I Can't Believe I Organized the Whole Room!

I (Teri) have spent the last two weeks touching every single item that is housed in this room. Determination to conquer the chaos and tame the mess took control of me, and I'm happy to say it paid off nicely. Here is a tour of my new space, which I actually enjoy working in now!

Welcome!

I'm embarrassed to share this photo from January, when I made it a goal to clean and organize. Yes, it really WAS that bad!!

I started in the closet, refolding every piece of fabric to size and organizing by color and type of fabric: homespun, batik, wool, and cotton.

I had boxes of these scrumptious hand-dyed wools that needed room on the shelves!

I cut old cardboard bolts in half to put between the stacks of fabric for stability.

Plastic trays, 10"x16", were perfect for fat quarters, also arranged by color and stacked on top of each other.

The other side of the closet has baskets filled with ribbon, more wool, and packing materials. Scraps were sorted and put in the drawers on the right by color. 

Wool by color

Ribbon by type

A drawer of silk and velvet

And one of wired ribbon

I got this adorable clock a couple of years ago, but my room was in such disarray that I never got it hung. It is now ticking happily above the closets.

Past the closets, I have hooks to hang tote bags, a design wall, organization cubbies filled with various tools, and a new book shelf for patterns.

I flipped my sewing table around and put drawers beneath. One has files and cards, and the other is filled with threads and needles.

One of said drawers with threads assorted by type: wool, chenille, pearl #8 and #12

Beyond the sewing machine is the ironing board. The bookshelf houses resource books and teaching notebooks. And pictures of my kids...

My pegboard wall is filled with all kinds of threads and ribbons, arranged by size and kind of thread. The idea is that if I can see it, I am more likely to remember that I have it when creating a new design.

Ribbon racks and drawers of threads for selling in classes. Oh, and my Martelli light box is always on hand for prepping blocks to stitch. (Email us if you want to purchase one of these gems: we have some available!)

The dresser is filled with vintage linens, batting, flannel, and a few UFOs. It is topped with more cubbies filled with teaching tools.

Sitting at my machine, looking out the window. Rulers are arranged by size.

The cutting table is to the right of my sewing table. I used mugs to arrange my markers, pens/marking tools, pencils, and scissors.

I have used my Martelli cutting table so much that I thought I might have to replace the mat. Imagine my delight when I remembered that it is reversible, so I just had to flip the mat over and start afresh. 

On the end of the cutting table is a pegboard stand that my husband made, where I hang patterns and kits that are ready to be mailed. 

This table, which belonged to my grandmother, used to sit in the corner, piled with projects. Now it is in the middle of the room, where I can sit to make kits or fill orders, or just stitch. 

So if you are ever feeling overwhelmed and discouraged about cleaning out and organizing your sewing space, just picture my before and after—and you'll KNOW that it could probably be worse. Mine sure was awful!! 

But it feels wonderful now. 😃

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A Reminder!!

Registration for the Academy of Appliqué in Williamsburg, VA, opens on Monday at noon. That's Labor Day. September 7, 2020. We would love to build some houses with you!! For registration info, click here.

Village Wanderings: Homes

Chaos Contained...Sort of

When the “stay at home” directive came, one of my (Kara) first thoughts was that I would have lots of time to stitch. I also thought that it would be a good time to do some cleaning out and organizing in the house, but especially in my sewing room. The weeks went by, and I kept waiting for that overwhelming organizing desire to hit—it never did. What did hit was the fact that my sewing space was so dis-organized that I couldn’t spend all that stay-at-home time stitching, because my space was so disordered.

The mess on the shelves doesn't look that much different from the mess on floor!

With appliqué as our primary focus, I have a lot of fat quarters and small pieces. All those small parts were mixed in with yardage and every time I needed to pick colors, any type of arrangement I had would become a hot mess, because it was too hard to put things back in an orderly way. Thankfully, I found the Facebook Group, Clean and Organized Sewing Group, and I was inspired.

There were so many good ideas there, and one of the popular ways of storing one's fabric was by wrapping it on comic boards–cardboard pieces used to help preserve comic book collections. Those would work for my yardage, so I ordered them from the German Amazon, since I knew they would arrive here sooner than if I ordered from the US. Something got lost in translation, and I actually ordered comic book sleeves instead. So I sent those back, but the organizing mood was upon me, and I needed to run with it before it left! I checked back on the site, and found that many people folded their yardage around a ruler, so it was all the same size. I didn't have a ruler that would work that way, so I scoured the basement and found an unused cedar plank that was designed to use on a grill. It was the perfect size for the width and depth of my shelves, so I began to fold.

I figured out the depth I needed, folded the fabric to that size, folded it 

around the cedar plank, and then removed the plank.

Folding it all took about 3 days, but the size was perfect for the shelf.

The next issue to tackle was my smaller pieces. I have a lot of fat quarters of quilting cotton, but I also have a lot of silks and velvets. I had ordered some plastic bins, thinking they were shoe box size, but again, I mis-ordered. This time I kept them, because I thought I could make them work in spite of being larger than I thought. They worked perfectly for the silks, velvets, and reproduction fabrics, and they fit two on top of one another with a little shelf adjustment.

The top half of the shelf before the yardage had been folded.

Since I'd already had two semi-failures in ordering storage solutions, I decided to try and use what I had. I had always saved clementine crates and used them not just for sewing storage, but for storing household items as well. If I folded the fat quarters and smaller pieces a certain way, I could fit two in a clementine crate side by side. Scouring the house, I gathered all the crates I could find, dumping what was in them into another container. I might have left some other disorganization in my wake, but now I had a plan for taming my fat quarter frenzy.

I need to purchase another shelf to maximize this space, 

but it works for now!

In a perfect world, my clementine crates would be all be painted a lovely teal or soft grey, but if any future stitching was to be done, I needed to tame the chaos while I had the drive. It's been over a month, and the fat quarter order is still there—that might be a world record for me! 

This old steamer trunk got half a makeover so that it holds my bolts and some art supplies, but the drawers hold most of my wool and that certainly needs an organizing touch.

You can see some of the wool trying to escape on the right!

The rest of the room still has some hot spots, like a file cabinet and a general catch-all shelf, but for now I can function and create in this space. It took a couple of weeks working a little bit here and there, but now the rest of the organizing will be much easier to manage. 

How do you organize your sewing space? If you have any tips or tricks we'd love to hear them. 

From Chaos to Order

I (Teri) am a person of piles—piles of papers, piles of "to do" items, piles of projects. It is a rule in our house: Don't mess with my piles! My right-brained system of organization depends on seeing something in order to remember to complete the task involved. Mail that needs to be answered goes on a pile. It may be an inch deep, but I know where it is. (In all honesty, this was probably one of the hardest things my husband had to learn about me, as he is just the opposite. It's true what they say about those attractions.)

When we moved this summer, part of the dream of our new home was a roomy space to house my studio. I actually had a fairly large room in our other house, but as you will see, my "stuff" exceeded my ability to keep it organized. Who are we kidding; I just didn't stay on top of it! Every now and then, it would even get to be more than I could handle, and I would do a total overhaul. But not often enough. With some trepidation, I will share a peek of my OLD sewing room mess, so you can see where I started.

My cutting table and sewing cabinet are piled with projects—at least three different things
I was working on at the time. Not very neat piles, either!

A dresser full of fabric, baskets of supplies and unfinished projects,
a suitcase full of quilts for a lecture, and bags of class materials

Needless to say, I rarely worked at this desk! 

The closet housed two book shelves, one shelf for books, and the rest for fabric.
Attempts were made to organize by color, which would last until I started pulling fabric for a new project.

Packing up that mess was my biggest job in preparing to move. I organized as I packed, did a bit of purging (not much!), and vowed to maintain some physical sense of order in my new studio. We were able to determine how the room would be designed, so I really would have no excuses, and my husband, an organization guru, was all about helping me to get the room in order. Maybe it was because he would be sharing the room with me; he has his office in one corner of the room. Whatever his driving force—helpfulness or self-preservation—his help was much appreciated. (I have a gem, for sure!)

It took me two months to get to a functional point, and I still have a way to go, but what a delight to have room for everything to have a place. Oh, and it's pretty awesome to know where everything is when I need it! 

You can see I have at least twice the area now, so no excuses. Now that I've shared my embarrassing mess, perhaps you will be my accountability in staying organized. ☺

Here is a short tour of my new space. The view on the left is from the doorway at the top of the stairs.

The sewing part of my studio—I love my Martelli cutting table!

That beat-up oak dresser got a coat (or three) of chalk paint and now houses vintage treasures, like embroidery and doilies, as well as batting, flannels, and muslin. Atop is an organizer holding charm packs, ribbons, and miscellaneous necessities.
The bin, bottom right, holds my quilt hoop and some UFOs that I plan to finish: in clear view as a reminder to work on them!

My favorite part is this peg board, inspired by Jan Vaine and her sister, Jo Cridge, from Graham Cracker Collection.
It is perfect for organizing my embroidery threads and ribbons, so they are in clear view when I am matching materials for a new block. What an advantage to have it all in front of me. Well, maybe not all, but a lot of it! On the bookshelf to the right are several bins of threads that didn't lend themselves to being hung, like Valdani and DMC.

Another ancient book shelf that I rejuvenated with chalk paint holds buttons, pin cushions, light box, and boxes of patterns.

My cutting table butts up to my sewing table. I have tons of light, but I always add a few more Ott lights in critical locations. One can never have too much light! In the nook in the corner, I have a table and chairs, where I can plan projects, sit and appliqué, assemble kits, or whatever. The table currently holds a pile of quilts that need to be hung. The back wall is a design wall, and hooks on the wall hold my project bags.

My specially requested twelve-foot closet is a dream! All those wire baskets that had been out in the room before are now behind doors. And lined, so things don't fall through the wire. With the extra room, we got another short set to stack, so I didn't have to stuff them to overflowing.

My husband was sure that it would be better for me to have shelves than to use the old bookshelves for fabric, so he installed eight-foot shelving and lined them for my stash. We have no secrets about the quantity of materials I "need."
Did I mention that I married a real gem?

Baskets hold silks, wool, mailing envelopes, ribbon, fancy fabrics, and hand-dyes.
The plastic drawers to the right of the baskets have scraps, organized by color.

We had a built-in desk installed for our computers. I still haven't discovered the box that holds my keyboard, so I've been solely using my laptop. We haven't yet hung all our artwork, but we adorned one wall with some of our old record albums.

And here is my gem, working in his office. I wasn't kidding when I stated that he would have a corner of the room for his office space. Wasn't I generous to give him so much room? Just kidding. I'm sure you've guessed who the generous one is!

I am learning that when my surfaces are not filled with piles, they are far more useful. Like when you get a phone call asking about cutting lace for tables at a wedding reception. How nice not to have to spend a half hour moving piles. Now, I can hide them in that twelve-foot closet!! 

Kidding, again. I hope...