A Tour of my Studio

Welcome to the lair of the Fiber Breathing Dragon.

My family giggles at me for how much stuff I shoe horn into my studio. And truly, I do need to do some de-stashing. I'll work on that some tomorrow, at Fabric War. Fabric War is a local SCA event, where everyone brings the stuff that has been sitting unloved in their stash. And then we all trade, and everyone somehow goes home with more stuff than they brought. Anything left over at the end of the day gets put in a big pile, and we have a free for all. Anything left after that gets donated to a local charity.

So, my job this afternoon is to go through my stash, both here in the studio and out in the shed where the gourds and extra boxes of fabric and fleece are stored. Let me give you a bit of a tour of my studio, so you can see where I work, and how much de-cluttering work I ought to be doing.

This is the south wall of my studio, and the one straight ahead of you when you walk into the room. It holds my computer desk, where I am right now. Above the desk is my reference library. To the right is my beading station, which is currently covered with a basket project, and various gourd, dyeing, spinning, and beading supplies that I need to find room for. There are a couple of tapestry and table looms squirreled away under the desks.

This is the west wall of my studio. The sun is streaming through my hand woven curtains onto my floor loom. The loom folds up and takes up less space when I'm not using it. The window leads out to my front herb and flower garden. To the right, you can see my sewing corner.


Here is the north wall and another shot of the sewing corner. That wall of books is my own personal pleasure reading library. I've been collecting mostly science fiction and fantasy since high school. I'm at the point now that if a new book comes in, I need to cull some space on the shelves. I've been using BookCrossing as a fun way to do that. Over on the bottom right, you can see my storage for big items. There is another floor loom tucked in there, an easel, a horizontal warping mill, my weasel, various baskets, an inkle loom tossed on top, and my drawings from art class are tucked down behind there.

And finally, the east wall is my storage closet. My husband put the shelves in for me. To the left is room for bolts of fabric to stand up. The top shelf holds large items, like the kumihimo stand, the drum carder, the bobbin lace pillow, etc. The next shelf down is for long flat items, like the umbrella swift and the loom reeds. I've currently got bags of finished yarn shoved in there too, waiting for them to sell on Etsy. The next two shelves hold my weaving yarn, loosely organized by color. You can just see the next shelf down, behind the roll out cutting table. That has pull out bins for small items like paint. The bottom two shelves hold big plastic bins. Inside the bins are my fiber and fabric stashes. Above on the wall is part of my collection of old weaving implements. I love to collect old textile tools, and put them back to use.

To the left of this picture is the door, with the ironing board, the drying racks, and the scorpion killing staffs tucked behind it. (Yes, scorpion squishing. I don't know that I'll ever get used to the desert Southwest.)

So there you have it. Now you've seen the organized chaos that is my studio. I've really got to do something about this--I'm starting to run out of floor space!