Real Studio Tour

Vicki Welsh is hosting a tour of real quilt studios (not fancy decorated and staged ones like you see in magazines) on her blog, Field Trips in Fiber. I meant to participate in all the posts but I just couldn't get myself organized. The final day was Friday and I'm just now getting around to taking photos and writing a post!

My quilt studio is actually the living room of my tiny, two bedroom cottage. When my daughter moved out last year, I moved my longarm from my friend's living room to my own. (I have some very generous friends!) I have a 24" Nolting on a 14' table. The table is long enough to store three rolls of batting underneath. The other side has storage for scraps of fabric and batting, large pieces of fabric for backing and quilting tools.

To the right is the doorway to the rest of the house and my sewing area. I use a sew-ez table with a small folding table at a right angle for my work area. I usually keep the ironing board to the left of the table. Before I bought the longarm I used to quilt with this setup, only I slipped another table behind the machine for a larger work area.

To the right of my sewing machine is the "wall-o-fabric". From left to right is my stash in the first section, which is about 32" wide and 7' tall. The next small section is UFO storage above and more fabric storage below. This fabric is mostly large pieces and stripes for binding. The next section is more UFOs above and finished quilts below.

To the right of that is quilting books and a mix of customer quilts, my own unfinished tops and unfinished donation tops. I hope to make a dent in this section over the holidays. To the right of this is the front door.

On the opposite side of the room is my work table (currently a storage table) and my cutting table. Underneath is storage and the dog bed, so my dogs can be in the room with me but not underfoot. That's Boo in the bed. Roxy is afraid of the camera so she went to sleep somewhere else.

This is my design wall, which I can roll around the room. It's two pieces of rigid foam insulation, covered with flannel, and sandwiched around an Ikea clothes rack, tied together with zip ties. I don't have a permanent place to store it so I just roll it out of my way. I like how I can roll it right next to my sewing machine for putting together a quilt top. I got the idea from someone's blog. It might have even been Vicki's but I can't find the original link.

 

So that's my studio. This is the first time I've had a dedicated sewing space. I wish it were a little bigger sometimes. On the other hand, I would just fill up the extra room with stuff! In case you're wondering, the second bedroom is now the living room.