I think they learned it as kids. When my kids were small as soon as the phone rang it was their cue to start a tantrum or needing my undivided attention. I didn't get much sewing done unless they were at school or asleep.
Dh does the same thing to me.

My sewing room is a mess and I can say its not all my fault.
My dd sews too and she often leaves stuff wherever she left it. I get fed up and put it all in front of her bedroom door. lol
I make lots of scrap quilts and its so hard to be neat when you have scraps all over the table.

DH has been working about 400 miles away since May and doesn't get home as often as he claimed he would. He's working for his son (my DSS) and being spoiled rotten, so he's not that anxious to make the trip LOL.
Since he's been gone the bomb has definitely gone off in my sewing room and the fallout is all over the house! I seem to have fabric in every room and closet all of a sudden and when he does come home it takes some serious crisis cleaning to get things at least picked up in the house. I can always close the door to the sewing room...........as long as I move the things out of the way that are preventing the door from closing......Oh dear, and yes the phone always ring and the dogs always want out and the cats are always on the wrong side of the door........and I can't find that darned buzzer either!
Happy quilting everyone!

Debbie,
I love your sewing room "sign"! Did you make it?
Audrey

I still remember the time that my family decided to clean house for my birthday. My husband took me for a really long drive and when I came back the downstairs was spotless. (Housekeeping is not my favorite activity!) They even took the magnets off the fridge and quotes off the cabinets! Thank goodness my sewing room and office desk were off limits or I think the outcome would have been much worse than it was! I'm afraid that I didn't respond very kindly. I don't think that will be my birthday gift again! :) Thank goodness for machines or the laundry and dishes would never get done! My microwave is also my friend!

Join the club. I have my pilot's license, I pile it here and I pile it there. I can barely get in this room, have a path to my clothes closet and one to the computer and one to the sewing machine. Once in awhile I dig through everthing and get it sort of organized, and say, give me ten minutes and it will be back to normal. I know anything I want is on the bottom of a stack of boxes but live with it.
DH gave me a plaque that says, Creative people are rarely tidy, he understands and quit growling years ago.

Carol J.

My DH peeks in my room and asks, "Maybe after Christmas you'll clean it?" I look up from the sewing machine under tons of material and grumble, "Maybe."

I had such good intentions for keeping everything neat and tidy. That lasts for a day, oh well, creative energy!! I try to put the scraps in an open basket and keep most of my cutting surface cleared. It's too much fun to create to worry about the piles:-)

Scapykate, well said.

I agree, hate to be interrupted, so I just wait for afternoons when dh is movie watching or napping.

If I had that sewing room wall hanging it would have to say-
I love my messy sewing room!!!!

Yeah, just me and my 2 big dogs. I do keep all my sewing in the basement sewing studio. I have an old sewing machine in the entryway mostly as decoration. But when I am working on a project, usually a couple at a time, things get pretty messy. I always clean up before I start on a new project. Speaking of which, time to get off here and get started sewing.....

While I was working on my blocks for the hot air balloon swap, it looked like one of my 'balloons' popped.

I took the doors off the closet and the door to the room as they took up toooo much room. I now have a tension rod and curtain for the door. I agree when I lived alone it was where is the sofa rather than where is the project. :shock: :roll:

My husband just does not understand my organized mess.
Everything should be where it belongs all the time according to him. I would never get anything finished that way.

Hi Debbie, I love your sewing room sign, it is so cute, would love to have one for my little sewing room. Have a great day.

I love your wall hanging. I don't have a sewing room. I use the dining room table and therefore always have to clean off a little corner for my DH and myself to eat. Then there is the corner where the iron, ironing board, and a few WIP's are stored on the floor in stacks. So my "sewing area" is almost always in a desheveled state. When company is coming I just carry it all into the guest bedroom and shut the door.

I'm obsessive about mine. I clean up constantly.There is a place for everything and it goes there. I want it clean when I come in every morning,as I also have my computer and tv here and practically live in this room.

Here is mine,,this is as messy as it gets...

Wow!!!

That is how I like to keep mine Riversong..

Glad I'm not alone with hubby attention 'problems'. Mine too, I get into my sewing room, start to sew and he is calling me about something. OR he will come to the sewing room door "You got a minute?" Hour later I'm back and then it's "Look what's on TV!" Sometimes I'll get one of his favorite western/cowboy movies and put that in the DVD and he is good for at least the length of the movie. Now that fishing season is almost over, it will get worse. But I am thankful, if Hubs hasn't seen me for an hour or so he will come and check on me, see if I'm ok. So that is nice. When he is hungary, he cooks, so that is super. In our first year of marriage, 38.5 years ago, that if I'm out and about, I did not take the kitchen stove or the frig with me. Hubs has learned a lot over the years. Yes, I agree, I think the phone is rigged to the sewing chair. Never fails as soon as you set down to sew, that phone will ring.

Yes my room looks horrible when I am working on a project. I think it is because I don't take time to put things away. I want to just get on withwhat I am doing. Fortunately I have a husband that can cook, clean, do dishes, wash clothes and doesn't mind doing those things. He is retired same as I and we help each other. But I still can understand where you are coming from.

Wow... This is so true! Phone, Friends and Family think that if you are sewing you aren't busy. LOL!

By the time I get my sewing room back in order at one end, the other seems to be creeping up on me again. I think I create better in chaos :)

Debbie, love your wall hanging. I'm somewhat a neighbor as I'm just down the road east of S'ville a bit.

My sewing room is pretty neat becase I can't stand a mess so I clean as I go or a soon as I stop for the day. My DH works alot so I am usually home alone. When I sit down to quilt my dog wants to help so he lays on my foot pedal and I have to be very careful not to mess up my project. On top of fiighting for my foot pedal that is when the phone usually starts ringing. So my biggest distraction is the phone calls with people trying to sell something that I am not nterested in or there is a recording on the other end.

I have learned that to get anything done in my sewing room, I need to only go in there to sew when the house is empty or all are asleep. I take my cordless phone to moniter any calls from the kids and sew. Of course dinner is either ready for heatup or a crockpot. The laundry has already been started. So I switch loads when I need to get up. The loads don't get folded until all are back that evening when I don't have to worry about it.

Solution for the phone calls---caller ID and a phone right next to the sewing machines. Someone invariably calls when I am embroidering, gets rid of them fast when they can't talk over the noise of the machine sewing. My computer is also close to my machines, so I can be on here and be sewing too. You know you need frequent quick breaks.....

Wow, its funny that I ran across this post. I have been spending a lot of time in my sewing room lately. My house needs cleaning really bad, the laundry needs catching up, etc. I am beginning to feel a little guilty about sewing so much. My DH is cleaning some for me today while I am at my day job. So guess what I will be doing when I get home. My excuse is that it is getting close to Christmas again and I need to get the holiday stuff done. Sure wish I could afford a house keeper and cook.
Charlene

Welcome from Murrells Inlet, SC

My studio looks like a bomb exploded when I'm working, luckily I have a friend who visits fairly often and she will calmly refold fabrics that are all over the work table, floor and any other surface available and put them back on a shelf. She is a neat freak and I am not, at least not when I'm working on a project. It works both ways, she gets to fondle my fabric and I get it folded and back on the shelf. Of course she then knows what I have, so if she needs a piece of fabric she knows who to call. Works great for us.

Yes, right now it does, but if I am starting a new project, I have to get the whole place organized first. I need some semblance of order, to create.

Oh yes! a bomb just went off in my sewing roon this weekend ! I made a new design wall last week, and it's 6ftx8ft. It dawned on me ( while I was laying awake w/ insomnia) that I could quickly and easily 'fix' the HST I have left over from the siggies block swap; I want to use the corners on the backing... so.... I tried the techique, don't know why it took me all these years to use the corner of my ruler to square up the folded HST !!!???? Any way... I have some of those on the wall, some English paper piecing I'm doing and Jinny byers 'woven ribbons' quilt I'm making for my sister, and the left overs from the Jinny byers quilt will be a companion quilt, all on the design wall. So, 4 quilts in progress means 4 times the bits & pieces , instructions, tape, rulers..... Plus someone didn't put the laptop away after they used it, so it's on the work station too. WOW

Wow, this one popped up just for me! I watched the Hoarders on Sunday and decided it is time to make some changes in my sewing room and am in the process of folding all my fabric into neat orderly piles and putting them neatly onto their shelf in color order even light to dark, and throwing away things that I don't need or use. I think I will want to spend more time in my sewing room when I am done.

YES !!!!!!If anyone wants to eat...they are on there own !!!!!......but i will do laundrey......just because the washer and dryer is in my sewing room....(it was the garage} !!!!!!!

Several years ago I had a non-sewing friend help me organize some rooms. I redid my sewing room and she helped me clean it out and start over. She couldn't understand why I needed so many rulers and so much fabric and why everything had to be out in the open. I just smiled and told her not to worry about it. She came over later and commented that it didn't do much good to clean it up - it was messy again. Again, I smiled and told her it works for me. However, I do wish I had more than 1 square foot to user on my cutting table as someone else mentioned!

I try to keep my sewing room clean it's in my basement and my laundry room is nearby. If I go down and start sewing I sometimes act like I'm doing laundy and it's funny how no one bothers you when laundry is involved. Or I sometimes look mad and no one ask questions then.

Cook, iron, clean....never heard of it. LOL

That happens in my house whether I am in the middle of a project or NOT in the middle of a project. So you are ahead of me by a longshot!