Autumn is my favorite season. I love changing leaves. Our new lake house is surrounded by trees so I've been looking forward to seeing their fall foliage. They have not disappointed me.
With the weather cooling down, I set my goal to unpack my craft room. I am ridiculously lucky to have found a house in which I have such a lovely, large space. But it will take a little more than a month to get it in a more completed state. That said, I did make progress!
View from the door before and after.
The big obvious change is that I sorted through the 15 or so totes of donated fabric. I passed on about half of it to two local quilting ministries. There's a lot of non-quilting fabric that I will pass on to other organizations, and I'll incorporate the last bit into my stash. The hardest part of organizing my craft room has been figuring out how to work around those three support posts. I have a plan in the works. Stay tuned.
This is my stash wall. My new studio is a huge room without any closets. I'm storing my fabric in the same Sterilite bins I've been using since I started sewing--just many more of them! I chose the wall farthest from the window to avoid sun damage. Niels and I went on an IKEA date to pick up a few things, the main one being a 4th Kallax unit. Originally I had 3 units placed side by side. I decided to stack two sets of two instead to make more use of the high ceilings.
My shelving corner was mostly neglected this month as my priority was getting everything moved to the right place. I had these shelves put up this summer. I'm a little scared to go through those white flexible bins because they were some of the very last things packed on the last day when all the boxes, bins, totes, and grocery bags were filled. I'm sure I will find some treasures.
Here you can see where I've moved a few things around. The desk I have by the posts now is made up of the top of the tall "desk" in the before picture attached to some IKEA legs we had in storage. The brown CD rack has been moved to our theater room temporarily while we wait for a buyer on Amazon Marketplace. The white Trofast towers were moved back toward the posts. You can also see that I moved my long arm. The new white cutting board was a nice garage sale find!
I decided to move my long arm to the opposite side of the room because the posts are not in the center of the room. Moving it means I have more room to walk around it. Plus, having it in the back of the room makes it less likely to be bumped by young visitors. I sold the big brown bookcases because they took too much visual and physical room. I've re-organized the Trofast scrap bins so I have more space for each color, plus bins for squares that are 1.5", 2", and 2.5" squares.
Other than the long arm, the view from this corner hasn't changed too much. My sewing machines are along the wall to the right and they were the first things set up, along with my main table.
With the long arm moved to this side, and my desk and printer moved in its place, I now have a row of machines along the far wall.
The room looks the most different from this angle. It feels so much bigger without the big bookcases and after clearing out those tubs. I'm hoping to have some friends over for a quilting retreat next summer so I'm happy I can have so many spaces to cut and sew.
I'm still noodling through how I want to set up behind the machine. I have a leaning shelf, Kallax, and Trones. Only one will stay.
The Trones hold my gift wrap and Cricut vinyl. I think I will move them by the other cutting table so I don't have to walk around the long arm to wrap gifts. (Christmas is coming!)
Here's my thinking corner. I love this chair but I'm stalking Amazon Marketplace for a leather recliner, or maybe even a small chaise sleeper sofa in case we need an extra guest space. No hurry on that. I do like to have my legs up when I work on my computer to plan quilts or write blog posts like this one!
To see more pictures of the state of my craft room, check out #VesperViewStudio. To see what I'm currently working on, follow me at deJongDreamHouse.
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