What a mess! ("Before" Pictures)

Sewing spaces become messy of necessity -- quilting just requires a lot of stuff. They stay messy (at least mine does) because there is not a good place to put all the stuff. (The old word for fabric was "stuff", and I sometimes wonder whether there's a connection.) I have the luxury of a huge L-shaped room with an open, under-the-stairs nook in the basement. But I still don't have a good place to put things. Right now most of the space is taken up with the donated stash and partially completed quilt kits for the guild's Project Linus committee. We've just started to buy plastic bins for holding sorted fabric, but you can see we still have some boxes. Big rolls of batting are on the right, and partially completed kits are in Harry & David boxes on the opened out futon.


Here's another view of the futon with boxes I've just been going through for binding fabric. The green bins hold fabrics large enough to use as backing, but some of those were donated on bolts and don't really fit. It's not a good use of the stacker for this reason, and because the fabric in the lower two bins is not easily accessible. As you can see by the futon and the forlorn TV in the corner, this used to be a guest room.


Directly across from the futon is a large cutting table. Right now it's piled with completed tops that have been measured against the cutting mat so I can find backing, batting, and binding to fit. Of course, I'll need to pile up the tops to get to the cutting mat!

And here's a tub of quilts ready to be quilted. There are ten pieced tops here, each in a bag with batting and binding and backing. I'm taking these to the guild meeting tonight in hopes that members will take them and finish them!

So why is this a "before" post? Because things are about to change! I hate the clutter but it is a real pain to put things away. After working with the Linus stash for awhile, I have a pretty good idea what we need, so this weekend it's off to Sam's Club (a fellow quilter is a member) to get some fabulous shelves like the ones we had at work. They are very sturdy metal, they roll, and the shelves are adjustable. I can put the backing fabric on them, put many tubs on them, and stack the kits-in-progress. Hoorah! Stay tuned -- with luck, I'll get them this weekend.