A Tour of my Studio

Suggested pairing: Everything in its right place, a playlist​

Let's take a little tour around my studio (aka the "living room" in a normal person's home). I've been following the 2023 Decluttering Challenge with Karen Brown, so it's in a pretty okay state right now.

This isn't really in the photos, but I've set up the studio for live streaming video. Click here to watch last week's stream on Twitch, where I worked on decluttering. It was a satisfying process, and I tackled several areas that I'd been ignoring. You can watch the replay for one more week.

My main work tables are two hollow-core doors from the nearest lumberyard. They're only 24" wide because that's what I can carry under one arm. (I like having furniture I can move myself.) One has been converted into an ironing board by covering it with insul-bright and a flannel sheet.

Both tables have a generous accumulation of acrylic paint.

The table "legs" are shelf units available at Target or any Target Substitute. This modular setup was my mom's idea and I gotta hand it to her because it's worked like gangbusters since I was in college.

Drawing supplies. I'll come back to you soon, my pretties.

This is the project management board, also a place to put stray papers I don't want to deal with right now. Not saying that's a great habit. But I do clean it off periodically. You can read more about the kanban board in last week's issue of The Fold.

My sewing machine is a Bernina. I call her Nina. She's a useful parking spot for stickers. Also, she sews. I put her on top of some padding to reduce the wobble when she's going at top speed. It's part moving blanket and part vintage Irish chain quilt (in sufficient disrepair that it's known as a "cutter").

For years, I put my sewing machine's pedal on an overturned milk crate. And I thought that was good enough. Every day I would press my foot to the pedal and it would move around and make me bonkers. For literal years I did this. One day I mentioned the problem during a live stream and my smart friend @solidnotions suggested putting that pedal onto a non-skid surface. Because she's very smart. I tried a few solutions and settled on a step stool with heavy-duty velcro. Folks, this stuff literally holds furniture together. The lesson here? Identify what's irritating you and fix it.

My Mom, Design Genius, chose this rug. It is the best rug.

An actual table (not a door). It's beautifully sturdy, and it has casters and adjustable height.

Bonus: I can put magnetic hooks on this table's steel frame and hang tools underneath.

This is the gym. I'm fancy.

I frequently get asked, "What is that thing behind the quilt?" It's a design wall. This one came from Cheryl Ann's Design Walls at Off the Wall Quilts. You can home brew one of these with any big piece of flannel or quilt batting on a wall. Mine is flannel stretched over a lightweight plastic frame. it works because fabric sticks to it like velcro and I can move bits around before I sew them together. Bigger pieces tend to fall off but I can pin them on.

This is the den.

I have this fantasy where I convert my closet into a quilt storage facility where they're rolled instead of folded and stored in custom-made cotton sleeves like some of my clever quilter friends make. I'm not there yet. But this way, I get to look at them every day.

I haven't talked about the hard part yet: Fabric.

My feelings about it are big enough to merit a separate discussion. Let's talk about it next week. Until then...

snippet.the-socials

A GIF For Those Who Read This Far

See you next week,
xoxo Sarah