Studio Makeover, Part V: The Final Tour

I've been following the Sew Canadian series of studio tours on Mad About Patchwork and decided finally to finish (more or less) last August's studio makeover.  To recap, my studio is in a first floor room that's meant as part of a rental suite in our house.   It's about 10' x 11', with south-facing windows and two doors, since the room provides passage between the front entryway and the back of the house.  It's small, but based on the Sew Canadian tour, it seems generously sized compared to what many Canadian quilters have, even among those with dedicated sewing space.  Erica at Happy Fabric, for example, sews in a tiny 6'x9' room without any windows, while Krista at Poppyprint has an 8'x9' sewing room, all of which makes it a little hard to keeping calling my studio cramped.  On the other hand, I once read a blog in which someone complained about the limits of her lavish, 400-square-foot sewing palace, and I've seen the occasional quilt studio online that's almost as large as our whole house.  At any rate, I'm lucky to have my modest but comfortable fabric empire, and in my renovation, I've tried to take advantage of every bit of cubic footage. 

As you might recall, a year ago I installed a lot of new cabinetry, and I left off while waiting for the final set of shelves to arrive.  I put the shelves in last fall, and more recently, I spent the past few weeks cleaning up a lot of mess and putting in a few final touches.

Here's what you see from the entryway, with about two-thirds of the room visible in the photo:

The windows are on the right, and as you enter the room, there's floor-to-ceiling storage on the west wall off to the left:

Almost all of the furnishing is from Ikea: the Billy bookcase and wall cabinet, the wire mesh drawers, and the red cardboard storage boxes.  As I mentioned last week, I used washi paper (from Paper-Ya on Granville Island) and cardboard to make inserts and cover the glass doors.  For the shelf above the wall cabinet, I splurged and ordered shelving from Pottery Barn.  It took forever to arrive, but when it finally came, it fit in perfectly with the rest of the room.

On the righthand side of the above photo, you can see the doorway leading to the back of the house.  The open door hides a multitude of sins:

As I said before, my studio makeover prioritized storage maximization.  In addition to hiding some cardboard and other items on the floor, the door itself also holds a storage sling made from an old sheet that I use for extra cutting mats and cardboard boxes. 

The studio doesn't have a lot of space for a design wall, so I installed one with three panels, two of which hang from a folding closet door and can be removed easily when I need to get at the fabric inside:

No wasted space here--I even cut around the doorknob so that I could use the closet door for the design wall!

On the east wall, I installed more Pottery Barn shelving below the Ikea kitchen cabinets that I put in last August.  The cutting table, which is the perfect height for me, is also kitchen storage from Ikea.  The placement jutting out from the wall, rather than up against it, is important to me, since I like to be able to work from all three sides.  As you can see, I still have some detritus hiding on the floor.  I'm too embarrassed to show what's inside any of the storage, but I will confess that it's all pretty much full, mainly of fabric.  

My sewing machine tables also stand along the east wall, straight ahead as you enter the room:

I mainly use a Juki TL-2010Q, which I bought about a year-and-a-half ago and just love.  When I need a freearm, I haul out my old Janome MC5000, which also still holds my affections.  When not in use, the Janome sits on the windowsill under its cover.

In theory, I can remove the back table and put it away in our storage room when I don't have anything large to quilt.  In practice, I've had the two-table set-up in place for about two years now.

To the left of the sewing machine tables, there's plenty of room for storing notions and other supplies:

Yet again, the bookshelf is from Ikea, as is the red drawer unit, along with the sewing machine tables (but not the metal adjustable legs, which I purchased separately).  The various shoeboxes are decidedly not from Ikea, but they are great for organizing supplies.  I suppose they would look really nice if I covered them with washi or fabric, but functionality is good enough for me!  The drawer unit has wheels, so I can pull it out easily if I need to.  The pegboard, which was a scrap that just happened to fit the bookshelf perfectly, represents another example of storage maximization:

Small touches here and there brighten the room, such as my green pencil box from Room in Order:

 
The silver grey plastic trash bin, as well as the stylish set of black metal bookends on top of the Billy bookcase, are also from the same place, which is a wonderful Vancouver store that I learned about from the studio tour at Terry Aske Art Quilt Studio.  Terry is a fellow member of VMQG and a supremely talented quilter and artist.

I removed the ironing board in order to take photographs, but here it is, back in its rightful place by the window:

My decor is on the spartan side, in part because I've commandeered almost all of the wall space for working or storage purposes.  Even the wall behind my sewing table gets used at times for photographing items for my Etsy shop.  I also like the minimalist, functionalist approach, which keeps my focus on whatever I'm creating at the moment.  But I have a couple of happy little items hanging here and there to keep the room from being sterile:

And that, as they say, is that!  Except that it's not--I still need to construct a new foam insulation extension table to fit the Juki (for an example, see here), find that stupid misplaced tool that will allow me to raise the adjustable legs on the front sewing table up by a notch, and make a dust cover for my wire mesh drawer unit.  I also need to do some major destashing, in the hopes of storing away that extra stuff that's currently on the floor behind the cutting table.  But my studio is functional, clean, and basically ready for a new round of creative activity this fall.

Linking up to WIP Wednesday on Freshly Pieced and The Needle and Thread Network.  I'm also posting a few photos on the Sew Canadian Flickr group.  Happy quilting, everyone!