Time to Rearrange and Set Some Quilting Goals

January is typically a time to clean out, clean up, and reorganize for me - this year has been no exception, specifically in the studio. It's taken all month because there hasn't been very much 'spare time' -- mainly late nights and weekends, but it's worth it!

If you've seen the photos of my 'ever changing studio' on webshots you'll see that once again I've made some changes. Minor ones, but very very functional! One I want to point out is my new saddle stool for sewing. I have a higher saddle stool that I use with the longarm and dearly love. I found out about the smaller one to use with the domestic and just had to have one. I'm now a distributor for these fine stools so if you are interested you can visit my website to contact me for details.

In this corner I used to have my great aunts hutch, that has now been moved to the laundry room (photo later on below) and in it's place I purchased a bookcase to hold my new project boxes. The wire drawers were brought out of my laundry room and they hold my notions and my overflow of 'quilts in waiting' in the top drawers.

Yep, I found these really cool stackable plastic boxes that I transferred all my projects that had been in hiding for goodness knows how many years (grin) I can place all the parts and pieces in the box that are needed for the project and when I'm ready to work on one, it just comes off the shelf and onto my sewing station. These are also going to be great when I go on retreat next month -- everythings already packed!!

As you can see, it's easy to see what's inside at a glance.

These are my most current projects, the ones I hope to knock out this year. It's cool that I can get 8 boxes on a shelf -- or four boxes and the fabric on mini bolts that go along with it. I have also converted my stash to the fabric organizer program . It's a wonderful way to know what you have at a glance.

This is my ironing and cutting station with wire drawers below. The drawers on the far left contain 'quilts in waiting' (tops waiting to be quilted, my personal ones as well as my customers) with the remainder obviously housing my stash -- or as my friend Jamie said "my collection" -- he explained that the difference was 'stash is something you are suppose to use, whereas a collection you can just enjoy' in other words it doesn't have the obligation of being used! Good thoughts to ease some guilt, but I really do want to use my stuff since that's why I bought it!

Pixxie was in the other room and saw the camera flash so figured she needed to get in on the deal -- I wonder if she thinks she's union and must get paid (in treats) every time a camera flashes?

This is one of my drawers that uses the smaller fabric organizers -- I use these for fabrics that I don't have a lot of yardage for but I know is enough for a narrow border, binding, or such. Anything smaller than a half yard is folded in another drawer. I also have a drawer for fat quarters and a drawer that houses all my strips and smaller parts and pieces.

This is a drawer mixed with the larger and smaller fabric organizers. I am trying to keep certain collections together so when I am ready to make a quilt (or finish one) with these fabrics they are all together.

I even reorganized my batting. I primarily use batting on a roll but do have a few prepackaged batts available so they are stored on the top shelf in my laundry room. I've had a bad habit of just piling up the cut offs from personal quilts knowing they were big enough to save....so I decided to make these scraps more user friendly. The little papers pined on the rolled scraps have the size written on them..So if I have a small quilt to do for myself or charity I can go into this area and see if I already have a batting scrap that would do instead of cutting off my large roll. Well, it looks good anyway (grin).

This is the old hutch I was speaking about -- it made it's way to the laundry room and the shelves hold yet more project boxes filled with the oldest UFO's and the ones that are unlikely to find their way to my sewing station any time soon. I found a project started in 1995! So at least it's in a project box and IF I ever became inclined I could find it and finish it....By the way, the glass cake dish on the left has my left-over binding scraps rolled up like a cinnamon bun -- I keep telling myself that I'm going to do a scrappy binding one day....mainly I pull from it when a customer comes over and asks for a lesson in attaching binding...oh well, it looks cute don't ya think?

So now that things are organized, and I discovered I have about 30 different projects started and enough fabric to keep me in stitches for quite a while. With this organization I believe that I am more motivated to turn these colorful stacks into empty boxes! (first to go will be the ones on the floor!) And as I mentioned, I'm already packed and ready for my Feb. sewing retreat!! Talk about goals!!

I've placed things in an approximate order that I'd like to finish and hope to turn these UFO's into quilts in waiting. Gosh, that's another story! In my personal Quilts in Waiting I have 4 small ones, 1 lap size and 1 queen. Not to mention there's a wallhanging already quilted that needs binding...and I'm really not sure all my personal quilts have labels (sigh). Just more areas to be better organized in I guess. More goals!

Ah, but if nothing else, I love looking at all the potential in this room! It's still my happy zone and I am more than content just to be in here.