5 Steps I took to make my sewing space sustainable.
In this round of decluttering, I literally made space in front of my design wall
If you had looked at my sewing space on a video chat on the last few years, you would have thought (to the naked eye) that I had a fairly organized space. It’s funny, I thought that too. But as I’ve worked through this year’s decluttering project – and I sincerely hope that I have arrived at Maintenance mode – there were underlying issues that had never been resolved. I had no systems in place for portions of the workflow, which meant my workroom (as beautiful, spacious and sunlit as it is) became stale, overcrowded and not a source of inspiration.
I’ve often said that once you’ve been quilting for 25 years, you can stop counting. For all that time, I’d done a lot of shopping, a lot of collecting, and tried many things. A container – whether it’s a box, a bin or a room – can only hold it’s capacity, and I was way over the limit.
I finally hit the proverbial wall with this in June. Everytime I wanted to access something, I hit a roadblock. Batiks – yes, I had them, but they were in a bin under my desk with something on top of that. My design wall is a sheet of insulation board, hung in landscape mode…but there was a desk about a foot in front of it, and I could only access about the first 3 feet of it on the right side. It’s a 4 x 8 sheet.
Live action shot of the fix for my chair.
And then my chair broke (the gas lift ran out of gas), and that broke the damn. The room that was supposed to be my creative playgound had become a place I avoided. I had to admit that I wasn’t coming in here to be creative. In fact, I was actively avoiding going into the creative part – it felt very heavy. I set out to change that so that it will never become like this again. Hence – Maintenance!
Here are 5 steps I took to make this a sewing room that I love coming into, and which – more importantly – I could sustain. I am getting too old to keep fixing the same problem year after year. In order to make lasting change to the space, I needed to start with me.
1. The chair - I’ve had the chair for about 10 years, and it was bought used when I got it. I looked around at replacements – but I found the answer for $11 on Amazon and now it’s as good as new – no more unexpected trips to the low position for me. Here’s the link for the fix on Amazon. I need to be able to sit comfortably in my space, and you do too!
2. The Design wall – I use the workroom for both my sewing and my office work, and the desk that I had purchased (again, used) was actually too long for the space. It’s an Ikea Galant (that they no longer sell), that was actually 2 pieces – the desk itself, and a 24 inch extension. I didn’t need a desk that was almost 85 inches wide! By removing the extension, I still have an oversize desk, but I gained that 24” on the left near the design wall. It’s now dance party central, and I can access every square inch of the design wall. It’s heaven. And this turned out to be the catalyst for everything else.
We can hold a dance party in my space now!
Batik’s Before: All this was packed away under my desk for more than a year!
3. The Batiks – I pulled them out and looked at them, and decided (based on color) that these weren’t batiks I wanted to use. There was a lot of fabric that I was basically warehousing under my desk. I took the bin out, dumped it upside down in the middle of my floor, picked out what I wanted, and placed the rest for sale as a lot online on my Instagram account. Within 24 hours, I had a buyer and they are now bringing joy to a quilter in Washington state. I didn’t sell them all – the ones I wanted (the bright, jeweled tones I love playing with) are now in two smaller bins in my kallax unit (yet another used Ikea find – there’s a theme going on!) and I’m playing with them.
After - these batiks are ones I’m playing with now! I had missed them!
4. So how did I take care of The Excess ? I’m not technically sure you can Mari Kondo a quilt space, but I sure tried. I went through everything in here, and if it didn’t fit the ‘Joy” model, I detached from it, and it went out the door. I went to a quilter’s yard sale, some went to charity, some of the fabrics were given away to friends. It looks bad, but remember - it has been over 25 years since I started quilting.
A word of caution – the phrase that it’s going to get worse before it gets better is absolutely true. Hydration and breaks are something you want to embrace.
I was shocked when I was done with the purge, and took a good look at the pile. So much there - and I just wanted it gone!
I used the ‘dance party’ space as my staging area – motivation to move the excess out of the space. In this process, I learned how deep my ‘green’ roots are running, and I got comfortable with my definition of what was too small for me to work with and which, was, in fact, trash. It was scary how much fell into THAT category.
Donating to the excesss fabrics to the New England Quilt Museum.
And in June, I took my suitcase down to the NEQM to donate the fabric that I no longer wanted to hang onto – all 100% cotton, quilt shop quality fabrics - to their store on the main level. I have spoken about the bins of fabric (Christmas, juvenile) that I kept for years in my closet. The bins are emptied. I learned at a guild meeting in June that NEQM uses 100% cotton fabric donations (something which I did not know but which I learned about at a recent guild meeting) as a fundraiser in their store. I was very happy to have this out of my space, and into the hands of quilters who will appreciate it, and I was happy to help the Museum to benefit in the bargain.
The Museum store and it’s fabric stash - I’ll be looking through that the next time I visit.
I’ve been away from the blog for a while, and that was partly because I was processing this. Look for another blog post - about a project that’s currently under my needle - next week here.
What’s your best tip for keeping on top of your creative space inflow? Leave a comment below and share it with us. Obviously, I need all the help I can get.