2017 - The Best (Quilting) Year Yet - and Organizing your Quilting Space

Welcome to 2017!  And I plan to make it the best quilting year yet!  How about you?  What are your grand plans for the year 2017??? Inquiring minds DO want to know!

 

If you subscribe to my newsletter, I discussed goals and even shared some of mine - and offered a coupon code!!! .  What - you don't subscribe to my newsletter?  Well head over to the website and sign up - and grab your free pattern!

 

But be sure to come back and check out a new feature on the blog - guest bloggers!  I plan to feature guest bloggers frequently (am trying for once a week - hey, it's a goal.....).  This week's guest blogger is Bea Lea.  She's got some wonderful tips on organizing your quilting space.  I know that's on my list.  Ok, it's way down the list, but it IS on the list!

 

Hi it’s Bea from beaquilter.com I’m excited to be a guest blogger here with Tammy.

We’re fellow Island Batik ambassadors together and I love being an ambassador for them and I’m also a guest blogger (ambassador) for Accuquilt and often I combine both Accuquilt and Island Batik to make my quilts!

A little about me, I’m from Denmark but I’ve been here 20 years now so I’m more American now ;)

I’m a stay at home of 4 kids, age ranging from 14 to 1 and I’ve been married to my awesome husband for 18 years! I’m an avid blogger and quilter. And I’ve even won some ribbons at shows and I’ve also been published in magazines, but my passion is quilting and giving quilts away to people. I’ve tried selling quilts but they don’t sell, but I do write my own patterns and sell a bit here and there too on craftsy and other places. Those of you who know me, call me prolific! And that’s what gave me the idea for this guest post!

I’m maybe prolific, but it’s more about being organized! And since we just entered a new year, it’s a good time too to talk about organization!! It’s funny, my quilt room is the most organized/clean in my house as I don’t like cleaning but I do like organizing!-who’s with me??

Here’s some tips for organizing!

1. SPACE

I’m very fortunate to have a BIG craft room/studio and it’s a place where I can come and go and leave things the way they are, unlike a living room or dining room where you have to clean up before dinner or company coming over.

2. STORAGE

I have these awesome metal shelves from Costco or the hardware store.

On the top I have bins for magazines, then shelves for little things, like a ruler stand, a box for zippers, a small set of drawers for buttons and paper pieces, then a shelf for Accuquilt dies and another for books, bins for scraps that I labeled and sorted by color! And top right I have hangers and space for quilt tops. On the wall next to the window I have a small dry erase board where I list current tops that are ready to be quiltes and sizes of the tops, batting and backing and if binding and label is done. Which leads me into #3

3. LIST of projects

Apart from the board mentioned above, I also have a project list on my blog that I list every Saturday, it’s not so much for blog readers to read, but it’s more for me!

I number projects and highlight in red if I worked on them and cross them out when they are done and I also dated when I started it. For 2016 my list got to 100 items!! And I completed 72 projects- 36 of them were quilts, the rest were small things like pot holders, gifts, dresses for my girls etc.

4. SMALLER STORAGE or DIFFERENT STORAGE

Another place I love is my ironing station, it’s half of those metal shelves with a board that’s wrapped in batting and fabric and that’s my ironing board! Then below I have plastic snap storage bins with current projects. I LOVE that they are plastic so I can see thru them, so even if I work on a project for a little bit, I pop it back in the bin and start something else. Which leads me to the net point.

5. MOTIVATION

I stay motivated by not getting bored!! And my list of UFOs and being in such a nice room. AND by working on several projects at a time, I don’t just have ONE leader and ender project, it’s more like a bunch! And several are in these bins. If I have one project where I get to a point I don’t LOVE to do, like adding multiple borders on it, then in between I work on fun blocks for another project or two!

6. TIME

Time is a biggie, I’ve mentioned that I’m a stay at home mom, so I’m fortunate enough/ addicted to this, after Breakfast time I go upstairs to my room to sew around 8-9am and then when I have to get the older kids from school around 3 is when I stop for the day. Of course I stop for lunch and play with the younger ones/change diapers etc. But most days I probably get around 6hrs of sewing done a day!

Another TIME saver is of course to do several projects at a time, but that also means to sit down at the sewing machine as much as possible, I don’t like to sew one or two seams, then get up and iron, if I only have two seams to sew, I add more as I mentioned and then when I have to iron I iron a lot!

7. HAVE FUN!

Of course if you don’t LOVE what you do, it’s not fun and if you’re not having fun, enjoying what you do, you don’t get it done.

Well I hope you’ve had FUN reading this post and maybe, hopefully gotten some useful tips out of it.

Now GO organize and then QUILT/SEW and HAVE FUN!!!

Thanks Tammy for letting me be a guest blogger, see you soon-online ;)

Bea

Thanks, Bea!  Look for more terrific quilters and bloggers in the coming weeks.  Oh - and just a tiny little hint - some super exciting blog hops are going to be hosted here over the next few months, with great projects and prizes (of course!).

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