My Slow Progress: Scrappy Tilda Celebration, Scandi Deco, New Sewing Room + Kitchen Update

Hello from sunny Naples, Florida, my lovelies!  Happy Spring and Happy Easter to all who are celebrating!  Son the Younger went off to spend the weekend with a friend in North Carolina, but Son the Elder, Bernie and I will be having Easter dinner with Bernie's dad and sister.  Alas, no little ones hunting eggs or keeping their eyes peeled to spot an Easter bunny.  Those years sure went by fast!

I haven't written a blog post in a LONG time, so fair warning -- I have lots to say.  ;-)

My Tilda Scrappy Celebration

On to the eye candy, because I know that's what you're here for.  My most recent accomplishment was cutting out all of the pieces for six of these double nine patch blocks, for my Scrappy Celebration quilt project.  The small scale green floral is Tilda Farm Flowers in Green (available here on Etsy).  This fabric is also included in the Tilda's Jubilee Mega Blenders Bundle if, like me, you are crushing on Tilda prints lately and want to add a whole coordinated assortment of these sweet Norwegian prints to your current projects (or to your stash -- no judgement!).  And now, for that icky but necessary disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.  If you make a purchase after clicking on one of my links, I might be compensated at no additional cost to you.  I feel so dirty now.  Moving on...  

The rose pink solid in the center of my little 9-patch blocks is from a Tilda Solids fat eighths bundle (not sure which shade), the little white squares were cut from my bolt of Moda Bella Solids Off White, and that low volume print with diagonal blue stripes and tiny red dots was pulled from my stash of Who Knows What Purchased Who Knows When.  I'm looking forward to piecing these blocks!

Yummy Tilda Fabrics Cut and Laid Out, Ready to Sew

I'm sure that, if I was following Lissa Alexander's pattern for my Scrappy Celebration-inspired quilt, the instructions probably involve time-saving strip piecing techniques.  However, when I began this project my rotary cutters and rulers were still packed in boxes somewhere, and they are still packed in boxes somewhere since we need to make modifications (amputations!) to my ginormous worktable before it will fit in the much smaller sewing room of our new house in Florida.  So instead of cutting strips for my nine patch blocks, I cut out all of my squares individually with my AccuQuilt GO! fabric cutting dies.  

Archaeological Accomplishment for the Month of August: I Have Unearthed My Cutting Table and Rediscovered a Window!

There Was a Cutting Table Hiding Beneath Those Mountains of Fabric!

Does your work space ever get so cluttered that it's literally paralyzing?  Mine had gotten to the point that I was stalled out on several works-in-progress because I only had about a square foot of this table surface available for cutting and measuring.  That was fine for making those decadent little string triangles, but I didn't have anywhere near enough room for:

• Measuring and adjusting the pieced borders of my almost-completed Jingle BOM quilt top
• Measuring, cutting and piecing the backing fabric for my Paint Me a Story Bear Paw quilt
• Measuring the backing fabric for a couple of charity quilt tops, which will likely need strips of fabric added before I can load them on my quilting frame properly

My Beloved 6" Time Timer, Available on Amazon here 

I thought I had taken a "before excavation" photo of the disaster that was my cutting table, but apparently I was too ashamed because I can't find one.  Anyway, it was bad enough that it took me at least EIGHT hours to organize everything and pack it all neatly away.  I know this because, to keep from getting overwhelmed, I used my handy Time Timer and would just set it for 30 minutes or an hour at a time, and then just focus on putting things away until the timer went off without thinking about the WHOLE mess.  And folks, I had to reset that timer MANY TIMES over the past couple of weeks...

I bought this timer for one of my kids, by the way -- a special ed teacher suggested it as a way to help my then-elementary-age son develop better time management skills for homework.  The 12" version is popular for classroom use as well -- it's great because the kids can see how much time is left visually in a red "pie" that gets smaller and smaller.  My son was annoyed with me for buying it and refused to even try it, but I love my Time Timer and I use it any time I need help staying on track with a tedious task that I don't really want to be doing.  Dusting, vacuuming...  I can do anything for thirty minutes, right?

If I had dumped everything off the cutting table into a big box and then hid that box in a closet under the stairs, I could have been done in 10 minutes.  But these were piles of new fabrics that had been carefully selected and coordinated for upcoming but not-yet-started projects, backing/binding/batting picked out for WIP quilt tops that are almost ready for quilting, and of course the BAZILLION leftover 1.5" strips of fabric that I'd carefully cut for my pineapple quilt...  If I just shoved those strips in my scrap bins they would be a wrinkled mess when I wanted to use them and I'd have to iron them.  I wanted to store everything in a way that I could find what I needed and use it easily when I wanted it again, so I undertook a reorganization of my stash of (mostly) fat quarters in hopes of finding the perfect fabric that I already own more frequently rather than continually buying all new fabric.

And so the fabric strips from the laundry drying rack have been neatly packed away in shallow wire drawer bins where they are ready to go when I need them again:

ClosetMaid Shallow Wire Drawer Bins for Folded Strip Storage

I cannot tell you how great it felt to finally get that laundry drying rack out of my studio.  It has been in my way, serving the purpose of keeping those strips organized and visible for the past five years as I S-L-O-W-L-Y pieced my pineapple log cabin blocks.

And my stash of fat quarters is now organized by color in deeper wire bins, like so:

Fat Quarter Stash Organized By Color in Deeper ClosetMaid Wire Drawer Bins

Those wire bins are great, by the way.  They allow air to circulate so my fabric doesn't get mouffy, and I can pull them out and easily see what I have in whatever color I'm looking for.  As I said, these are just stash fabrics, not earmarked for any particular project.  I also have certain wire bins designated for all of the fabrics that were purchased to be used together in upcoming quilt projects.  It is definitely time to start finishing some of these stalled-out projects and turn more of my stashed fabrics into finished quilts!

With the butcher block surface of my cutting table finally visible again, I gave it a good wipe-down with mineral oil and allowed that to sink in overnight.  Now I just need to knock down a few cobwebs and give the studio a good dusting and vacuuming before I get back to sewing again.

Do you have any favorite tips for organizing and storing your fabric stash and supplies for different projects?  Or, better yet, any tips for STAYING organized so your studio never gets so cluttered up in the first place?  I'd love to hear fabric solutions in the comments (unless your suggestions require me to stop buying fabric, 'cause THAT ain't gonna happen!).

Have a great weekend, everyone!

I'm linking up with:

• ·       Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/ 
• ·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com
• ·       Finished It Up Friday at http://sillymamaquilts.com
• ·       Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com

How High is My Cutting Table? And How Big is TOO Big?

Now that I've bored you all with my dry-as-dust discussion of ergonomic sewing table heights (click here if you missed that one and can't bear to go on without it), we're moving on to the second-most-important work station in a sewing studio: The Cutting Table.  Dum, dum dum dum.....

New Cutting Table In-Progress

This is my fourth custom-built cutting table, believe it or not.  It consists of a kitchen drawer base cabinet that I bought and painted red for the sewing room in our last house, along with two ClosetMaid modified wire drawer units on either side.  (This post contains affiliate links).  I saw these wire mesh drawer bins in Carolyn Woods' book, Organizing Solutions for Every Quilter, which I reviewed here yesterday.  These are the bins that Alex Anderson uses to organize her own fabric stash, and I bought two of the 40" tall, 17" wide 5 Drawer Kit units online and then had Bernie cut them down for me. 

The surface of my cutting table, for now, is an old 67" x 35 1/2" Pottery Barn kitchen table top that was previously repurposed as a kiddie arts and crafts table in our play room. Honestly, I'm torn about the cutting table size, which is why I want to try this setup out for awhile and see if I can live with it.  My former cutting table (below) was a whopping 54" x 72".  That table was sized large enough to accommodate 54" wide bolts of drapery fabric and was a nice size for quilt basting, but it ate up a lot of space in the room since it was positioned as an island, accessible from all four sides.


Previous Cutting Table, 54" x 72", 35 1/2" height

The old cutting table was impossibly heavy and was balanced on four little wooden book cases with dead space at the corners and beneath the center of the table where all sorts of stuff would get piled and forgotten.   I rarely ever sew any drapery stuff anymore, but I liked knowing that I could if I wanted to.  I also liked having a table roomy enough that I could be rotary cutting on one end and sorting/staging my project on the other side of the table. 

However, one of my major goals from this rework/remodel is to free up enough space for a small seating area.  It's nice having a Room of One's Own, but who wants to quilt in solitary confinement, after all?  So we're testing out a much smaller (and much more NORMAL) sized cutting table, and I've positioned it up against the wall beneath the window to free up even more space.  If I decide I can live with this size, then Bernie will morph this into something sturdier with additional storage space, perhaps on casters with a drop-down leaf in the back so I can pull it out and get additional workspace every once in a blue moon when I need that larger size.

OSHA Cutting Table Dude

The height of my new work-in-progress cutting table is currently 37 5/8".  Of course my attempt to find a consensus about the "ergonomically correct" cutting table was a big flop -- recommendations ranged anywhere from 34" to 40" for me.  Everyone says to stand and bend your arms at about a 90 degree angle, and have someone measure from your elbow to the floor.  One book said that my cutting table should come up to the bottom of my elbow, but most sources, including the U.S. Department of Labor's OSHA guidelines, said that the table should be at elbow height or just a few inches below that, and a couple sources suggested slightly different ideal heights for cutting tables depending on whether you'll be cutting with shears or with a rotary cutter (elbow height if you cut primarily with scissors or shears, and a few inches below that if you primarily use rotary cutting tools).

I knew the table had to go a little higher than the 35 1/2" I had before, because I had that lovely red base kitchen drawer cabinet that I wanted to use and it didn't fit beneath my old table.  So I decided to go up about 2" to a 38" table height -- remember that I'm 5'8" tall, my elbow height is 40" from the floor, and your mileage may vary!  The idea is that I will be able to cut longer and more comfortably (sans back pain) if I don't have to bend down and stoop constantly at the cutting table. 

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.