Tour of the studio

Shhhhhhhhhh, don't tell anyone, but I was supposed to do this yesterday! One of the groups I belong to, requested everyone to share photos of their studios or sewing areas. We were all supposed to do this yesterday. I got busy though, and totally forgot to do it!

I used to have a sewing area in our living room. The living room had a pool table that we covered with plywood so I had a nice place to layout and cut on. We sold the pool table though, and converted that sewing area into a living room! What a novel idea! I LOVE having a real living room again.

Anyway, the downstairs bedroom was a den and now is my new studio. I like it better because I can shut the door on both cats and family whenever I want to! I am SO spoiled to have this room! (thanks honey!) :)

Remember, if you click on any photo you can see a larger picture that shows more details.

This first shot is of the entrance door. I have my hoops hanging on the back of the door. To the right you can see three areas where I have my rulers. There is also the first set of bookcases that hold both books and a few of my bolts of fabric. Normally I keep that covered so the sun doesn't fade the fabric.
Here is another shot of the ruler area and bookshelves. Hubby made the two ruler racks for me.

Next is a taller set of bookshelves and a corner unit with our dragon figurine collection. I have bins of various items on these shelves, my Brother sewing machine, and miscellaneous odds and ends. There is a spare ironing board there too.
Swinging around to the next wall you can see the back of the new cutting table setup. It is hard to make out, but the ironing board I use most often is there to the left of the table a little bit and to the right of the spare ironing board. Why a spare you ask? Well, it has adjustable height and I use it behind my sewing machine cabinet when I am quilting. That way the quilt doesn't hit the floor behind the machine. It also keeps it from snagging on the backside of the cabinet.

Here is another shot of that wall. Those windows take up most of the wall and face south. This makes the room very bright, but also very hot. Hmmm, maybe I should get a little window air conditioner for this room too! lol You can see both the blue cutting mat and the two white ones, if you look closely at the table top there. In the corner is another set of shelves that house the fax/phone, a postal scale, a tv, and bins with patterns in them as well as some of the smaller themed fabric collections.
The brown square above those shelves is for my thimble collection. My husband used to travel a lot for work and would bring me back thimbles from the various places he traveled to.
Continuing to the right, you see the double sliding doors to the room's closet. That houses part of hubby's collection of stringed instruments. There is a full length mirror on one door. There is also my dress form with one of the tunics on it that I am working on.
Below the table you can see the rolling plastic file cabinets that house the majority of my fabric.

Continuing along the third wall you see a small wall-hanging that I have. It was from a siggy swap years ago. If I get a pin or charm that I want to keep, I also pin those onto this little quilt. The window faces my front yard and I can see the mailman coming to bring me wonderful surprises in the mail sometimes! The machine is my JukiTI98e and the cabinet is a Horn. The OTT light there, can be used with both the Juki or the next sewing machine on the last wall.

Here we see the start of the forth wall. There are two racks of threads and my mouse clock. Also there is my Pfaff Quiltstyle machine in a Koala cabinet.

Here is more of the forth wall. There are quilt stencils hanging here, along with a dowel rod that holds various ribbons. My iron sits there as well. It is on an extension cord so I can use it pretty much anywhere in the room.

Here is another shot of the same area. You can see the wire basket there as well. That particular one has scraps of batting, and other items.

This is taken underneath my cutting table. The table is really two tables, both on bed risers to raise the height to a comfortable level for working on. You can see the storage bins with costume fabric in them, and the rolling file cabinets with the quilting fabric it those.

Here is a close up of one of the file cabinets under the table.
Here is how I store fabric in these files. I fold them over hanging file folders and try to keep color families close together.

Some things I plan to do are to hang a felt design wall over the closet or above the Pfaff. I also want to put some sort of sun shade outside that big bank of windows, like a canapy or something. Then the hot summer sun won't bake that room as much. (AND perhaps an air conditioner too!)

One last little thing...if we are going to have company and need sleeping space, the tables fold up as do the sewing cabinets. We then have a LOT of floor space that we can put two cots in for guests.

Thank you for touring my studio with me!