Chris Dodsley @mbCD: Neocolor II

Once upon a time, long, long ago, Chrissie lived in a house in the English countryside, happily enjoying her own work room and drawing up plans to have a studio built in the large garden. Then one day a handsome prince/terrible ogre (delete whichever you feel appropriate!) made her pack up all her crafty belongings and move them to a two-bed apartment across the pond.

The truth is not many of us city quilters have sewing rooms and we can only dream of owning a long-arm so I thought you might enjoy seeing how I'm managing my quilting and other crafts around apartment living. I'm really fortunate that my apartment is larger than most and my family are incredibly supportive of me and my quilting passion so I've been able to create a great work area.

Let me start by saying that we brought some of our furniture over with us from England and as we're only renting the apartment I've been keen if possible not to buy anything to accommodate my crafts - I'd rather do that when we're finally living somewhere permanently, so there's a lot of mixing, matching and making do furniture wise.

I've been sewing with a sofa alongside me in my work area but I've finally given in and decided to get rid of it (we really don't need four sofas) and this has opened up my work space and allowed me to reorganise - and while the area's looking spotless I took some photos to share. I will admit to being incredibly organised and a very tidy worker but these photos are a rarity as you can't usually see the floor for thread ends.

I have invested in a SewEzi table which I love to pieces - my second favourite item after my Bernina 440QE sewing machine which I brought over from England with me. Can you spot my drop leaf 'tea trolley' table? This was a fab buy from an antique shop in Hungerford, England and you can see I've removed the wheels (don't panic I've kept them for when I can restore the table to its correct use!) and I'm now using it as an extension to my sewing area.

Check out that quilt pile under the 'tea trolley' - lots of scrummy quilts waiting patiently for me to set up my Etsy shop!

My basket of solids and some print fabrics that I'm about to start working with.

A close up on those solids.

My wonderful, fabulous, can't sing her praises high enough, Bernina 440QE sewing machine set inside the SewEzi sewing table.

My fabric collection boxes, divided by colour and my scrap tins on top.

Selvedge Edge Tin.

Scrap Tin.

Wire cage shelves for all my work in progress, threads and tools.

The majority of my projects are kept in clear plastic wallets - keeping all the materials for a particular project together came about after I accidentally used a fabric for one project that I'd meant to use on another - didn't want that happening again so I started this system.

I buy these wallets at my LQS (as you can see!), they're clear so I can see exactly what's in each and the plastic stacks nicely - it's sticky, not slippy. I've pulled the pile out so you can see them a bit better, there's plenty projects on my 'to do' list there - probably best if we move on quickly ...

more projects waiting for my attention - oh dear, Flicky's Uni quilt is in there and becoming a bit more urgent!!!

More quilts for my Etsy store just waiting to be sandwiched, basted and quilted!!! And can you spot the white dog gate on the right - there to keep that Tatty dog out of my space, she's very partial to a spool of Aurifil thread, it's doggie caviar and just as expensive ;) .

And this monster pile is so large it's stored in a cardboard box. It's the Skill Builder BOM - can you spot my 6 completed QAYG blocks under the box? I'm looking forward to watching the box emptying and the block pile growing over the next 9 months :)

My cutting and pressing area. There's my June Tailor Shape Cut Plus Ruler (tutorial here) against the wall and under the desk are baskets full of papers for my Art Textile work, a crochet project, a cross stitch project and a bag of solid scraps. I bought those flags on the desk for a project last year - I only needed one Union flag and one Stars & Stripes but had to buy a huge pack of each, I quite like how they look though. Standing behind the desk in the window you can just spot 2 bales of quilt batting.

Pots full of tools, sellotape, masking tape, starch, water spray, sticky roller, basting spray and my favourite pin wheel pin cushion made for me by my great friend Sarah @Quilt Candy.

A drawer full of batting scraps ready for piecing (piecing batting tutorial here).

And this is how I set myself up for a quilting session. I extend my 'tea trolley' table to its full size and put my ironing board alongside to extend my sewing area as far as possible to allow the quilt to lie flat while I'm working.

Another shot of how I set up my area for quilting - I'll do anything to defy gravity when I'm wrestling with a quilt!!!

This is my view down the rest of the living room so you can see that while I'm working I'm still very much part of family life. Can you spot that white sofa at the far right end of the room? Well it's not normally there - that's the sofa that's going but I'm leaving it at that end of the room just for 1 week to be sure I don't start to regret agreeing to let it go.

And this is the view out of my window earlier today.

I've only shown you my sewing area - I still need to store all my other craft materials elsewhere around the apartment - I guess some women collect shoes or handbags and hide them in the bottom of their wardrobes - well I hide anything artsy and crafty.

This is one of my wardrobes - my painting easel is on the left and these plastic boxes contain many art textile materials.

The top shelf of the same wardrobe has a pile of clothes that I'm intending to turn into quilts and each plastic box contains a different art media - oils, acrylics, watercolours, gouache, pastels (chalk and oil) and inks.

Simon's sharing his wardrobe with my beautifully labelled, metal, art drawers containing felts, tissue paper, foam board, sketch books, wood, metal and much more/

Another wardrobe drawer containing pens, charcoal, modelling paper, canvases, brushes, Caran D'ache Neocolor ii and Brusho. I'm surprised to spot some space in that drawer - I'll have to see what I can do about filling it!

A second wardrobe drawer with a felting box, non-fire clay, pair of compasses and set square, watercolour pencils, paint tray, sketch book and much more.

Flicky's room hasn't escaped my crafts either - these cupboards are perfect for storing wool.

A second cupboard with more of my wool collection

Oh and as I'm coming to the end of writing this post I've just remembered there's a suitcase under Flicky's bed that's full of all my dark room photography equipment.

And it's only right to finish this story as we started in true fairy tale tradition ...

... and they all lived happily ever after
... at least for now ;)

Wow, that was a much longer post than I ever imagined it would be!
Hope you've enjoyed having a look around my sewing space and other places I store my fabric and wool collections.
I wonder where you store all your crafting goodies? - I'd love you to leave a comment and share your stories :)

After all the exciting and scary stuff that's happened over the last week or so, yesterday I was glad to get back to my quilting 'To Do' list. Admittedly I wasn't totally idle last week, taking the opportunity to hand bind several quilts but it was good to get the cutting mat out and be a bit more creative yesterday.

Siggy Block

First up I made a siggy block using a great tutorial by Rachel Griffith of ps i quilt. It's part of a project that Liz of Dandelion Daydreams is putting together as a thank you to Beth at Plum & June for hosting the 'Let's Get Acquainted!' Blog Hop which is coming to an end next week.


Philip Jacobs for Rowan. Westminster Fibers #PWPJ42 'Primula' and Kona 'Azure'

Kandinsky Challenge

Secondly, I set about my NYC Metro Mod Guild challenge to take along to our December meeting. I posted about the challenge here a few weeks ago but just to recap we each took a square image cut from a Kandinsky painting - it's 1/30th of the painting. We've been asked to reproduce the image to 6" on a 6.5" fabric square using any media - paint/paper/fabric/etc and it doesn't have to be washable.

The original image and instructions

On the left: Neocolour image on fabric square and on the right: Finished textile art square

I created a background colour image on cotton fabric using Caran D'ache Neocolor II - water-soluble wax pastels, wet the colour through with a paintbrush and set it with a hairdryer. Then I added some tissue and handmade papers, then a small amount of sheer and netted fabric and free motion stitched over these areas.

Another job done and ready to take along to our next Guild meeting :)

Once the blocks are all pieced together at the Guild I'll see if I can share a photo of the finished art quilt with you.

Bear's Paw Block

Finally, in December it's my turn to be Queen Bee for the NYC Metro Mod Bee so I wanted to trial my chosen Bear's Paw block. There's a lot of history to the Bear's Paw block and rather than write it all again here anyone interested can read this Quilt Patterns Through Time piece on Womenfolk.com. It's larger than the normal 12.5" block measuring up around 16" untrimmed and, although there's lots of pieces, it's very fast and easy to make using a chain piecing method.

Here's my finished block - my chosen fabrics are a print from Tula Pink's The Birds and The Bees called Swallow Skies in Storm and a solid Kona Cotton Sage.