tessagin

I keep thinking fire hazard. Also the other day, I was cutting some pieces of fabric and when I reached for a piece of another print on a back pile of stash. I nearly got bit by a very large and ugly spider. Wasn't a tarantula but just very large house spider. whacked it with a fly swatter. Thank goodness no babies. So word of caution, careful when you reach for a piece of fabric. This particular stash was on a shelf.

Wanabee Quiltin

Yes, my room gets cluttered and messy. I love to quilt and when I get going, there is ironing board and iron set up and fabric all over, I have way too many books and magazines and love them all. Please do not throw your magazines away, I am the person who buys them in thrift stores and charity stores like Goodwill. I have all kinds of cutesy pincushions on my desk and yes, I know they need to go, but not just yet. I have just finished a scrappy quilt and I love it, but it is a job cutting up all those pieces of fabric and the room gets too messy while I am doing it. I always have about 3 or 4 quilts I am working on at one time and I am very productive so I have no big plans on stopping that. I am with you in not giving your fabric away, it's yours. Don't be so hard on yourself about the mess, you will wake up one day and decide what to do about it. I did and things are much better in my room now. Good Luck !

Country1

Ditto here! It seems to happen every time I turn my back it sneaks up on me!!!!!

Snooze2978

I can relate as I'm sure so many other can too. In my Florida home my sewing room was just 10 x 18 and it was very crowded with a 8' quilt system. Now in my new home in Iowa I have most all the basement which I measured the other day to be around 20 x 25. I thought I was in hog heaven with all that room. Well, one thing led to another. I decided with all this room I'd enlarge my cutting table. Then came an upgraded quilt system....12 foot frame. I leave my ironing board up all the time. I added a design wall which I didn't have in the last sewing room. It just keeps going on. I can get around my room well enough but as we all know............we want more. I'm fairly organized thankfully. My fabric is all folded and on their shelves. Have lots of pegboards for rulers, scissors, threads, etc. I know I still have totes filled with UFOs I started down in Florida and I'm getting to them once I finish quilted the last of the quilts I started eons ago. I clean up the room and vacuum after every project/quilt so I can start new again. I tend to throw threads, scraps on the floor as I work. Then clean it up afterwards. When I start a new project, I pick out the pattern, then the fabrics, lay everything on the side of the cutting table and get started. If I need more fabrics, then I take what I have to the fabric store to add to it. I have lots of fabrics so its seldom I need to do this. My scrap pile is overflowing and even after making 4 over sized lap quilts, it didn't go down. But I'm happy in my little haven down here.

Michellesews

Sorry, but there is no cure. Michelle

katesnanna

I try to leave the room tidy before I go back to the house. It doesn't take too much time. I also bought another portable clothes line and hang fabric on that if I'm going to have it out for a while. Mine is not spotless but I work better when things are tidy to start with.If I do pull fabric out and I'm not going to use it I put it back in the cupboard.
I still have quite a lot of organizing to do but would rather be sewing or quilting. Haven't been out there too much recently because I'm knitting for a lady for her new grand child. When I finish knitting I intend to spend a lot of time out there.

btiny36

LOL, I cleaned and organized sooo well that I couldn't find anything....seriously. I lost my yellow brick road pattern oh soo long ago and yesterday, I finally found it right where I put it ....But now I try to keep things tidy. I've kinda fallin off the edge again and have 4 projects set out to be cut...so my counters are cluttered again. Oh hum whats a girl to do...sew I say sew...I'm currently working on a baby quilt doing the smaller big star pattern from Missouri site an I can say that I'm just about ready to take the blocks and burn them on our drive way.....I used 5" charms that had pinked edges ooooooh How I hate them....

Rhonda Lee

Sometimes I wonder who I am trying to impress, myself or company. I am fairly neat and organized. I mostly put things away after their use and mostly get the aftermath of scraps from a project cut up and stashed. But not always. I feel so fortunate to have my sewing studio, my machines, my stash. I feel gratitude each time I enter my space, be it clean and tidy or a little messy. I've worked years for my stuff. It's my solace. I feel blessed to be a quilter. I feel blessed to have stuff to use and make a mess. I feel blessed to have a mess. I feel blessed to clean it up. It's my gift that I have been given and that I can in return also give. So if someone else looks inside my world be it tidy or messy perhaps they just might be blessed too, because magic happens here, wonderful creative magic. Because out of that room comes items of creation that is born thru work and imagination and out of needed messes. There is a deep love for color, texture, shapes, combinations and my world is filled with it when I enter my space. I love my organized tidiness and messyness. It's what defines my creative process. I am wonderfully fortunate to be a quilter.

DonnaC

I'm just chiming in to say that I have the same issues. Last weekend I decided to pull my sewing room apart because I thought (that is the operative word - thought) I had come up with a better arrangement for my shelves. Needless to say, the room is still an absolute mess because I work during the day, and I haven't had any time to get back in there and put anything away. I keep telling myself to leave well enough alone and ignore all these "organizing ideas" that pop into my head, but do I? Nooooo!

My biggest problem is not fabric though - it's magazines and books. I love both, but at times I just want to sell them all and start over again. They take up so much space and I find myself going online all the time to look things up. Sigh......

DonnaC

Rhonda Lee - I love your post. I want to print it out, frame it, and hang it up in my sewing space. You have such an awesome way of looking at this issue!