet but the plan is for him to drop down my sewing machine into the table so it's flush with the tabletop.  That way it will be SO much easier to quilt on.

My Sewing Room: Dressform and Scraps
Tower with scraps, Supplies Shelf, and Dressform

My Sewing Room: Desk and Dressform
Desk and Dressform

My Sewing Room: Fabric Bookcase
Fabric bookshelf!

My Sewing Room: Peek into the Closet
A Peek into the Closet

I also got some yummy fabric!

New Fabric from Purl Soho Distribution Warehouse
Yummy Fabric from Purl Soho

30's Repro Fabric from Barbara
30's Reproduction fabric from Aunt Barbara

Fabric from Rebeckah
Fabric from Beckah

Cowl from Rebeckah
Knit Cowl from Beckah

The stash stack fabric wasn't for my birthday, but I thought I'd show it off anyways since it's so pretty.

September Stash Stack Club
September Stash Stack Fabric


name for blog

EDIT: Just in case you were wondering, the ballerina painting above my sewing tables was painted for me by my sister Jen when I graduated college, and the dog portrait over my dressform is a portrait of my dog Davey painted by my mom as a birthday present last year.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Welcome to my sewing room

Welcome to my new sewing room!

As I mentioned in my previous post,when Granite and I moved to Fullerton our new place was big enough for me to have my own craft room.  The room isn't huge, but it has windows on two walls and overlooks the backyard so I love it.

Arranging the room was SUPER difficult.  I have so many things that needed to fit that organizing the room was difficult to do, and many things got moved back and forth in the process.

Below is a picture I took from the doorway.  I painted the room a color called "sculptor's clay" that is a light grey with a slight purple tint, and I re-painted the sewing table laminate counter with special countertop paint in a color called "palest blue" which is just a pretty light blue color.  My color vision for the room was purples, blues, and greys.

One thing that Granite INSISTED be in my room was my romance novel bookshelf.  Yes, I'm sure none of you realized that I had so many romance novels, but my bookshelf is FULL, and I have many more I've lent out to people and many more on my Nook.
The painting in the corner was a graduation present from my sister when I graduated from college.  She took my love of purple and made an amazing textured painting, complete with a real tulle skirt for the ballerina. 

The shelves in the corner wasn't planned for.  It sits on top of a plastic bin of drawers that had originally been intended to hide in the closet but didn't fit, so it got put into the corner since nothing else really fit in there anyways.  The shelves had been in our old garage holding Granite's brewing supplies, but as I was trying to figure out a way to display some of my prettier fabrics (my non-Joanns fabrics) I remembered it and viola! it became mine.
 Taking pictures in the sewing room is a little tricky because of the mirrored closet.  For the closet I decided to split it in half conceptually.  On the right side of the closet is all of my papercrafting supplies.  I just got a new toy to go along with my Cricut machine and it's hiding in there somewhere.  I'll have to play with it a bit and then write about it in a future post.

My dress form sits prettily in the corner wearing my dachshund apron, and my garage sale find wall cupboard sits undecorated above it.  The only thing currently on it is my row of Timmys and a ball of twine.
My sewing table!  My sewing table was my graduation present from Granite for completing my MA.  It originally had an ugly sea foam marbled laminate top but I repainted it when we moved.  The sewing table was technically with us at the old house for about a month but I never got a picture of it there so I waited to post about it.  Originally this piece was a stand-alone kitchen counter from Ikea, with a removable counter that extended just a few inches on either side over the surface.  Granite found it on Craigslist and got it for me as a surprise while I was in San Diego.

To make it into the wonderful sewing table it is today he shifted the countertop so that all of the extra length extended to one side.  I chose to have the machine on the right side of the table so that quilts, etc. that I'm working on can rest on the length of the table while I sew.  He then traced the size of the base of my machine onto the countertop and cut.  He then took a piece of laminate he bought at the hardware store and drilled holes in four corners, and then aligned the board on top of the countertop and made four matching holes.  With the help of some long carriage bolts and wing nuts he attached the undertable, and I was able to just slip my sewing machine into the hole and adjust the wing nuts up and down until my sewing surface lay flush with the countertop.
It really came out wonderfully, and since the counter is high I don't bend over as much while I sew and so my back doesn't hurt as much, and since it's high I never have to worry about hitting my knees on the bolts that hang down.
I almost forgot to show you the serger! I noticed in the old house that my serger was rarely used since I always had to bring it out and set it up to do so, so I stole the sewing table from an old broken sewing machine and made myself a serger table.  It's unfinished, for some reason none of it's drawers have knobs or handles, so I need to find some. 

Also, this is NOT it's final resting place.  I think it will eventually end up next to the sewing table squeezed in there by the closet since this wall is destined for a daybed.  Yes, my sewing room is also the guest room.  We don't have a mattress yet for the daybed we purchased so I'm in no hurry to put it in, especially since it will make my room VERY cramped.
My desk.  Nothing fancy really.  Since I completed school and Granite is starting year three of his PhD I let him have my macbook pro and instead took the old window's desktop computer as my own.  This is it very de-cluttered.  I had originally hoped to have it open enough that I could do paper crafts on it but I doubt that will happen.  The huge screen is nice though for when I watch Netflix while I sew, so that's one perk.
And one final shot.  This is the view from my sewing table.  Across the yard that has nothing in it but grass, and a view of the hills.  It was kind of overcast when I took this picture, normally you can see the hills with the mountains behind them.  And when sunset happens, the view is amazing.

Well that's all folks.  Now that I've written about it it's time to put the sewing room to good use.  Feel free to stop by and sew with me sometime if you're local, I'd love to share the space.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

A Well Organized Craft Area...

Having a well organized craft room or craft area is extremely important to a serious crafter.  How else will you know where all of your stuff is?  Without a good organizational system you will be forever searching for where you put that scrap of flowered cotton or where you put your bag of buttons.
There are a lot of little tricks you can do to keep your stuff organized.  Above is a photo of a simple microwave cart that was adapted to have a large flat top to use as a cutting table.
Another trick is to use old furniture and update it to fit your needs.  Above is an example of a movable island being used as an art center.  You can get cork from craft and hobby stores and install it on the inside of the doors to create a nifty "idea center" to keep track of ideas you have.
Finally you can create interesting storage containers from things you might already have.  Here are old-fashioned straw dispensers used to keep ribbon organized.

And now that I've introduced you all to the importance of being organized, I'd like to introduce you all to my own crafting area...



...Yes, this is my shame.  I do have a good reason for why it looks like this though.  In addition to all the sewing I've been doing recently I also just made a birthday card for a friend this morning using my cricut machine.  So now it makes sense why I have a sewing machine, a serger, a cricut machine, a paper cutter, a box of scrap paper, pieces of cut paper, glue sticks and scissors, and a plate of donuts on my table.... well at least it kind of makes sense.

I'll post photos later of the card I made.  I'd hate to ruin the surprise of it if I posted the photos now and my friend who it's for saw the post before she received the card.

******************************************
Dez's birthday party tonight was tons of fun.  We played Taboo while we enjoyed our meal and Henry's Hat in Burbank.  Dez loved the card I made, so here it is for everyone else to enjoy. (the green plumb-bob in the corner represents her gift- we ordered her a copy of the Sims Medieval)
 Inside the card I added a little "kick stand" to hold the card open while it sits on the table. 

*All photos of well-organized craft room taken from www.allpeoplequilt.com
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