More Quilty Things to Share with You!

Here are a few more fun things I keep in my quilt room.  Last September I went to the Top of Virginia Quilters tea, where our door prizes were pretty little cups turned into pin cushions.  I was so taken with mine that I promptly came home and did the same with one of the pretty tea-cups I inherited from my mother-in-law years ago.  I hot-glued the cup to the base, filled the cup with batting, cut a circle to fit the top, glued it in place, then had fun glueing buttons and beads on top.  A little teal ribbon and voila!  - a new pincushion.

I've also started appliquing again, and, like many of us, find I need a little more magnification than my glasses provide.  I found this neat Dritz magnifier with an LED light at WalMart.  It hangs around your neck and rests on your chest, so you can have a better, hands-free view of the work in front of you.  It's particularly good if I'm doing needlework in the living room in front of the TV, because the lighting there is too spaced out to provide the right illumination for handwork. 

I've started incorporating lots of baskets into my sewing, room, too.  One holds large spools of thread for my piecing, which makes it easy to move them on and off the stand-alone thread stand.  Another one has my collection of small pincushions.  An apple-gathering basket is just right for small patterns, which were stashed away in a drawer and never saw the light of day. 

This one is right next to my sewing machine, and holds a collection of scissors, seam rippers, a hemostat for pulling on stubborn threads, my curved scissors for trimming applique pieces, and a few small snippers.  I am ALWAYS leaving my trimming scissors "somewhere else" when I am sewing....on the cutting board, on the ironing board, anywhere but next to me.  This way I always have something on hand and don't have to get up every time I need to clip a thread.

A large woven "laundry basket" holds quilts awaiting binding, odd pieces of batting, and a selection of plastic laundry containers (4 for $4 at the Dollar Tree) are handy respositories for scraps awaiting sorting, my collection of plaids, and fabric groupings that I've selected for projects that haven't been started (don't want to put them away, but not ready for construction yet).  One of my baskets has my UFOs and hand work......each project is in its own plastic bag, ready for pick-up when I'm headed out the door to a Quilt Group meeting or a long car trip.

How do you keep your sewing room organized?  I'm always curious about how other people work.  I find I work best when I keep things pretty neat; it seems to allow me to work better when I'm not faced with clutter all the time, but I know some people who flourish in the  midst of chaos! 

Off to prep some little cornish hens for dinner tonight.....stuffing them with garlic, lemon and herbs so the house will smell awesome....plenty of football on the TV agenda.  Have a great weekend!