Getting Close

It is spring break here and I have been busy getting the studio ready. I have some before and after shots to share! We finally chose colors and I am really pleased with how it looks.

 Obviously, these are the before photos. It's a huge space with lots of white and pretty darn boring. It is one of four (yes, I said four) garages on my property and it stored cars, car parts, and riding lawnmowers for a very long time. Making it girly was no easy task. This is my sewing corner where I have my personal machines set up. Super ugly and not at all cheerful.

 This spot was a little better because there was some color here. It served as my cutting and ironing station. But not super functional simply because the space on the shelves was being utilized all wrong. Bicycle helmets and hot rod magazines DO NOT belong in a sewing studio :)

I knew I wanted a spot to sit and relax so I moved in a loveseat and a coffee maker. But still... not the best set-up. Behind that quilt hanging up is an awesome peg board that could be used for all kinds of things, but I hated the red so I covered it up.

Ready for the after?! So much better, I promise!

DRUMROLL PLEASE!

 Ta Da!!! I switched the cutting and ironing station with the loveseat and coffee area. It makes so much more sense. Now I am using the peg board to hang scissors, rulers, cutting mats. The shelves above the loveseat now hold craft magazines and books for folks to look at while they hang out and have a cup of coffee. 

I still have a bit of cleaning up and organizing to do, but I'm mostly finished. My favorite part of the room is, by far, my fabric shelves. I had my fabric spread out in different places around the room. Shoved in cabinets, crumpled up in baskets, folded in tupperware bins... Now it is all in one place and out where I can see what I have.

Now it is time for me to start sifting through all the ideas in my head and come up with a class schedule. That will be finalized and posted within the next week or so. Be watching for it!

New Cutting Table

I have been wanting a new cutting table or a long time. For awhile I was using one of those tall, white fold-able craft tables from Jo Ann Fabrics. You know, the really wobbly ones that have wheels on the legs that you have to put a piece of folded paper or cardboard under to keep it from teetering as you cut fabric with a super sharp razor blade? Yeah. That.

Then I started using a small dining table. It was pretty ugly and way too low to the ground to be comfortable cutting for extended periods of time.

I found some bookshelves at Shopko on sale for $25 each (score!!!!). They have 3 shelves on them and are 36" high. I bought two of them, along with 12 small tupperware bins. The shelves serve as the legs for my new cutting table, and double as storage. I didn't have an idea for a table top until I brought home the shelves. I was moving things around in my room trying to make space for my new cutting table. As I was moving the old white craft table, I realized that I could just unscrew the wobbly legs from the top and just use that! It was a little too big so I took one of the fold-able sides off and it was perfect. My cutting mat fits on top with some leftover room to store my bolt of fusible fleece.

And if you were wondering what all those small plastic bins were for... COLOR CODED SCRAP STORAGE!!! This is very exciting to me because I have so many scraps. I never used them in project because it was hard to sort through a huge bin where all the colors of the rainbow were all jumbled together. So far since I have organized them, I have made 3 different projects using my scraps.

I built the shelves with the help of my 11 year old daughter. Including the time it took to sort through all of my scraps, this was a project that was about 2 hours from start to finish. It was inexpensive, saves my back from hunching over while cutting, and it looks pretty! It is so simple, I would encourage anyone who hates their current cutting space to give this a try.