Running away from home...

RETREAT!!  (happy dance, happy dance, happy dance!)  Why do we have to pack up half of our sewing room and run away from home to enjoy hours of guilt free quilting time?!?  (None of the above stuff contains clothes or toiletries...almost forgot to pack them!)  I did not take a sewing machine...no room!

Before I left for retreat, I tasked myself with getting my main floor bedroom sewing area organized.

I have no room in my downstairs quilt cave for my quilt books, so I keep them in the bedroom.  It is very convenient.

A homemade beautiful doll from Ola and an art glass piece from another dear friend.  I also have an embroidery piece from Mary in my downstairs sewing room.  Memories of my Michigan home...sigh.

I keep my Featherweight upstairs for mending, whatever THAT is.  This is a custom sewing cabinet that Steve's grandfather made...I just LOVE it!  It used to hold an old Necci machine.

There is an exercise machine...also known as a clothes tree.  I am trying to make myself use it a little when I am sitting for a long period of time.  I can't help but see it as I work.  Getting on this beast is is the hardest of all the life changes for me...

I have decided to do my doodling, drafting and applique piece-prepping upstairs, along with my stitching.  My computer is also in the bedroom.

Look at this lovely framed picture given to me at the recent Huntsville quilt show!  It was hanging where my quilt was originally hanging, I think.  Then they gave it to me...what a lovely memento!

So, since I was a good girl and got my sewing area organized...I left for retreat!  Yahoo!  Off to the Red Rooster Inn, just west of Cullman, Alabama.  

Sue organized the retreat (below, on the right).  Thank you, Sue!

We were a jolly party of fifteen industrious quilters from all over the southeast and Ohio.  I slept down this long hall, just past the dining room, and to the left.  There were more bedrooms upstairs.  I think this place will sleep up to twenty-four with plenty of bathrooms.  We were all very cozy and well fed from Wednesday to Sunday.

If I had not been so eager to work, I would have gone around the whole place and counted all the roosters and chickens...pictures, quilts, knick knacks, sculptures of various composition, salt and pepper shakers, WOW!

In the following picture, we are just the last few that had a hard time leaving on Sunday morning...

There was a great balcony for show and tell finishes.  They eventually stretched across the entire area!  I totally missed getting a picture of all of them, together.  It was quite impressive.  Here are Marge and Kim holding Marge's beautiful completed top.

The place was lovely...I spent almost every morning after breakfast stitching on this elevated porch, rain or shine.  Smith Lake is at the bottom of the hill.  I spent a lot of time water skiing on that lake when I was in high school, eons ago...

Steve was away near Philadelphia, visiting his dad for a couple of weeks, so it was nice to have somewhere to go myself!  I will share what I worked on next post.

In stitches,
Teresa   :o)

The big reveal!

Yippee, I think I am finally comfortable in the quilt cave!  It's all clean, shiny, and ready to drag all kinds of stuff out to play and make a mess!  It was a good time for pictures before I destroyed it.

It's still sort of a stained glass studio.  My cutting station is over the glass work table, there is glass equipment stuff behind the shelves at the end of the room, and all the larger pieces of glass are in their rolling wooden containers under where I rotary cut.

The wooden door connects my room to the walkout family room, the metal door goes outside. 

I have to close the wooden door to get to my "desk" to pick bits for applique or dig through patterns in my filing cabinets.  Having the door closed makes it harder to find me, hee hee.

The lighting was designed for doing stained glass, so the room is definitely bright enough.  I can open the blinds to a big picture window to let in natural light.  That softens things a bit.

I did buy the black plastic shelves from Lowe's, but most of my other fixtures are recycled, reclaimed items I collected when I lived in Michigan.  

The four wooden cubby hole structures were found among discarded items on garbage day (three of them cleaned up and cheered with a lick of paint), my chair and filing cabinets were plucked from the U of Michigan Property Disposition Center, my "door desk top" came from a second hand lumber yard, and my colorful, spongy child's mat on the floor under my cutting center came from a garage sale.
  

I like to sit at the "desk" to sort out the little bits for my applique.  I have small containers of little scraps, segregated by color, and containers that hold slightly larger pieces.

This allows me to chose bits for a scrappy applique project without dragging out bigger containers all the time.  I keep replenishing the containers as I need from my stash.

Steve mounted a plug strip to the wall and ran the cord over the door so I can use my mini iron (and charge my phone) right where I am working.  This is where I press down all those freezer paper patterns.

My Dad put so many plugs in this room when he built the house, but I managed to cover up the ones on this outside wall with my gigantic stack of fixtures, hence the need to have the extension cord snaked over the door.

Those of you that saw my posts about my Michigan quilt cave, or read through the organizational tutorials on my blog tool bar, recognize my fabric containers.  I collected all these over about 20 years of using my weekly JoAnn's coupons on plastic storage containers.

This is my cutting area, where I am also currently saving my batting scraps.  The wooden strips on the wall are a part of a storage system my Dad made for Mom's glass samples (for reordering.)  We took down all the others around the room and forgot these...now we can't reach them!

The glass fits well under the homemade glass work table.  The work surface is just the right height for cutting fabric as well as assembling glass.  

The cabinets and counter top were second-hand as well.  My Dad found them, installed them, and put in a huge, deep sink.  That is all the hidden storage I have for other crafts and quilting clutter. Visible storage is clear or opaque so I know where stuff is located.

The TV and blue ray player are a must!  There is no cable or network connection in there, but that is fine with me!  That means no commercials.  I am currently re-watching the 10th season of "The Big Bang Theory" before the new season starts next week.

I decided a long time ago that I was tired of maneuvering heavy plastic tubs of unsorted fabric.  That was hard on my back and hands.  I could never find what I was looking for.  It made me very cranky and wasted so much of my quilting time.  That is why I use multiple smaller containers...better on my back and hands, and I can find EVERYTHING!

It makes it look like I have more fabric than I do, but I like that the containers aren't so packed and crammed.  I can fondle the folded fabric with ease.

Of course, a large 3-person "quilter's garage sale" and moving out-of-state after 20 years culls the stash nicely.  I don't miss anything I got rid of, and I made lots of other quilters very happy.

I encourage everyone to realistically look at their stash and give away, donate, or throw away stuff you will never use.  It is very freeing (and then there is room for new purchases).

Everything has to have a place, or things will be perpetually cluttered.  I like to pull out stuff for a project so that it looks like a tornado blew through, then clean up and put things away before I move on to the next thing.

I am totally OCD!

Steve installed the nice blinds...the sun really intrudes late in the afternoon.

My sewing table is another fixture my dad built for stained glass work...it is so solid!

Flexible labeling is key and helps me target the correct container right from the start.  After new fabric is washed and folded, it is filed.

I would love to have this huge sink ANYWHERE but in this room. It is taking up precious counter space and there is a sink, in the bar area, in the next room if needed.  I have been storing things in it (the water line is turned off).

Steve cut me a sturdy scrap of plywood to cover it up, temporarily. I painted it with the paint I had left over from painting our exterior front door in Michigan, so it is a nice reminder...and it sort of matches the room.  Sigh.

I can't quite get everything in the room.  There is a utility/mechanical closet not far from my door where I store things I don't access every day.  It's kind of rough, but it reminds me of my unfinished basement quilt cave in Michigan.  Again, sigh.

I also store hand quilting hoops, hand quilting poles, backings, and newspaper print in here.  There is a chair in here...and a door.  I can hide in here as well, hee hee.

There used to be a huge mountain of quilty stuff that needed to be put away right outside the door of my quilting space.  Now there is only a table and a few stray things.  I hope to sort all that out this weekend, put the table away,  and put my design wall up, neatly, over that window...for now.  I don't know where else to put it.

Then I can stop using the top of the pool table for my design surface...

I always dreamed of having one of those huge, fancy quilt areas that you see in the quilt magazines from time to time.  I don't think that is going to be possible...I am here for the duration.  I am so very thankful for the space I have and it has been fun to make it happen in my parents' house as frugally as possible.  It is not fancy or brand new, but it is functional.  I think I can be happy in there.

Oh, and I put a FABULOUS reed diffuser in there...so it no longer smells like a workshop.  

AND, I have 2 of 4 outer borders on my Little Treasures top...including all those circles...

In stitches,
Teresa   :o)

Have you seen THIS?

This is a drawstring bag that opens up to a 44 inches diameter containment system.  I think it is designed for Legos and toys, but wouldn't it be an awesome "play area" for LITTLE SCRAPS????

For those of us who use every last snippet of scraps, we struggle with organization so that little pieces of fabrics aren't migrating around the house, stuck to socks, shoes or the cat/dog/husband/kids.  But the scraps also need to be accessible.  I like ones with a little "rim" that helps contain the madness.

I have to say I am intrigued.  I am really more excited about the smaller versions, also pictured above, which I didn't find on the same website.  I think 44 inches would be a little large, although I could spread it out on the ping pong table. But if I go to a class or retreat it might prove a little clumsy if working space is an issue.

I wonder how may quilters it would hold at one time?

Hmm...

There are tutorials online for making something like this, ones to purchase on Etsy, etc.  Amazon even has different kinds and sizes.

I have worked pretty hard to tame my little scraps, opting to put some of them in little flat containers...they take up little space when pressed and ready to go.  

I pick through them with long beading tweezers rather than my fumbly, clumsy fingers.  Really easy, fast and convenient when I know what I want to use.  I set up and maintained several of these for making the music quilt, where I used brighter fabrics than I am currently using on the LITTLE TREASURE blocks made from reproduction fabrics.  I wish I had taken the time to make some little boxes for my repro scraps, but I had no idea at the onset that I would me making so many little blocks!

(These little containers are made by Iris, are really made for storing 4 x 6 and 5 x 7 photos, and can be gotten from Joann's and Amazon.  At my old Michigan Joann's I found them in the scrapbooking area, not the little containers near the fabrics. At the Joann's website, the 5 x 7 are here, and the 4 x 6 are here.  At Amazon, the 5 x 7 are here, and the 4 x 6 are here.)

But then I still have some larger scrap boxes like this...sorted into warm (red/pink, orange, yellow), cool (blue, green, purple), and brown/black colors.  Oh, and a fourth one for the neutral giblets.

These boxes fit well on shelves, but it might be fun to have a drawstring bag to dump them into while "fishing" for what I want, or when going to a class or retreat.  It is hard to "fish" through these without stuff spilling everywhere because they are basically at capacity.

Hmmm...may have to order a bag...no time to make one right now...

Stash and scrap maintenance is definitely on ongoing, ever-changing thing in my quilt cave.  I do very little permanent labeling for that reason (insert index cards that "peek through" the see-through containers and use easy-to-peel-off label tape in my label makers for drawers).

Anything to make the prepping of applique blocks and scrappy quilts easier, more organized, and streamlined is groovy to me.  I am always looking for ways to reduce the amount of time when I "sit and spin" or "wring my hands" or "tear hair and gnash teeth." Those activities waste time!

Happy stitching!

Teresa  :o)