Cloth Paper Scissors Studio Tour

I'm a fiber artist specializing in art to wear, which I sell thru art galleries across the country. My sewing studio is located on the second floor of my farm house. I have a dying studio on another floor, but that's way too messy to share. The sewing studio is not a very big room but every inch of space is used for storage. If I were to show you a photo of how the whole room looks I would have to really vacuum those threads up, so I thought I'd share in bits and pieces.

Above is where I sew. I like everything in proximity so that I don't have to walk across the room to change a needle, iron something or use another machine. I use a serger, machine, and embellisher machine almost every day.

Refer to the numbers above for what I store where:

1.Zippers, trims, specialty embellishments.

2. Threads for serger, machine, etc.

3. Beads, crystals, antiquities for embellishing things.

4. Yarns, mostly hand dyed that I use for my art to wear and arranged by colors.

5. "The Basket" labels, pliers (I use jewelers pliers for lots of helpful things when I sew), press cloth, small pieces of fabric for what every project I'm working on.

6. Needles, snaps, beeswax, etc.

7. Not shown - The drawers below my sewing machine hold scissors, rotary cutters etc., embroidery materials, interfacing, elastic, instruction books for all of my machine and whatever attachments I have for all of them.

This is an example of what I make.

Here I'm making tie transfer fabric (shameless self promotion: This technique is featured in the current, October-November 2010, issue of Quilting Arts.)

Number references:

1. I collect old hand made boxes and use them for storage. In this instance ties and scarves for transferring onto other fabrics.

2. I use baskets a lot for storage of projects, small pieces of fabrics I think I might be using on a project, etc.

3. Ties laid out for transfer.


This is my inspiration board. I do clean it up from time to time otherwise

it would pull the wall down.


Here are the number references:

1. A piece of foam core that I hung on the wall as a bulletin board. It's located at the end of my cutting/painting table. The table is huge - 7 feet x 8 feet - and pushed against the wall in a corner most of the time. The table is made of 2 hollow core flat doors hinged in the middle and sitting on top of 4 folding waiter's tray holders ( like in a restaurant). It makes it movable and it's very stable. Lots of messy storage underneath.

2. Wine case full of dyed and printed silks and cottons that are close by when I'm working on a project.

3. Specialty paints, brushes, etc. Handy when needed, removed to under the table when cutting large items or printing yardage.

The top of my fabric storage system. I keep lots of vintage buttons in the containers and boxes above. The shelves are in a system that folds down to become a table. I thought that would be very useful when I found it, but the reality is you have to clean off the shelves before you can use it as a table and that's lots more work than I'm going to do when I need it.

There are 6 large shelves below, full of fabrics and too messy to show. The remainder of the fabrics are kept in boxes in the room and in shelves in the very small closet in the room.

Thanks so much for stopping by.