The REAL Studio Tour

I know I'm a day early for the tour but I am taking tomorrow off for my annual shopping day in the city so I'm hoping I will be able to add my link to the Tour party via my cell phone. Keep your fingers crossed.

Today's topic on the Tour is the final reveal of our studios in all their lived in glory and boy is mine lived in. LOL!

As you come in from the side porch (all (blog) friends enter from the back door, right?!) take a left from the dining room into the living room and this is the view of the studio you'll see.

Before walking into the studio look to the left and you'll see my Great Aunt Bernadine's round table with hexie parts. The bottom layer is 5 twisted hexie rosettes, topped by 12 rose stars.

To the right you'll see an old chair topped with 4 different hexie projects.

Step up to the studio door frame and this is what you would have seen about a month ago:

Told you it was lived in :)

Of course, this morning this is what it looked like:

It's the same but different. Midgie is in the same spot, Design Wall has changed but there is still stuff every where!
It's just different stuff.

Great Great Aunt Katie's laundry basket sits right outside my studio and is filled with finished tops, fabric, mending (Yuck), jeans to recycle, etc.

Next in the room is the curio cabinet that holds hexie, leader/ender and other projects either in baskets or boxes to keep them sorta organized. More baskets are on the floor.

Dad made me this sewing table. We bought the laminate for the top but then he found the drawer units on clearance some where and surprised me. The single drawer immediately to the left of my chair pulls out and houses a cutting mat but I also pull it and the regular drawer out while quilting to gain more table space with big quilts. The space behind the drawers houses plastic drawer units with my rubber stamps - haven't touched them in 5 years tho. The piles and black baskets are current projects/gifts (Yikes, only 5 days left!!). The white basket is my Celtic Solstice fabric. And Midgie is my ever present companion in the studio :)

The shelves to the left of the windows hold strip and orphan bins as well as my stereo and audiobook pile. The white drawers on the bottom shelf are empty - what a waste of space. The cardboard box is full of patterns - need to clean some of them out too.

Shelves to the right of the window hold EPP papers, quilting books (in color order!), markers and colored pencils, quilting stencils and tatting and beading books on the bottom.

The oversized design wall is always chuck full of projects or ideas. The crock still has the pile on top and who knows what is in that blue trug.

The elfa drawers were my entire studio space back when I lived in Miami and first started quilting. I had taken the doors off a closet and there was just enough room for the drawers and my old sewing machine table. I've kinda expanded since then. The top holds boxes of tatted hankies and old sewing baskets. My chain stitch machine from Vicki also sits there on the top :^) The drawers are filled by UFOs or supplies.

This is the left side of the cutting table that Dad made. Oh look there is the other crock with wrapping paper that I mentioned last week. The back left corner is a pile of patterns to try (they are from before I started pinning on The Evil Website) and EQ7 books. Then my laptop and some piles of current projects. The cupboards are full of unknown treasures and need a real deep cleaning. Under the table on this side are boxes with tops waiting to be quilted.

And of course, here is the right side of my table where you can kinda see my cutting mat and ironing board - both are covered in Celtic Solstice stuff. Under the table on this side are plastic boxes with my FQs sorted by color and a big bag of selvages. The top drawer is misc rulers and the other 2 drawers are full of neutral colored FQs. Oh check it out - I forgot this other non-quilting tool. Based on the way Dad made the table top, I can hang groups of blocks on the side of the drawer unit using pants hangers.

And one final view of my studio via the Christmas Balls hanging in the window. I hope y'all enjoyed the tour of my REAL life, lived in studio. Merry Christmas and I hope y'all will stop back soon!

Feline Friday & the REAL Studio Tour

The kids were all excited to host today's post for the The REAL Studio Tour but they are still frozen after their little adventure this morning!

Hmm...maybe it's time to take the bunting down.
It was snowing faster than I could shovel this morning.

I still don't let Zorro stay in the house if I'm not there so he was very ceremoniously taken to the porch while I went out to shovel. Apparently the porch was lonely tho cuz he followed me up and down the driveway as I dug my way out. It was very cute as he would sit near me for a while and get covered in snow flakes and then run back to the porch for a few minutes. He would be back soon enough. Sadly, I couldn't get him to play in the snow.

LOVE YOU, Momma!

After shoveling was done, every one came outside:
Squeaky wanted outside.
Zorro wanted inside.
Midgie didn't really want outside so I carried her and then she really didn't want to go back inside either so I carried her again :)

Sew, today's topic on The REAL Studio Tour is all about storage ideas.

As a certifiable crock-aholic, there are several crocks very prominent in my studio.

I didn't get the 3rd crock in this picture but there are 3 at the corners of my cutting mat and ironing board. The largest holds my most often used rulers and the two-colored crock you see is a trash bin. The hidden crock holds ... wait ... can you guess? ... Chocolate! And for those of you who stopped by last week, YES, that is 3 containers for choco in my studio. LOL.

This 20 gallon crock is just as it was this morning when I was taking pictures - a dumping ground from when I cleaned something else off. If I had taken the time to clean, the bottom of the crock holds packages of batting and a trug full of scraps waiting to be trimmed sits on the packages. It has the appearance of being 20 gallons of scraps and I assure you it is not!

I forgot the 7(?) gallon crock that is the perfect height to hold rolls of wrapping paper, interfacing, etc.

This curio cabinet was a hand-me-down from my sis-in-law. I've filled it with baskets and boxes of UFOs. Yipper, probably half of the projects in the top section are hexie related.

Ok, you've probably been waiting for this on pins and needles - this here is hexie central!!! It got to the point that I couldn't keep all the slippery little bags of hexie papers neat and tidy in a basket so I got these drawer units at Dollar General and created a chart in Excel of all the shapes and templates I own. Each drawer holds a specific size and then there are a few drawers left for random sizes or supplies. It's so easy to pull out what I need or want to play with.

Don't forget to stop by next Tuesday for HeLP for Hexie-aholics and again next Friday for the big reveal of our REAL studios!!!

I hope all your pussy cats are warm and dry!

Feline Friday and The REAL Studio Tour#1

Sew don't tell but Momma almost forgot TRST started today. Ackckck! For anyone that is new here, WELCOME!! Today is Feline Friday and my name is Midgie - I'll be your host today. Be sure to come back every Friday to see what my sissy, half-brother and I are up to.

Today is the first installment of  The REAL Studio Tour being hosted by Vicki at Field Trips in Fiber. Vicki was a little dismayed by the way magazines always portray studios and wondered how/if people actually work in them. They were always spotless in the magazines and didn't look the least bit used so Vicki wanted to see our real, used (really used?!) studios and planned a three week tour for December.

Now let me tell you, Momma really uses her studio and I've had to climb my way over some pretty big piles in order to beg for snackies. Recently tho she's been picking up. She knows she wasn't supposed to pick up for this tour but when she is gonna host a party in just 2 more days, she kinda had to. Don't worry tho, knowing Momma, when she gets back in to sewing (10 minutes after the party is over!) it will be messy again just in time for the final studio tour post.

Without further delay...Today's theme is a favorite non-traditional tool. Ever the indecisive, Momma had some problems with this one but I think she came up with some goodies.

This is Momma's ironing board - it's really plywood covered in batting, that silvery stuff and green duck cloth, providing a nice firm ironing surface. You can tell by how dirty it is that she uses it all the time. It's about the only place I am not allowed to sit at the cutting table cuz it stays hot. Well yeah, I know that!
You can also see Momma uses a water bottle and funnel to fill the iron so no spilling!
What is hard to see in the background are the 2 jars of candy. That girl likes her choco!

This cute birdie thing holds 10 antique thimbles. You might say that these are quilting related but not really for the way that Momma uses them. When she has to count lots of Bonnie's mysterious parts she sets one thimble on the shelf for every 10 pieces. She lays a thimble on it's side for 5 if she has to stop and feed me or something.

As some of you might just be aware, Momma likes her hexies.
Not sure what she likes more, hexies or choco. I'm serious!!
This box of micro-binder clips from the office department at WallyWorld holds her fabric to the papers and makes it easier to stitch or even stop if she has to give me more snackies.
The bigger binder clip is usually clipped to the end of a stack of fabric strips to make it easier to pull the stack away from the mysterious subcut pieces. Kinda silly to me but it makes Momma happy.

Momma's last favorite tool is kinda her library card. See the stack of audiobooks next to her stereo? She listens to books while she quilts. Something about 2 birdies with 1 stone but I haven't seen any birdies other than that birdie thing with the thimbles. Come to think of it, no stones either.

Now then, get ye over to The REAL Studio Tour and check out every else's fav non-traditional tools but then don't forget to get ye back HERE to link up your favorite felines.




Momma here - Midgie didn't mention that she and her sister are my favorite tools for keeping me company in my studio :^)