Stu, Stu, Studio

I haven't updated for a few days, but I have a good excuse! On Sunday I talked Bats into taking me to the new IKEA, in spite of the torrential rain. Despite all the people and Bats following me around complaining about all the people, I managed to get what I needed. The rest of the weekend and most of Monday and Tuesday was spent cleaning my room. (Cue dramatic music.) This is going to be a pretty picture heavy post, just as a warning.


On the left, you can kind of see the MASS of fabric that was piled in the middle of the room. To be fair, I was in the middle of projets and I knew I was getting this stuff so I hadn't been tidying up after myself. Which is usually do, really! At the top of the "after" picture you can see the two shelves I put up all on my own, unfortunately for my poor little arms. I really hate not having a drill. On the plus side, only $6 for a shelf and two brackets.

You can see my ENORMOUS new table (76" x 30" roughly) down in the far right hand corner. The width will be great, I'll actually have room to cut things out. The table under the window probably won't stay there, it's over the air vent, but I didn't have anywhere else for it at the moment.
And finally, my favorite part...

Old fabric storage, meet new fabric storage. For comparison, here is my stash from June 2008 and April 2008.

Let's get another picture of that beauty. It's half as wide as the old one (meaning I have more room to actually open my door), but taller and wider and with actual shelving. I still have a huge box of fat quarters and discontinued deco samples (the joys of working in a fabric store) that I need to sort. Those are eventually going in a plastic drawer unit under my work table... I see a lot of patchwork in my future. I also have a basket of fashion fabrics that need a home. But for now, I am so happy to have most of my stash organized and accessible and easy to see. Glee.

And here's more of my work area. My sewing machine looks so teeny in the middle of it, I think it needs a cozy. I took my old curtain hardware down so I could use it to support a dowel with most of my ribbon stash, you can see more of it on the stand on the left. Hopefully having it in front of me will make me more inclined to use it instead of hoard it. Not that there's anything wrong with hoarding...

And leading into my next endeavor for today, on the laptop screen is this post on the Bakerella blog. I made just the cake cookies, veganized, but didn't bother with the frosting. Bats is vegan, so I've had to overcome my inability to bake in order to have tasty baked goods we can both enjoy, and I actually have been fairly successful. Duncan Hines Super Moist cake mixes are vegan with the exception of the buttery something or other cake and I used Smart Balance Buttery Spread and Ener-G egg replacer (love that stuff). They came out really yummy and chocolatey. Usually, given the opportunity, Bats will devour all the cake he can. (Literally, he has gone through almost an entire pan of mini cupcakes in one night.) Where cake batter doesn't keep, cookie dough does. So I have enough left for another batch of cookies tomorrow and no gagging boyfriend, everyone wins.

Now I'm going to lay on the couch and try not to move my sore little body. Ow.