BLOG: 2015

How to Declutter a Craft Room

January 13, 2015

A peek inside my Shiny Happy World studio

I recently posted some photos of my newly tidy studio and a bunch of people asked for more details. A BUNCH of people. They all wanted to know how to declutter a craft room – exactly what I did.

I’m happy to share! Especially because this time I feel like I finally got it right. 🙂

Sure, I’ve “decluttered” before – but only with moderate success. This time I swore things would be different – and they were!

The number one change in my approach was a change in my attitude. Instead of asking “What can I get rid of?” I asked “What do I want to keep?”

On the surface that seems like it’s really the same question – but the subtle difference was key for me. First, let’s look at a before photo. It’s not taken from the same angle (it’s actually from the other side of the room) but it’ll give you a pretty clear picture of what things looked like.

And this was a good day! Every horizontal surface is full of stuff. There are plastic tubs stacked under my sewing table and in front of my storage shelves. There are permanent piles of stuff stacked on the corners (out of the way, right?) of my work tables. There is stuff everywhere – and I wasn’t using even close to half of it.

No more!

Here’s what I did. . .

Start with one thing. The experts say to do one room at a time – but even that was too much for me. I tackled one piece of furniture at a time.

Remove everything from that piece of furniture. Stack it on the floor, pile it on a table – whatever you have to do to get down to an empty piece of furniture. As you unload, you’ll spot some things you know you need to get rid of. Bag them up if they’re trash, box them for donating – go ahead and get rid of them now. But know that this is the easy stuff – things like the jar of bobbins that went to a sewing machine I got rid of over ten years ago, or the water damaged tablet of nice drawing paper. This is where I’ve stopped before – the things with an easy reason to get rid of them. This time I went deeper.

Clean it. Clean it really well. Dust it, polish it, vacuum out all the weird nooks and crannies full of Cuddle Fleece fuzz. Make it look (and feel) like a new piece of furniture.

Now – start “shopping” in that pile of stuff. Pull out the things that you actually WANT. The knick-knacks that make you really happy when you pick them up. The supplies that you love to use. I used the word shopping very deliberately. If you were strolling through Joann’s and you saw this stuff – how much of it would you actually put in your cart and buy today? Probably not much.

The best example of this was when I went through my yarn bin. I don’t use much yarn. I’ll crochet something every once in a while, and sometimes I need yarn for hair or a tail – but that doesn’t add up to much. You wouldn’t know that from looking at the huge (overflowing – the lid wouldn’t fit on it) bin of yarn I had. I called Jo in (because she crochets sometimes) and we dumped it out on the floor. We very quickly picked the 5-6 skeins of yarn we actually liked – and got rid of everything else. Yarn in ugly colors, scratchy yarn, fluffy yarn that I loathe crocheting with – it all went away. And I breathed a huge sigh of relief!

Don’t ignore the emotional difficulty. Decluttering like this can be hard because it often means letting go of dreams. I had kept a bunch of small skeins of eyelash yarn (given to me by someone who was decluttering – ha!) because I thought I might someday use them in amigurumi. They’d be cute manes or tails, or be great for little hedgehogs or porcupines. The problem with that is that I don’t crochet amigurumi. I could learn – and I’d like to – but the realistic side of me knows that I probably won’t. Or – to be more precise – I will definitely NOT take the time to learn every single craft I’ve hoarded supplies for for the last two decades. I already sew, quilt, and embroider – I’m very unlikely to also learn amigurumi, knitting, jewelry-making, garment sewing, printmaking, watercolor painting, acrylic painting, and all of the other kajillion crafts I was storing supplies for, just in case I decided to try them out. And if I really do decide to crochet a cute little hedgehog, I will go out and buy the single skein of grey eyelash yarn I will need. None of the 20 skeins I had were grey anyway. 😛

Put the things you really want back where they go. Make sure they’re stored in a way you can easily access them – both to get them out when you want them, and to put them away again when you’re done. No storing things stacked on top of other things!

Move on the the next room/piece of furniture.

I did this over and over again, touching every single thing in my studio. And I mean every single thing. I went though my pencil cups and got rid of the hard pencils, the pencils with hard erasers, the pencils that were too short to get out of the cup without digging. I touched every single thing in the room and asked myself if I really wanted it. Not if I could think of a reason to keep it – you can always think of a reason to keep something. The question is – Do you really want it?

Two more decluttering tips for you. . .

Be fast. You know in your gut if you really want something. As soon as you touch it – pay attention to your gut. Do not start listening to your head. Your head will start telling you, “Well – you could use it for this or that or some other thing.” That’s what you told yourself when you picked it up at a rummage sale 10 years ago and you haven’t used it yet. You’re probably not going to. Get rid of it! If you find yourself dithering, you don’t really want it – but for some reason you feel bad about getting rid of it. Which brings me to. . .

Be ruthless. Some of your best decisions will be the hardest. Letting go of some things means letting go of dreams or might-have-beens. Sometimes there’s a lot of guilt attached – money spent on supplies for a craft you ended up not enjoying, time and money spent on a partially-finished project that’s been sitting on the corner of your sewing table for years. Sometimes people you love give you things you don’t like very much, but you feel like you need to keep them. It’s all hard – but I feel so good about every tough decision I made! Especially getting rid of the things that had guilt attached to them – talk about burdens lifted!

And now – I work in a lovely, inviting space that I’m not embarrassed to show you. My supplies are easy to reach and easy to put away. I don’t have to clear off a corner of my table to work on a project.

I have never experienced this before. Never!

But I love it – and I find that it’s spreading. I recently started on my kitchen – one cabinet at a time – and the results are fantastic. I can’t wait to finish that room and move on to my closet! I’ll have to move more slowly – decluttering my studio was basically a full-time job for a week – which means the results aren’t quite as dramatic, but they’re soooo satisfying. 🙂

So there you have it – my tips for how to declutter a craft room. Have fun!

Here are handy links to all the posts about quilting tools and supplies.

Sewing Machine

Iron

Rotary Cutting Tools

Scissors

Other General Sewing Room Supplies

One More Hugely Popular Post that Seems to Fit Here Better than Anywhere Else

How to Declutter a Craft Room

Return to the Let’s Make a Quilt main Table of Contents.

Move on to the posts about choosing your quilt pattern.

Dye yarn with Wilton Icing Dye!

January 12, 2015

Did you know that you can dye your yarn using Wilton Icing Dyes?

Dyeing yarn with Wilton Icing dye from FreshStitches

You already know I’m a huge fan of dyeing with Kool Aid… but the colors can be a little limiting. So I had to try my hand with the Icing Dyes!

Advantages of Icing Dye

Icing dye, as the name suggests, is actually meant for dyeing. Granted, it’s usually food and not yarn… but it means that there are a wide range of colors that are really quite nice.

The dyes also have the property that you can mix them together with fairly predictable results, which isn’t necessarily true of Kool Aid.

The main disadvantage is that you’ll need to add vinegar to your dye bath to get the color to set. That’s not too big of a downside!

Wilton Icing Dye Color Card

For each color, my recipe was:

8 yards of white worsted weight yarn
1/8 tsp of Wilton Icing Dye
2 T vinegar
1/4 cup boiling water

And here’s how the colors look!

Wilton icing dyes and yarn freshstitches color chart

I’m so excited about the possibilities! These are the colors straight out of the jar… you can mix the colors to get even closer to what you want.

Notes on Dyeing

These colors were all produced with the same strength of dye. Experiment with adding less dye for more subtle colors.
Purple is notoriously difficult. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but the blue & red tones separated out quite a bit. I love the look, but you’ll want to always test swatches if you want a certain look.
A true black is very hard to achieve. I’ll play around with adding a higher intensity of dye.
Always do a test swatch! These 8 yard skeins were just perfect, you can wind them yourself for playing!

Have fun!

Here are handy links to all the posts about yarn. . .

Return to the main table of contents for Let’s Learn to Crochet Amigurumi.

Move on to the lessons for the basic crochet stitches.

Happy stitching!

Pins and Needles

January 9, 2015

This week I’m on vacation. While I’m gone I’m showing off my new super-tidy sewing room, and sharing my solutions to some common craft supply storage challenges. On Tuesday I shared how I store and organize all my favorite sewing tools. On Wednesday I showed you my embroidery thread. Yesterday I showed how I store all my fabric – including scraps. Today we’re talking pins and needles. 🙂

I have three pincushions I use all the time. I keep one at my sewing machine, one at my ironing board, and one at my work table. The ones at my ironing board and work table tends to empty as I work, and the one by the sewing machine tends to fill up, so I just switch full ones for empty ones as needed. And by having several pincushions at all the places I pin and unpin, I’m never looking for pins or letting them pile up on the table.

There are a lot of super cute pincushion patterns out there, but I love the look of these – and they’re very functional. There’s a free pattern for this pincushion here.

The needle cushions are another of my favorite things. I keep one with commonly used needles at my work table, one with weird needles at my sewing table, and another one with commonly used needles downstairs by the sofa where I do a lot of hand work.

I used to have a bad habit of sticking needles into the arm of the sofa (and leaving them there), sticking needles into my clothing (and leaving them there) and occasionally mistaking my thigh for the arm of the sofa and sticking them there. No more!

These needle cushions are great because they have a hard bottom so the needles can’t disappear inside them. There’s a free pattern to make them here.

And that’s it! My favorite solutions for common craft supply storage issues. I hope you enjoyed the tour through my studio this week! I’m back from vacation on Monday and I can’t wait to get to work in my awesomely tidy space!

Have a great weekend!

Best,
Wendi

How I Store and Organize My Fabric

January 8, 2015

This week I’m on vacation. While I’m gone I’m showing off my new super-tidy sewing room, and sharing my solutions to some common craft supply storage challenges. On Tuesday I shared how I store and organize all my favorite sewing tools. Yesterday I showed you my embroidery thread. Today I’m going to show how I store all my fabric – including scraps.

I store most of my fabric under my main work table in plastic milk crates.

I divide it by color. . .

red
orange and yellow
green
blue
purple
browns and tans
black, white and grey

I also have one crate that holds works in progress. By that I mean things I’m really and truly making progress on – not unfinished objects that are just piling up somewhere that I’ll never get back to. 🙂

So that’s for regular woven cottons. I keep other fabrics under the other side of the table.

The bins on the right side hold polar fleece, cuddle fleece, satiny fabric that makes good ear linings, and tulle that makes good tutus. That’s a roll of batting and my cuddle fleece color swatches rolled up between the bins.

The right side holds my colored backdrop paper for photo shoots (top shelf), painted paper for making cards for Jo (middle shelf), and some more paper, a basket of felt scraps, and my stuffing tub on the bottom shelf.

Now – about scraps. . .

I used to have twice this space devoted to scraps. Now it’s just these three bins, sorted by color. I have one for warm colors, one for cool colors, and one for neutrals.

I went on a bit of a scrap quilt binge last year and realized the six bins I was using had enough scraps in them to make three quilts – and have more than half left over. I do NOT need enough scraps for six quilts, so I pared down what was left, got rid of the ugly stuff and the too-small pieces, and this is what I have left. When the bins fill up (like they are now) I need to make another scrap quilt.

So that’s how I store all my fabric – including my scraps. 🙂

Tomorrow – pins and needles.

Best,
Wendi

How I Store and Organize My Embroidery Thread

January 7, 2015

I get a lot of questions about how to store embroidery thread in an organized way.

I recently decluttered my craft room so now I have multiple posts about storing and organizing craft supplies!

See my new super-tidy studio here.

See how I store my sewing tools here.

Today it’s all about storing embroidery thread.

I struggled with organizing my embroidery floss for a long time. A couple of years ago a reader suggested storing each color in a ziplock bag and IT TOTALLY WORKED. I love it, and I posted about it here.

I still use the same basic system to organize my thread, but I’ve made a couple of changes in the last year. Most of the thread I use is matched to one of my wool felt colors, so I bagged those up with the wool color AND the DMC thread # written on the label, like this. . .

Then I put all of those baggies on one binder ring, so all my felt colors are together in one place.

The rest of my thread is bundled by color and kept in a shoebox – just like I described in the other post.

So that’s my embroidery thread! Tomorrow – fabric!

Here are links to all my posts about embroidery tools and supplies.

For Beginners

Specialty Fabrics

Threads

Stabilizers and Pattern Transfer Tools

Why the Right Stabilizer Is Like a Good Bra
Sulky Sticky Fabri-Solvy
What Product to Use When (Freezer Paper, Fusible Adhesive, and Sulky Sticky Fabri-Solvy)

Return to the Learn to Embroider main Table of Contents.

Move on to the posts about working with patterns.

My Sewing Tool Basket

January 6, 2015

This week I’m on vacation. While I’m gone I’m showing off my new super-tidy sewing room, and sharing my solutions to some common craft supply storage challenges.

This little sewing tool basket was the first thing I organized in my sewing room. I did it over a year ago and it was SO NICE having the tools I needed right at hand – and to know right where to put each one back – that it inspired me to really tackle my entire room and make everything as organized and tidy as this basket.

I keep this on a shelf right behind the spot I usually work at my work table.

I just need to turn around to grab a tool or tidy up when I’m done working. For me – minimal effort is key to keeping things organized, so I try to keep things right where I need them, but not cluttering up my work surface.

Here’s a view of the basket from above, so you can see everything. It’s a very sturdy basket, with soup cans in it to keep everything organized. Here’s what’s in each can from left to right across the top. . .

Weird scissors – pinking shears, scalloped shears, and a few pairs of old, awful scissors for cutting open rough packaging. There’s also a lighter in this can for lighting scented candles.
Regular scissors – fabric scissors, paper scissors and paper-fused-to-fabric scissors, plus tiny sharp scissors for clipping curves and cutting small shapes out of felt and a box knife for opening packages. (Here’s how I rotate my scissors.)
Random tools – hemostats, hem gauge, bone folder, snap setter, tube turners, compass, awl

There are two pencil cases to grab and go when I’m carrying work around with me. One is drawing stuff – pencils, eraser, black ink pens. The other is sewing stuff – needles, thread, itty bitty scissors, Thread Heaven, etc.

Here’s what’s in each can in the front row from left to right. . .

Rotary cutters – one for fabric and one for paper
Things to mark on fabric – iron-on transfer pens, chalk pencils, air erase pens, water erase pens, sharpie, etc.
Things to mark on cardboard boxes – mostly fat black markers
Things to mark on paper – pencils and black pens for inking

There are also a few clothespins clipped on the handle – handy for holding odd things when I need them.

And that’s it! Those are the tools I use most often and everything has a place in this basket.

Tomorrow – how I store embroidery thread!

Best,
Wendi

A Peek Inside My (Tidy!) Studio

January 5, 2015

A peek inside my clean sewing room at Shiny Happy World

Look! It’s a clean sewing room!

Over the years I’ve thought a lot about showing the space I work in here on the blog. But – frankly – it’s always been a bit of a mess. More than a bit, actually. If you follow along on Facebook you know I spent the last week doing a MASSIVE declutter. My husband has been doing the same thing in his office and between us we’ve gotten rid of five carloads of stuff. (Now it’s time to tackle the rest of the house.)

I put a lot of thought into my decluttering this time and I was far more successful than I’ve ever been before. I wrote a post about how to declutter a craft room here – and you can see some scary before photos. 🙂 But for now, I’m (finally!) going to share photos of my clean sewing room, followed the rest of the week with more specific posts about how I tackle some of the most common craft-supply storage issues.

First up is a bird’s-eye view of my space.

I took this photo from the top of the stairs to my husband’s office, which overlooks my studio. He writes children’s books and also works from home. It’s nice having our spaces adjacent so we can holler back and forth at each other throughout the day.

I love my space! It has lots of windows and terrific natural light. Please ignore the fact that none of those windows have trim yet. It will happen someday, but the fact that it took me five years to remove all the factory stickers from the windows might be an indicator of something. . .

I’m going to start my tour at the ironing board (the purple bit at the right of the photo) and take you counterclockwise around the room. But first – look up!

Technically I guess you’d be looking straight ahead from your stop at the top of the stairs. The corner over my ironing board has this support beam that I painted a pretty blue and then wrote “make” in purple. That’s what I do here! I love the glass baubles hanging from the support. And just to the left of the windows hangs my very first quilt. (More info about that here.)

If you walk down the stairs you’ll run into my supremely awesome ironing board. It’s an Ikea hack and I posted all the details and instructions here.

The baskets and drawers are a later addition. (More Ikea stuff). All my wool felt is stored in the drawers. The blue cubbies are for general supplies (starch, water bottle for filling my iron, embroidery hoops, etc.). The natural baskets hold a lot of the tools and supplies I sell in the shop.

Keep moving to the left and you come to my desk, with some things I love hanging over it. I especially love these toys by Amanda Visell.

And here’s my desk itself. It’s a hollow-core closet door from Home Depot sitting on two glass-fronted end tables from Target. It’s the best desk ever!

The scanner and two printers used to be stored under my old desk so that I had to sit on the floor every time I wanted to use them. My back is very glad I don’t have to do that anymore. 🙂

See the tiny bit of orange hutch in the top left corner? That’s next.

The jars in this hutch hold buttons, trim, elastic, eyeballs and more fun stuff – but it’s also a place where I put random things I love, like this. . .

Behind the doors at the bottom of the hutch are random office supplies and all my shipping supplies.

If we keep moving left we’ll zoom past a tall bookcase full of kids nonfiction books. . .

. . . and come to these low bookshelves where I store all my kits.

Turn the corner and this is where I store Cuddle Fleece.

The quilt over the top keeps the bolts safe from sunlight and dog hair. 🙂

Turn the corner again and you’ll pass my washer and dryer, the door to Jo’s room, and a (probably overflowing) laundry hamper before you come to this.

The right bookcase is all my picture books – great reference for when I need to know what a crocodile might look like standing upright on his back legs. 🙂

The left bookcase is all my craft/sewing/drawing/design reference books and sketchbooks, plus a few favorite things like the Party Animals.

There’s a new guy ready to join the party soon!

Continue left and there’s this long row of low bookcases along the half-wall overlooking my dining room.

A peek inside my clean sewing room - Shiny Happy World studio

This is where I keep thread, beads, markers, paints, glue, my tool basket, files of patterns in progress, and other stuff. It’s just a step away from my main work table so it’s really handy. If I want to keep a clean sewing room – I need to make it easy to put things away properly. Otherwise I’ll let those supplies pile up.

Now we’re back to the stairs. Under the stairs is some pretty art. . .

. . . and this piece of furniture.

The striped bins hold my scraps and behind the doors you’ll find paper, extra printer ink, and random, bulky weird-shaped things like my tripods.

On the wall above the stairs (as you head back up to my husband’s office) is a collection of some of my favorite children’s book art.

It’s impossible to shoot a photo without getting sun glare – I’ve tried every time of day and every time of year. But there’s some great stuff up there!

We skipped a couple of tables in the middle of the room.

This is my main work table with a big cutting mat up top, and fabric storage underneath. (And Augie Dog peeking in the side of the photo.) It’s between my desk and the low storage shelves.

Just past it you can see my sewing table – the magenta one.

That table top is a collage of picture book pages with a layer of clear epoxy over it. I love it! You can see how I did it here. There’s a futon backed up to the sewing table, because my studio is also the guest room. 🙂

And that’s it! My clean sewing room! More details coming every day this week about fabric storage, tool storage, embroidery floss storage, and pins & needles.

I hope you enjoyed the tour! Happy Monday!

Today is going to be great! – Free Felt Pattern for January

January 2, 2015

Happy New Year!

I’m a morning person. I really do wake up most of the time happy and excited to start my day.

I know this can be super annoying. I live with two not-morning people who speak in grunts for the first hour they’re up. By the time they wake up I’ve usually been working for a couple of hours and I have all kinds of things I’m excited to show them. I’ve learned to restrain myself until they’re past the grunting stage. 🙂

As Polyanna as it can be – my eternal optimism is part of who I am. It’s a part of me that I like – and a part that I fully embrace in my work. So my studio is a great place to hang this happy reminder of how I like to start every day!

I love happy words, felt applique, and embroidered details – so you KNOW I had a ton of fun stitching up this project. 🙂

Here’s how. . .

Download the pattern here.

I printed the reversed version of the pattern onto a sheet of freezer paper, then cut the letters apart and fused them to some of my smallest felt scraps. I cut out the letters and the freezer paper at the same time – it’s the best way to accurately cut small, detailed pieces like this.

I colored in the regular (not reversed) version of the pattern with some crayons first to help me choose a good balance of colors and make sure I didn’t end up with consecutive letters in the same color.

My scraps were ruby red slippers, loden, periwinkle, love bug blue, old gold, and copper. Use what you have! Your scraps will be in colors you love!

Arrange the letters carefully on your base fabric. I used black cotton twill.

Today is going to be great! Free pattern from Shiny Happy World.

The pattern shows the letters arranged in an 8-inch circle, with a dotted line showing the vertical and horizontal centers. That line can help you eyeball the arrangement of your words. I used a 9-inch hoop for a little extra breathing room – plus it’s what I had on hand. 🙂

You can pin the letters in place, but it drives me bonkers when my embroidery thread catches on the pins, so I glued each letter in place with a tiny dab from a fabric glue stick.

Whipstitch around all the letters.

I love the look of whipstitch in matching color thread, but an outline in blanket stitch in contrasting thread would also be really nice.

I could have stopped there – and I almost did. I thought there was a real charm to the simple refrigerator-magnet-letter look. But I couldn’t resist adding a bit of extra fancification. 🙂 I did keep the extra stitching tone-on-tone so the effect wouldn’t be too wild or overwhelming. And I love the texture it adds!

Sometimes I just did little straight stitches across the letter.

Sometimes I did French knots in the center.

Sometimes I made little stars out of simple straight stitches.

Sometimes I backstitched a stick letter right in the middle of the block letter.

And sometimes I did some extra little stitches across the backstitched letter for a “Frankenstein stitches” kind of look. 🙂

For the two i letters and the exclamation point, I stitched a star in the dot and a row of three backstitches in the line.

I didn’t plan anything out – I just did what would be easiest in each letter and tried not to do the same fancification in two letters right next to each other.

Finished!

I finished the back using this technique. No glue!

Now it’s hanging in my studio and I smile every time I see it. Even at 6 am. 🙂

Happy stitching!

Advantages of Icing Dye

Wilton Icing Dye Color Card

Notes on Dyeing

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