Could anyone else be as an untidy quilter and sewer?....
 

Okay, I sew a lot. I mean obsessively! And my machine is on a cushion floor which is easy to clean, and I do even ( occasionally) clean! But my DH finally gave up trying to get the threads out of my chair wheels and bought new wheels. I have a great lumbar support rolling? ..chair. Doesn't roll much with all those threads. Am I just the wildest sewer ever or does anyone else have this problem?

I sew in my dining room. My 2015 Resolution was to clean up after completing a project before stating a new one, so you can imagine what the room usually looks like. My only saving grace is that we actually use the dining room to dine a couple times a year, so I have to excavate then.

I do understand what your saying, after a day of sewing my husband states it looks like a hurricane went thru my sewing room. I just had to purchase another rolling chair due to the wheels being clogged with pieces of thread and scrap fabric.
Its my sewing room and when my husband cant stand to look at the mess he shuts the door, and tells me that if I am comfortable working in the mess then more power to me lol

Tartan, I'll have to remember to put a bit of oil in mine. They are about ready to be cleaned out again. So no, Oldquilter, you are not the only messy quilter out there. I actually have a problem remembering to keep my threads etc. tidy at a retreat or class. Right now, I also have several pins (dropped the dang pin bowl) and a lot of paper from a paper piece block on my floor. It will be tidied up tonight--or maybe tomorrow. Depends how energetic I feel after today's activities.

I am also a member of getting the wheels tangled with thread so do not feel that you are alone, you got plenty of neat company !!

I'm usually pulling threads from my chair and dog hair. I dust a couple times a day because of the dog hair and have to the same to the kitchen chairs. They have casters also and my office chairs. Come to think of it we don't have any chairs that aren't mobile. All casters! Pickin' and not grinnin'!

I found a plastic bag holder that attaches to my sewing desk so I try to control the threads and hit the bag as much as I can. Plus I put the thread in the bag out side for bird nests in the spring.

Me, me, me!

I have two sewing rooms and both have stuff everywhere...one room isn't enought for all my junk.

I use to be. I made myself put all threads and bits of fabric in a trash holder. I bought a big beautiful basket, my stuff basket, and have it on my cutting table. I put everything that seems to collect while sewing in that basket, it's not laying all over. The stuff basket fills up fast and every so often I put everything away where it goes. I have baskets of scissors, seam ripper, and pin cushions sitting at different places in the room so I don't have to keep looking for one, just grab one where ever I'm at.

I had to take my vaccuum to the dealer to have the roller replaced because it wouldn't turn anymore. The dealer cut all the threads off and cleaned it up for me and laughed at me. He didn't charge me cause he said it was the messiest challenge he ever had.

No sorry, I am on the other end of the spectrum. I am obsessively clean and organized. I have something to catch my threads next to my machine and A small waste bucket for unusable trims on the cutting table. Everything so far has a place in my sewing room which by the way can be seen from and Living room and front door. (My sewing room is in the sunroom.:) My happy place.

As far as chairs, I desperately need a new chair. The chair I have now is too low. (Soon) Ikea has one I really want that would be perfect. (Saving) So, I don't have the chair problem yet. :D

Now ask me about 3 little doggies running in and out from the back yard every day. Ack, (serious eye roll) I'm constantly sweeping up dirt. It is never ending. Thank god they don't shed much. :D

Every one of my machines has a waste basket or thread catcher but I still end up with thread on the floor.

I am also a member of thread build up in my chair wheels. I have not looked lately.

I may not be a neat sewer, but I'm a happy sewer, I pickup after each project

I take my chair outside and burn the threads off with a match. I would do it inside but I am afraid I might set off the smoke alarm LOL!

The wheels on my chair have to be cleaned too! Last week I found my DG with the vacuum all apart, cleaning it. Couldn't beleive how much better it worked. It's only used on that level of the house.

Don't have wheels in my sewing room, but this is my vaccuum all the time! I just flip it over and sit there with small scissors and have at it.

I have a chair at my sewing machine and another one at my desk so I don't have the problem with the threads winding around my wheels. That doesn't mean I have a clean sewing room..... no no no. I'm a very messy sewer but when I finish a project, I don't start another one til I clean up a little bit at least a little path to the machine.

I've been doing some cleaning and reorganizing and I had a good supply of those plastic drawer thingys, shallow and the deep ones, I told my dh that I wanted all the shallow ones put in my sewing room, he asked where in the sewing room, because he'd seen the mice packing up and leaving, said they're leaving because there's no room, although in truth, there aren't ANY mice in my sewing room. The good part is, I did manage to get them all in my room and they're now all filled. LOL We won't even talk floors, cutting table, ironing board, sewing desk, etc. LOL

Have converted my "parlor" into a studio. It is visible from three directions. Since I had to clean it after some neglect, I have been so much better at pick up as I sew now as I had really let it get messy. I apply wide adhesive tape to the base of my task lamp to the rear area of my machine so that I can pat down my threads on it. I have a habit of placing them there anyway, so...just putting some tape down is great. Now, the floor, which is carpeted...I have to be diligent with sweeping with broom so as to save on my vacuum machine before using it. I have been known to apply tape around my swifter to grab loose pieces of fabric and other debris in carpet. To my DIL s it must look frightful to them. But, the more creative I seem to feel, the more stuff is out in the open. you are not alone.

I seem to have taken over the dining room with my vintage machines. All the furniture is still in it and it gets messy sometimes. It never seems to be "very clean" but somehow other than the floor I can keep it pretty clean. Organized is another story. It seems to take too much time for me to put things away as I use them. And, it is annoying to me that the rest of my "stuff" is in one other room and a closet in yet another room. I can't move it all to the dining room because there isn't enough room. But, I try. That's good, right?

My DH regularly cuts the threads out of our vacuum cleaner due to past problems! No matter how I try to put stray threads in my thread catcher, lots of threads end up on my clothes or the floor all around our house. Now I'm whispering, don't tell anyone, the other day, after I had been "unsewing" something with red thread, he found some in the "bathroom". He said have you been ingesting thread now? I thought that was sew funny!

I try to clean up my room with every finished project. When it is clean I call my husband in to take a look cause it looks so nice! But as he says -- it can either be clean or be used. It just can't be both ways!

I am admittedly a very untidy quilter/sewist. Try as a can to have a sewing space that I see in so many photos of beautifully organized areas... its just can be done .. at least by me. When I am on a sewing bender.... "stuff" in my sewing space is everywhere. I have thought of naming my space chaos!

I have used a wire pet brush to "gather" longer threads off the carpet before vacuuming. Every so often have to check the chair wheels AND the vacuum cleaner rollers for threads.

My husband's leather work area looks about like my sewing area - just bigger chunks. Lol!

I keep a small garbage just to the right of my machine and it's pretty automatic for me now to snip and drop the threads in the basket. Not to say that I still don't end up with threads on the floor but having that basket there helps. I tend to have more of a problem with pins ending up all over the floor.

I too keep a small trash can very close when I'm sewing. But I miss, lol. Oh, have to share my DH's latest idea. He gave me a magnetic screw holder for mechanics, for my pins. So far I havent dumped them in the floor since using it. Didn't mention we've had the same problem with vacuum wheels, thankfully the one we use now can turn the brushes off. Have locked those rollers up with thread before. Yep, creative and sloppy, that's me��

Funny. My first thought today was that I needed to straighten out my sewing room after work today before I begin sewing. Can't find anything!

When we added on my sewing room, I had laminate flooring put down. That seemed to take care of threads getting wrapped up in the wheels. But I have been raising some great crops of dust bunnies:)

Same here... my Janome lives on our dining room table so she gets moved into the laundry room on an evening we are entertaining guests. I am forced to keep my sewing paraphenalia to a limit since our dining room is right at the entrance of our home but I do get a lot of exercise up and down the stairs since my gadgets and fabric live in the spare bedroom.

I just spent the last four weeks cleaning everything up, labeling drawers, containers, refolding fabric, separating colors, tonal, batik, solids, tools, sticky notes, putting pins in the right containers, you name it and I did it. And I was so excited yesterday ---- beautiful little corner of the house, some of my mothers quilting hung on the wall and the wardrobe that I keep a lot of my stuff in covered with Command stickers to hang my Mom's hanging stuff, Sun catchers on the window, and I started cutting out fabric for a quilt and started sewing - I managed to get six-12" blocks done (double pin wheel), 18 to go, and I was so tired last night and I looked down - PUZELS (pronounced like the word put only puzel. Puzels are the threads that you cut off of your sewing. Who has time to put all of them into the waste basket. Besides which, when I throw a thread into the waste basket, it flies away!!!!!! So I just let them sit there til I am done for the evening and then vacuum them up - Got a new Shark - whoo-hoo, is that a charmer!!!! picks up puzels from 20 years ago!!!
So, in another six months I'll be doing the same thing I did for the past four weeks. But I will vacuum up yesterday this morning!!!!! Oh, yah, several years ago, I had my brother in law, the potter, make my mother a little jar with the word PUZEL written on it. It has a little cover and everything. She had the same problem as the rest of us - puzels. I thought it was a good idea. She quilted til she was around 95 and I thought this would be easier for her to not have to bend over and pick up threads. Well, two years ago, this coming July, Mom went to that great Quilting Retreat in the sky and I took the puzel jar. Guess what? I don't use it either. Mom was right. It takes more time to put a thread in a container than it does to let it fall where it may and vacuum it up later. Lots of memories in my little corner of the house. Edie

I'm not good at keeping my fabric tidy & neat, so do try to control my threads. I typically vacuum at the end of a project right before I have to try to iron my pieced top before I quilt it. I hate having to pick all the threads off the quilt top again. I keep my tops thread free as I go. I really detest all those little smidgeons of thread staring up at me from the seams. I don't get the thread build up in my rollers of my chair, because most of it goes in the trash can which sits beside me. I have 5 trash cans in a two room area. There is always one near me, whether I am cutting or sewing.

Just an FYI...about the threads for the nests. Years ago, we raised parrots and had read that the thread was a good idea. One of our African Grey babies got a thread around a toe and had we not seen it and cut it off, would have lost the toe. I don't know if the same thing could happen to much smaller outside birds, but thought I would share our experience.

I have a trash can sitting by my machine table and every thread makes its way into the can. My room isn't large enough for a chair with wheels -- no problem there. Since cleaning is not my forte, I make a point of never throwing anything on the floor -- it makes life much easier.

I have got to be the messiest person in the world when it comes to my sewing room. I find projects occasionally that I don't even remember starting.

My sewing room is the living room so I try to keep it clean but lately it's become a bit of a mess. I haven't had the thread problem, but I'm also really paranoid about my nutty cat eating thread - I've caught him at it before and had to pull a big long strand out of his mouth/throat and that wasn't pleasant for anybody. So I make sure to throw away threads as I snip them and when I leave my sewing area I'm now in the habit of giving the floor a look-over and picking up any thread longer than an inch or so. (Although there usually aren't any...I don't seem to drop thread that much.)

My room is the worst for clutter, though. I have vintage sewing machines lined up under one table but ran out of room and now they're lining up on top of the table too and perched in other odd spots. (And I don't really have that many, just no room.) I pre-wash before I stash my fabric but I'm also really lazy about it, so that means there's probably 20+ yards worth of new fabric folded and piled up on the table, waiting to go through the wash....all the fabric I've bought since August or so and didn't need for an immediate project. (Lazy, lazy, lazy) My cutting table is only half-useable; the other half is piles of fabric I had pulled to audition and never put back, piles of paperwork (receipts, drawings, patterns, instructions...), and just random "stuff" I haven't found a home for. It's sort of neat (in neat piles anyway) but it's been nagging me so I need to get that cleaned up.

I don't eat in there or drink anything other than water; and the animals are mostly kept out of there, so it stays clean in that respect. And I'm constantly bustling around and fussing with things in there so nothing ever gets dusty...it's just way too cluttered. I really need to sort some stuff and move some of those older machines out of there...it's a sewing room, not a sewing machine repair room!

I have a lot of different sewing items and craft items in my sewing room...that sometimes looks a little messy. But I'm careful about threads all over the floor because of a new puppy. Currently cutting up all scraps into 2 1/2" and 2" blocks and trying to keep everything ON the table. Guess I'm a little OCD in my older years.

I have three sets of wheels in my "office" aka the old kitchen or the sewing room. I have 2 sewing machines and 2 sergers up and running. All of the flat surfces in my sewing room are either formica or kitchen counter top tile. Each of the machines has a thread/bits and pieces catcher that came with the machine OR was fabricated with my two little hands from a plastic bag and tape. (This is when the tile and formica get important.) I open the top of the bag and stick down just under 1/2 of the edge on the top of whatever the machine is sitting on. Threads and bits fall or are dropped onto the bag.

Ta Ta! One downside, though. Until you get into the habit of dropping/scooting threads, etc.,one still gets thread/bits build up in rollers. It does get less with time. I promise.

Any "excavations" around here are facilitated by long, really pointed tweezers from a "hard to find tool" place and an oldish but not quite dead seam ripper. We needent discuss what to do with those because all my sister and brother sewers already know what to do with them regarding clogged wheels.

Please enjoy your day. Thank you for being there. You make my days much nicer.

Pat