Creative Spaces Blog Hop: Week 1 Studio Clean Up
Welcome hoppers! I hope you have been enjoying this first week of the Creative Spaces Blog Hop! So many wonderful designers have been offering you fantastic ideas on Studio Clean Up and staying organized.
Moving into a new studio space has it's glorious moments and presents one with the opportunity to feel like everything is in it's place, however the longer one stays in a space the harder it can be to keep it organized. Sooner or later deadlines and multiple projects will put you in a position in which your studio might have a moment in which it looks like mine did when I came back from Spring Market and a lecture series in Oregon.
My tables were cluttered, my scrap drawers were over flowing, no corner was left without a pile of debris! As you can see, I even had lights hanging from the window blinds. What a mess.
When confronted with a room like this, my philosophy is always to pick a spot to start and create one beautiful space before beginning to consider the rest. I like to start with a table surface, so I have at least one space to work while I'm cleaning the rest of the space. In this case, I had been traveling with my machine (Lacey) so my primary sewing space was clearly the place to begin before resetting a machine. I also had a new machine (Diana) waiting in the box and decided that I would set her up as a trial and send Lacey to the shop for a spa day with the machine techs.
Goal one was to clear the machine space completely, wipe it down, and make it ready to reorganize the space.
Every time I get this space cleared I take time appreciate this gorgeous hickory table my super husband made for me. He does nice work!
Now that I have a cleared surface I was ready to unbox Diana and get her set up with my Sew Steady Table.
I also took a moment to reorganize my bobbins, since I often have several wound and ready at a time. I have two bobbin savers that are filled with the bobbins I have prepared for projects that are in progress, but I still have a box full of bobbins that are not in use and that have been left over from previous projects. To get them organized, I used a left over card box and used the clear plastic lid to create spacing between the different rows.
This new plan left me no bobbins loose to roll around and plenty of room to add empty bobbins as I finish up new things.
Now that I had a clean surface I started organizing the shelves, cleaning out old items, removing clutter, and putting things in labeled boxes. This would allow me to put away things that were out from projects before I left and a few of the things I picked up on my trip.
The clean up of the shelves, actually left me with extra room, which seriously hasn't happened in some time! Just look at that extra room! Obviously I have room to put a few more things on those shelves.
I made some decisions to keep fabric collections on these shelves that I am currently working with. I also found a few things that I had started years ago and never finished. Some of them I gave away and some of them I finished and got out of the way.
One of the things on the shelves that was terribly disorganized was the thread I have purchased in the last couple of years.
I had left it in bags and bowls and had different types all in the same bags.
I even had thread organizers I just wasn't using them. I asked my husband to hang the two wooden ones on the wall and I got the bigger case out for the King Tut.
The King Tut all went into one case and organized by color family. Aren't they entirely luscious when put all together as a gorgeous collection? Candy for the quilter!
The Aurifil thread also benefited from being organized by color families and went on the wall organizer.
I had a few left over King Tuts that didn't fit in the case and they luckily fit sideways on the rails of the organizer.
The Sulky Blendables all went on the last organizer along with the white King Tuts.
Once all of this was done I cleaned floors, dusted all the sills, and put the next set of projects in order.
This whole exercise left me feeling rejuvenated and ready to start on the next set of quilts! It feels so good to know where all of my tools are and have my fabric and notes all easy to find.
I hope that you will find some ideas in this blog hop that will help you to come up with plans of your own for spaces you can happily work in.
Stay tuned with the whole Hop and visit the pages of the other 16 amazing women who are offering you their ideas over the next several weeks!
Next week I'll be introducing you to my favorite tools and offering you a prize give away opportunity! See you soon.
Mondays
(Be sure to visit Cherry's blog to find out how to enter the prize drawings!)
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