Love Your Creative Space: A Visual Guide to Creating an Inspiring & Organized Studio Without Breaking the Bank

By Lilo Bowman

A budget-friendly guide for needleworkers, quilters, and crafters to help you design the best workspace to let your creativity flow.

Does your creative den leave you feeling overwhelmed or uninspired? Energize your crafting space with jazzy ideas for organization and accessibility! With over one hundred and fifty photos, this lookbook offers an endless visual parade of ideas to help your studio reach its full potential. Smart storage solutions, furniture, and accessories can help quilters, needle artists, knitters, and crafters keep their creativity on track! Whether you’re undergoing a radical reinvention or looking for tiny tweaks, you’ll finally be able to plan and organize your projects in a workspace that works for you.

• Inspired workspaces! Get a sneak peek inside creative studios of all sizes, designed on budgets large and small
• Keep creativity flowing and stay organized with smart systems in place
• Make your space accessible! Pursue your passion in spite of physical challenges

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781617459184

Book preview

MY STUFF

Photo by Mary Kay Davis for TheQuiltShow.com

If you have something, but can’t put your hands on it when you need it, do you actually have it?

Fabric, yarn, thread, and batting are all soft items that can become beasts to deal with or find if left on their own. It’s time to tackle that stashed-away stash. You know what I’m talking about: bags of purchases, found treasures, gifts from others you have stowed away in the back of the closet, under the guest room bed, or in cubbies in any spare space around the house. Once it’s packed away, it’s hard to remember what you purchased, much less what it looks like or where you put it. That stuff needs to come out into the light of day.

SOFT STUFF

Photo by Liselotte Bowman

With so much soft stuff to deal with, the idea of taking it on in one fell swoop is daunting for anyone. Make the job easier by tackling just one of the soft things at a time over the course of several dates to make the job more manageable. A suggestion is to start with the big stuff and work your way down in size. Breaking down a mountain of fabric clears out an amazing amount of storage space.

Plan and Set a Date

Mark a date on the calendar and stick with it. Don’t say to yourself, I’ll get to that next month. Next month very quickly moves to next year and you’re right back where you started. Break that circle of frustration by just getting it done. I promise, the result will be well worth it.

Doing a bit of homework before a sorting day helps to make deciding what you do with discarded items much easier.

Ideas for passing things on include:

• Give to family, friends, or recycling organizations.

• Bring to your guild’s Put and Take table.

• Donate to a church group that makes quilts for the community.

• Donate to an animal shelter.

• Donate to your school’s art department or to a retirement or outreach center.

• Sell on consignment.

Sorting and Purging the Stash

Find a place outside of the studio (but still close by) that will serve as a sorting station. This can be a dining room table, folding tables, or a hallway. Getting items out of their hiding places will clear out some room, let you see your collection at once, and allow you to work in bite-size tasks which is much less overwhelming. Grab assorted laundry baskets, cardboard boxes, or grocery bags to serve as sorting containers. Label the containers by type (Keep, Donate, Gift, and so on).

TIP

• Sorting helps you have a better idea of what you have.

• Sorting means not spending money on something you already own.

• Sorting saves valuable time spent looking.

• Sorting and purging allow for more usable space.

As you go through your fabric and yarn, ask yourself questions about each item.

• Does it still appeal to me?

• Or is your reaction more like, What was I thinking when I bought this?

• Will it fit with my current style?

• Is it a look I still work with?

If your answer is no to most of these questions, that item should go in either the donate or gift pile. You can change your mind later, but the idea is to get a handle on what you have and whittle it down. If you haven’t set eyes on a piece of fabric for five years, chances are it’s not going to rock your world now, but someone else will love it. After quilting for 30 years, Nancy Arseneault’s style of work changed. Rather than taking up room in her studio, she donated her entire fabric collection to her quilt guild.

This should be a speedy process; don’t overthink or take items out of their individual packaging for the moment. Put on fun music or a movie to make the process seem less like work. If your stash includes a wide variety and assorted sizes of fabric or yarn, break the job into manageable groups by sorting major categories first.

Quilting / Sewing / Embroidery

• Yardage

• Batting rolls / packages / pieces

• Embroidery/needlework fabrics by type (Aida, Hardanger, and so on)

• Fat quarters

• Fat eighths

• Scraps smaller than fat eighths

Crocheting/Knitting

• Yarns by weight

• Yarns by fibers (wool, cotton, and so on)

• Novelty yarns (eyelash, chenille, and so on)

Once the entire collection has been divided into major categories walk those donate and gift babies to the car, and then (after a journey) place them into the hands of another who will love them. Turn, walk away, and don’t look back.

Divide and Catalog

After major sorting (and removal) there should ideally be a lot less. Now it’s time to divide your collection within each category. Work on one area at a time (garment fabric, quilters’ cotton, specialty fabric, wool yarns, cotton yarns, threads), and don’t forget to take a break occasionally.

As you begin sorting more specifically, it is a good time to think about the type of work you enjoy.

• Do you love working with lots of tiny scraps?

• Are you mostly a garment or home dec sewist?

• Is your style traditional, modern, or Bohemian?

• Do you prefer to work in color families?

• Or do you enjoy dabbling in a variety of playgrounds?

Identifying your preferences can help determine the most efficient method for storage, which in the end might be one, but often is a combination of several.

Fabric Storage Options

Susan Carlson’s work requires thousands of tiny scraps, which means storage can be difficult. She’s even admitted to raiding the trash cans of her students after a class. Her solution: a collection of antique suitcases displayed around the studio. Toss the fabric in, close the lid, and no one is the wiser. For smaller bits (sorted by color) that aren’t relegated to the suitcases, she uses plastic salad containers from the grocery store. Brilliant! They are see-through and easily stackable, and you more than likely have a few in your fridge right now.

Jacquie Gering works with larger pieces of fabric, which she groups by color family. A laundry basket under her sewing table serves as a catchall. Once a project is completed, scraps are sorted by color and moved to the color family basket. When Jacquie needs just a bit of a fabric, it’s simply a matter of pulling down the scrap basket color of her choice.

Jacquie Gering’s fabric sorting system

Photo by Liselotte Bowman

Cynthia England uses a wide range of fabric for her personal work and makes hundreds of kits to sell, so her fabric stash has a room all its own. Bookcase shelving holds fabric in bolts by color. Smaller cuts of fabric sit on shelving sorted by color in another area of the fabric closet.

Libby Lehman’s system of using labeled flat, white, lidded gift boxes (for small precut fabrics by color and size) offers a large amount of storage, and when stacked, uses a minimal amount of space. Larger pieces of fabric (less than a yard) are wrapped around cut-to-size foam core sheets and stored vertically in a storage cabinet (an IKEA Kallax) under her cutting table.

Photo by David Fitzgerald

Other fabric storage options include freestanding cupboards, IKEA modular storage (such as Kallax), Elfa mesh drawer systems, ArtBin Super Satchel Cubes, bookcases lined with decorative tubs, and repurposed furniture.

Cynthia England’s fabric storage area

Photo by John Anderson, courtesy of TheQuiltShow.com

Scrap Solutions

Scraps have a way of growing without anyone taking notice, and in the blink of an eye, they can consume a studio. Why not put those unruly scrap bits to good use with something fun? While I don’t want to add another UFO to your already-long list … come on, I know you have one …simple little projects might just be the ticket for taming that pile of scraps while you find the perfect way to store them.

TIP   Hate Tossing Out Scraps?

• Make pet beds filled with fabric scraps for your animal shelter.

• Use scraps to make fabric that can then be made into quilt blocks.

• Make storage boxes for your studio space. Add labels for easy identification.

• Repurpose a lampshade with small fabric squares, some lightly watered-down Mod Podge (or PVA glue), and a paintbrush.

• Place bits of fabric, yarn, trim, and such between two sheets of water-soluble stabilizer. Stitch around the edges and densely over the entire surface, soak in warm water, rinse well, and you have some fun textured fabric.

TIP   What to Do with Fabric Strips and Yarn Scraps

• Make colorful string quilts and scrappy bindings.

• Wind sewn strips around cotton clothesline (for crafting) and stitch on the machine to make decorative baskets, bowls, and tote bags.

• Sew fabric strips together end to end and crochet an area rug for your studio.

• Make a fun rag rug by looping 1˝ × 6˝ strips of fabric through individual holes of a nonskid rug mat along every other row. Tie the ends with knots to hold in place.

• Yarn bits are perfect for making mini motifs (flowers, hearts, granny squares, and so on) as embellishments for other projects or to hide moth holes in your favorite sweaters.

• Tie lengths of yarn scraps together (leave tails about 1˝ long) and roll into balls. Knit or crochet a colorful, fun, and very textured throw or shawl.

When it comes to yarn, separate again, within one specific category—by color, size, type, and so on—the idea being that the focus becomes smaller and smaller. This is also a good time to inventory for future reference to avoid the frustration of buying a new crochet or knitting pattern only to discover, when you get home, that your stash is one skein short.

Mary Maxim (marymaxim.com) offers an assortment of downloadable forms for cataloging your stash and crochet/

knit projects as well as WIPs (works in progress). Print the pages on card stock or use laminating sheets (available at office supply stores) to make them sturdier. Organize pages in a ring notebook with dividers based on your needs. Or if you prefer something a bit more mobile, check out apps like Sortly (sortly.com), Stash2Go (stash2go.com), or Wooly—Knitting & Crochet (available from the App Store).

Mary Maxim yarn organizer

Photo by David Fitzgerald

Yarn Storage Options

Fabric lies flat and generally stays put when placed on a shelf. The same can’t be said for that yummy, squishy yarn that is forever spilling out or rolling about. Think creatively when it comes to storage. No matter how large or small, don’t just consider out-of-sight spots. If lack of storage is a concern, make the yarn collection part of your home decor by using paper hatboxes (look in your local craft store), vintage suitcases, steamer trunks, or a repurposed chest of drawers. All these options keep light and dust at bay while being decorative and keeping your stash within easy reach. And speaking of keeping things