In My Work Room 1

I’m joining Anne in the first of her In My Studio series.

Mine is mainly a sewing space, but it also holds equipment for drawing, painting, knitting, crochet, gilding, pyrography, pattern cutting, beading, felt-making and photography. As well as that, it contains my old Mac computer, now rather slow and clunky, which has many years’ worth of images and records of my work in iPhoto and a huge iTunes music library. I’m extremely lucky that I don’t have to share this space with any other functions or people.

There’s a Visiting Chair, for when the Husband comes up to spend time with me while I’m sewing; he can play games on his tablet while I stitch and we’re not isolated from each other in separate rooms.

Under the window is the sewing table, clear space to the left for the project I’m working on, and on the right a clutter of tools, coasters for the inevitable cup of coffee, scraps of paper and fabric with notes and stitch samples on them, and occasionally, a timer to remind me to stop and do something else!

To the right of the sewing table is the cutting table, which I’ve raised on special feet to make it a more comfortable height to work at while standing. Here’s where the early part of my patchwork pieces start life, where I trim out paper projects, audition colours and fabrics, and where my quilt notebooks are assembled. Above it is my tool board, with everything I need close at hand.

On the opposite wall is a floor to ceiling bookcase, taking up the whole width of the room apart from the space occupied by the Cupboard of All Colours. The bookcase contains not only a large library of fiction but also all my craft and quilting books, back copies of magazines I’ve kept for a specific reason, and storage of clothing waiting to be recycled into something else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, the aforementioned Cupboard, a beautiful hand made American oak item which I designed and which was made by my brother in law, a talented cabinetmaker. Inside it’s all cedar shelves, on a system which enables them to be positioned at any level. It’s one of my most treasured possessions. As it’s incredibly heavy, it’s fortunate that it comes apart with just a few screws!

On the innermost wall of the room is my design wall, a flannelette sheet hung on a rod on hooks. It will just accommodate a queen size quilt, which is the largest I’m ever going to make. This wall allows me to lay out the pieces for an entire quilt in one go, so that I can be satisfied with the arrangement and colour balance before I start to sew it together. In the short term, the fabric pieces will stick to the flannelette; longer term, I pin them on when I’m happy with the arrangement; the air conditioning and ceiling fan tend to blow them off otherwise!

So that’s my creative space.  At present, it’s fully occupied with my latest project, the Cloths of Heaven quilt, which my followers know as a long term piece I’m hoping to have finished by the start of May next year. Around the margins of that I have three blocks a month for the F2F block swap, and also a ‘scrappy’ post on 15th of each month.