15 Minute Studio Spiff Up #7

Do I dare admit I'm not too interested in spiffing up the studio these days?  The worst part of my studio has been cleared up and is workable.  But I know I should be continuing so I've picked something that was easy for me.  I hope it is easy for you too. 

This week's assignment is: 

Straighten and clean up your ironing station. 

I have a rolling ironing table that my husband made for me.  You can read about it here. Some times it is piled high with stuff -- extra fabric, scissors, spray starch, finished blocks.  I do tend to pile stuff on it.  But, honestly, this week it wasn't all that bad.  Here's what it looked like today. 

One thing that did need to be done was dust each of the shelves.  So I cleared every section, dusted the items and the shelf and returned the items.  Surprisingly, it didn't take all that long to do and that includes ironing that blue fabric and putting it away.   

Here's the finished ironing station. It doesn't look all that much different.  If I'd taken a picture that showed all the dust then you could have seen a big difference! 

Look over your ironing board or station.  What can you do to clean it up?  Do you need a new cover for it? (Luckily, mine is fairly new.) What about cleaning your iron?  Does it need a good cleaning too?  

That's your assignment for this week.  Pretty soon we'll be starting two week assignments because the jobs are going to be bigger.  Or at least in my studio the upcoming jobs are going to be longer than a week.  I think I have one more one-week job to do.  How about you?  Are you doing areas you need to work on? We've got a few more weeks of work.  And, then I plan on doing a once a month spiff up.  Shouldn't we be able to keep our space cleaned up with just a little work each month?  We'll see if that works for us in the coming months. 

How is your spiff up going?  Do you have specific areas you want me to include. Just leave me a note with the area you need help with. 

Happy Quilting All!  

Hot Stuff!

Nothing like a hook to draw the readers in, or at least that was what I was taught in my journalism classes years ago.  

Today's hot stuff is the new ironing station Pat made me a few months ago.  When we moved me into the new studio, with hard wood floors instead of carpeting, we found out my incredibly old (35+ year) ironing board was scratching the floors.  So Pat came up with an ironing station/cart. 

He put it on wheels which he purchased from Ikea. These come as pairs and have a locking mechanism.  So cool.  When I need to move it, I just flip the lock up with toe, move it, make sure the locks are in the front and flip it back down to lock it. The hardest part is making sure the locks are facing front.  

He used white laminate because much of the furniture in the studio is laminate. He sized it to fit my big board. And then he added shelving so I could get rid of a little table that sat next to it (and collected dust!)  

So far I've stashed my collection of spray adhesives, glues, starch and water bottles under there.  I need to think about what I really want to store there in addition as I have some more room.  Pat backed it with a piece of wood he already had to keep the stuff from falling off the back.  

This is such a great addition to the studio.  Although I haven't had a reason to move it more than away from the wall, it is so easy to do.  My collection of ironing "stuff" moves with it.  Wonderful. 

I've looked at a lot of pictures of studios on the internet and on Pinterest.  In fact, I got a lot of ideas from there.  One thing I've noticed about a lot of the pictures is they have white laminate furniture and very neat, color coordinated accessories or things stashed in the furniture.  Mine will NEVER look like that.  I am all for functionality.  Thus you see what I use around my ironing station -- starch in various forms, scissors, a little thread catcher, a sheet of something that I can iron with adhesives so they won't get on my board, a pin cushion... you get my drift.  

Vicki W is into her second week of 

The REAL Studio Tour - Week 2 - Storage Solutions so I will be linking up with her.   I've already decided I like her idea and will have DH look into doing that for me.  Why didn't I see this was happening?  I guess I am very behind in reading blogs.  Bummer.  (added 12/13/13) 

I haven't had a whole lot of time in the studio lately.  I hope to spend a good part of today there so I can get some things done.  I've got a baby quilt to finish quilting so I can give it back at the guild meeting on Sat. I still have a bunch of placemats to finish in time for Christmas. I want to make 2 pillowcases for our bed.  I guess I'd better take a look at my weekly goals to make sure I work on what I really want to get done! 

Happy Quilting All!