Tidying Up!

My sewing studio was starting to look like a war zone again so I decided that today was the time to bite the bullet...pardon the pun...and start to reorganize and tidy up!

Late last spring, our neighbor was having a garage sale and when I saw this shelf, I thought it would be a perfect addition to my studio.  Well it sat in our workshop waiting to be brought indoors since then, gathering dust and fly poop!  

This morning I asked Mr. Painted Quilt if he could bring it indoors because it was going to be a necessary element in my tidying up process.  I forgot to take some before pictures but I do have some after shots of what my studio looks like now.

Starting with the "new" shelf...minus the dust and fly poop of course...here is my CLEAN studio.  

Most of the fabric that is folded on this shelf has been purchased in the last month or so and was just piled on or near my cutting table just waiting to be put away.

Next are several photos of my sewing corner.  The table in the center of the room in the photo below is my cutting table.

This was my Mom's Featherweight which I use from time to time when I have a lot of chain piecing to do.

The Hoosier is a great place for storage...

and next to it is a part of my scissor and pin cushion collection.  I use the pine desk for storage as well.

Lastly is the bookcase that houses my books and patterns and next to it are stacked crates holding more fabric.

Everything is neat and tidy once again making it so much more conducive to being creative and productive.

In my last post I mentioned that Darlene was designing a mystery quilt for our guild and decided that she would open it up to everyone by posting the instructions on her blog once a month after our meetings which you can read about HERE.  

A bunch of friends got together at the library on Saturday to work on various projects.  I worked on the mystery quilt and managed to get all the snowballs done.  Yesterday I pieced together and completed the center medallion so my homework is done.  The sad part is that I will now have to wait until next month for Part 2.

I used only Civil War and antique reproduction fabric scraps that I won on Cyndi's blog a little while ago.  Cyndi owns a shop called Busy Thimble in Litchfield, Maine and she specializes primarily in these types of fabrics which just happen to be my favorites too!

We just started the mystery quilt so there's lots of time to join us!

When we woke up this morning, it was snowing lightly and was a bit on the cold side.  After their breakfast, you know what Frankie and Ollie were up to...

Why snuggling by the fire, of course!