Session 2: First Things First

In the words of the Marvin K. Mooney book by Dr. Seuss, "The time has come, the time is now." You're ready to do a new studio. You want a new look, or you're ready to create a brand-new studio. Well, let's start with first things first. The secret to your success, and I can't stress this enough, is a well thought out plan. You don't want to just rush into this willy nilly. I want you to slow down and take your time. It's gonna save you a lot of time, it's gonna save you a lot of money, it's gonna save you a lot of frustration, and it's gonna ensure you get what you want at the end of the project. So take a deep breath and slow down. So first things first, we need to analyze your current situation. You need to find out what really works and what doesn't. You're in your studio, you're working, but something's always bugging you, or you're saying, "Gosh, I just hate this. "I hate getting up from the sewing machine "and going over to iron all the time." Okay, let's fix it. I want you to go sit in your sewing studio. I want you to be in your chair. I want you to look around, and I want you to say, "What drives me nuts? "What's going on here?" "What don't I like?" Swivel in that chair, look around, figure out what's driving you nuts, and then on a piece of paper, I want you to write it down. I don't want you to just have it in your head, I want you writing it down. What's driving you nuts, what's working, what doesn't work? Give it some thoughtful analysis. Along those lines, what can stay and what can go? You know as well as I do, we all have a lot of stuff. We need a lot of it, but there's a lot of things that we've accumulated over the years that we never use or our interests have changed. If you aren't using it or you have no interest in it, let's clean it out, let it go. You'll thank me at the end. You need to also know yourself. As you're analyzing your situation, be very honest. Even though you've seen some wonderful spaces in your favorite magazines, and you've oohed and aahed over them, let's face it, there's a little thing in the back of your head saying, "That's not me." Your space doesn't have to look like this. It needs to be your space with your stamp on it. You need to know how do you work, that's the number one question to ask yourself, how do I work, how do I function best, what makes me inspired and then be able to turn that inspiration into a finished product without any hesitation? What is your level of organization, and what is your level of tolerance for clutter or a messy work area? Those are critical. Let me give you an example. When I was in the Air Force, one of my commanders, fabulous individual, loved him to death, but the man was a mess when it came to his office. We'd go in there looking for something and couldn't find it to save ourselves, and finally, I'd have to say, "Hey boss, "where is the X, Y, Z," and he'd turn around, and from these high stacks on his desk, he'd just reach right there, pull it out, and say, "Here you go, CJ." Like how did you do that, how did you find that in that massive mountain of paperwork? It was just, it was a disaster. It worked for him. He was perfectly organized, he was very successful, he just wasn't one for being neat and organized with files and everything where it needed to be. Now let's contrast that with my mother. My mother had a phrase for everything, and probably her favorite was, "A place for everything "and everything in its place." She didn't like clutter, she didn't like a messy home, and she kept things very, very neat, and she was actually ahead of her time with organizing drawers and everything and finding ways to make things as neat and attractive as possible. It actually ended up being a good thing that she did, because in later life, she went blind and her organization skills as she was losing her sight helped her know where everything was, and was able to function for a lot longer on her own. So everybody has a different level of comfort when it comes to organization and clutter, and you just need to be honest with yourself and write it down. Now that you figured out what doesn't work, take a minute, take a deep breath, close your eyes. Now open them. I wanna see a vision. As you look around that space, what do you see? What is that perfect space where you go ahh? How do you move in it, where is everything, where's the ironing board, where are your books, what do you see as being functional? How are you functioning in there? What color, what color is your studio? Is it bright orange, is it basic beige? I don't know. What's right for you? I want you to visualize it, take some time just sitting there and spending time in the space and feeling what it can be, what do you see as the potential? Write it down, write it down, write it down. I want the keywords. I want the color. I want the feel, I want the flooring. If you drop a lot of pins, you may say, "Hmm, I want a floor that's easy to clean up." I have a husband, he walks in and literally had pins in his feet because we had carpet. That was one thing on my list, is say, "Hmm, I think I wanna change this next time." Now, as you're thinking about that, realize that we do, while you don't have to be super organized, you do need to have a place for everything. Everything needs a home, and you need to think of your storage needs. We've got fabric, we've got thread, we've got books, we've got patterns, batting if you're a quilter, stabilizer if you're an embroiderer, notions. You name it, we've gotta find a place for it. We don't need to be thinking microscopic at this point in time in your visualization stage. I want you to be working from big to small, so I'm thinking big fabric for our storage, big storage for books, big storage for thread, especially if you're a long-armed quilter, those sorts of things, all right? And that brings us to our furniture needs. You have to have a certain amount of furniture, so look around your studio and figure out what works and what doesn't, what can stay, what can go. You need some type of cabinetry or a table or a desk for your sewing machines. Each machine needs a space, ideally, or you may have one table and you bring each machine up as you're sewing with it, it depends on what your situation is, how much space you have. But do consider your needs for your primary sewing machine, your serger, your embroidery machine, your secondary machine if you have one. We're going to need some type of furniture for that. It doesn't necessarily have to be a standard sewing cabinet and I'm gonna show you how to think out of the box later in the video. You're going to need a good sewing chair. You're also going to need a chair for hand sewing and probably a table and a lamp next to it. Just put this in the back of your mind for right now, we're gonna talk about that later. You're gonna need a cutting table to cut out your patterns or your quilts. You may have a computer that you use in your work area, especially if you embroider or you have a business, we need a place for that. If you have a business, you probably have a filing cabinet, so these are the things that you need to look around your space and say, "What do I have, what furniture do I need?" When you're thinking furniture, I want you to think ergonomically. Ergonomically is the way our body functions best. What can we do to protect our body, and believe it or not, sewing and quilting takes a big strain on the body. For your sewing table and your sewing chair, they need to work together. They need to be a good height so that when you are sitting in your chair and you're sewing, your elbows are level, or your forearm rather is level. It's straight from the elbow to the hands when we're sewing, that's the ideal. Your back should be straight in the chair. Your feet should be on the floor. If they aren't, if any of those are out of sync, then you need to either adjust the table lower, higher, adjust the chair lower, higher. For the chair, make sure that it has arms. Believe it or not, you want arms because there are times when you sit back or you're ripping or you're doing certain motions at the sewing machine where it's nice to take that break and let your arms relax for a minute or two. It is nice if those arms are adjustable. The more adjustable the chair, the better. You need it to be adjustable literally all over, up and down, forward and back, it's worth the money to buy a good chair and while you're at it, make sure it has some lumbar support, that's very important while you're sewing. You also wanna make sure that it's on good quality casters so they don't break and that it can move around very easily getting in and out. You don't wanna be pushing it and putting that strain on your back, so get a good-quality chair. Your cutting table needs to be at counter height. I don't want you bending over your table like that. I want you up as erect as possible and cutting, just like you do at your kitchen counter. That's about the height that you wanna have for your cutting table. If you need to, you can put the table up on risers. They're available at the home improvement stores, and they don't cost very much. They're heavy duty plastic and you put one under each leg of your table and you can raise it. When you raise it, you just wanna make sure that it's stable and that it's not gonna be falling over or you're going to get injured. I always want you to think safety first in your studio. Your furniture can be practical and it can be beautiful. So be creative, think out of the box. How could I repurpose something? How can something do double duty? I don't necessarily have to buy a sewing cabinet. Maybe I can find a desk, maybe I can find a table that I've just fallen in love with at the flea market and I can make it work for sewing. Maybe I need it to be portable, because I wanna take it with me to classes or retreats and I don't wanna have just one bulky table. I wanna be portable, or maybe your situation is such that you're having to set up a table to sew and then put it away, because at this point in time in your life you can't have a full-time space. Those are things that you need to think about. So the best thing to do, is start looking for inspiration and magazines and books are some of the best. If you can get your hands on this one, this is one of my favorites. It was a special publication, special interest publication put out by Quilters Newsletter back in 2013. Quilters Newsletter has since been retired, but sometimes you can still find the magazines online or in the library, and this one is wonderful. This is a magazine of, they went out and had different professional quilters put together an interview about their particular sewing space, and it is wonderful, and it's everything from people who are long armers, with their spaces, and showing how they work, to regular quilt designers, to the editors on the staff and everybody put their ideas in the book and told what they do, what they don't do, what they like, what they don't like. There's even some commercial ones, one that I really like is, we've even got the old Quilters Newsletter studio in here, and I used to work at Quilters Newsletter for several years, and I got a lot of great ideas for my current studio from working at the magazine, and I'm gonna show you those when I take you on my studio tour. So this book is wonderful for inspiration and you're gonna see what I was talking about, where a lot of the furniture that these professional sewers and quilters use is not necessarily standard sewing, sewing machine studios or sewing machine cabinetry is what I'm trying to say. So it's a great book for inspiration. Another book that I really like, she did a fabulous job on this, and I worked with her on an article when I was at Quilters Newsletter, is Lois Hallock on creating your perfect quilting space, and she has put a lot of thought into what does it take to design a studio. For instance here, she's talking about the ergonomics that we just discussed. She gives you a lot of tips for doing layouts, she also comes in and what I really like, I wanna show you this, she goes through and she analyzes somebody's current studio. She shows what the before looked like, then she shows you the after, and she goes through and tells what her solutions were, what was the problem, why didn't it work, and how did we solve it, and she does that for quite a few examples in this book, and so I really strongly recommend this one before you start your project. You will get wonderful ideas from it. Another one that's really good, and there's many others on the market, is this one from Sunset, it's called "Complete Home Storage" and it has wonderful ideas and it's for storage throughout the house, but think out of the box. Start looking at ways it could be adapted for storing fabric, for storing a lot of your supplies. How did they do the closets? What about the cabinetry? I really like, you know, the pullout shelves. You can use these rollout shelves in your studio. Use it in a credenza where you're storing books and underneath, you've got a pullout that you can put tools in. Use it in your cutting table. How can I incorporate some of these? How about some of these turning storage options that we put spices on, let's say? There's just lots of ideas, and the nice thing is, in these books, they show you how you can make it. So if you have somebody in your life that's a woodworker, and you can twist his or her arms or perhaps you have those woodworking skills, it's gonna give you some good ideas that you can share that can be turned, that they can make and turn into wonderful storage for you. So I want you to also, while you're doing your analysis and your visualization exercises, sit down with these wonderful books and get the inspiration that you need. But now that you've dreamed and you've dreamed big, it's time for the reality check, all right? I wanted you to dream the perfect space. Now let's get real. You may need to prioritize your needs and wants, because sadly most of us have budgets that we have to stay within, all right? So know what your budget is, look at how much you think you wanna spend, and look at the timeline, especially if you're doing this from scratch. What's your timeline, how long are you going to have to do this makeover? Remember, it doesn't have to be done all at once, maybe you're going to do a little bit at a time. You're going to spread it out and maybe you're just going to organize one section of the studio or maybe you're going to buy one piece of furniture every so many months. So prioritize your needs and wants and then have that list and use it to check off as you go throughout this project. It can be a journey, it doesn't have to be a one-shot deal when it comes to organizing. So now that you've had a chance to think and analyze, what's the next step? Well, we need to get a good layout, and in the next session, that's what we're going to look at.