Back in mid-December 2025 I shared in the post Chaos in the Craft Room! that we had moved my quilting/crafting studio from the large Primary Bedroom to a small bedroom in preparation for putting our house on the market and moving to a smaller home.

Since then I’ve been playing/sewing/crafting in my new studio and doing some re-arranging to make it work best for me.

I added back in my tea station and little refrigerator (we tried to make it work in our Primary Bedroom but I didn’t like the low volume noise the refrigerator made when I was trying to sleep at night; and I missed easy access to tea as I need a couple cups a day to keep me happy, ha!):

Thanks to my friend K who attended the 50th anniversary 2025 Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show and got me a poster! (I used to attend it every year when I lived in Oregon for 14 years and had exhibited quilts in it along with my quilter late husband several times…and sold quilts)

I had to rearrange where I kept my projects in queue because this is what the area looked like previously:

Now the projects in queue are stored under my cutting table (I forgot to take a photo).

I added a floor lamp (left side of image below) to my half design wall area (we had to break up my former design wall to make it fit in the room). As we plan to sell the house and move next year to a smaller house, John didn’t want to install track lighting in this room like he did in my previous mega-studio that was in our converted Primary Bedroom (which has now returned to being a Primary Bedroom):

I am pleased with the floor lamp and it illuminates the design wall nicely.

I’ve done additional rearranging and here is what the rest of the room currently looks like:

You might think it would feel very cluttered moving from a large studio (see the post Thrifting for the Studio if you’ve recently joined us and haven’t seen my previous studio) but it feels COZY and like a HUG of CREATIVE INSPIRATION whenever I go into the room.

In addition to being visually “warm and cozy” it’s also physically/temperature-wise warm and cozy because there is less space to heat compared to my big studio. In my post Magnetic Poetry to Ease My Soul I discussed, in the Postscript section, “Creative Restraints”/”Creative Limitations”/”Creative Limits”; and it appears that a smaller space to create in is really fueling/stimulating my creativity!

During the studio move and reorganization I’ve had an “archeological dig” of unearthing old projects in progress (or “UFOs”/Unfinished Objects as quilters like to call them). For example I discovered this partially finished table runner that would be wonderful on the table in our entryway:

I actually sold a couple of these when I had my Etsy shop going (see my post from 2017 – What’s on the Design…Ironing Board?) and I guess this one another one from 2017 that I was going to finish and list in my Etsy shop.

I continue to work on the English Paper Piecing hexie flowers quilt that I shared in my post ScrapHappy January 2026: Moving Forward on the Hexie Project ; and I love sitting my little studio and working on removing the hexie papers from the back of the flowers (so so so many to go…):

(I’ll share an update on the hexie quilt progress during February’s monthly ScrapHappy post.)

My Minimalism Journey, Studio

Chaos in the Craft Room!

December 14, 2025December 15, 2025 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

So a couple days ago John and I decided to switch back my studio to another room and our bedroom back to the primary bedroom.

In case you have no idea what I am talking about, see this post from June 2025 – Thrifting for the Studio.

My studio is located in the former Primary Bedroom of the house. A couple years ago my husband John and I decided we didn’t need that much room for our main bedroom and moved to a smaller bedroom. Originally it was a carpeted room but in summer 2024 John put in a floor.

I’ve always had a small space to sew and craft until I met John and then a couple years ago we turned our primary bedroom (which is fairly large) into my studio.

However In my small crafting spaces I created entire bodies of work such as those I exhibited in my solo show (see 2019 post Solo Show Seattle Municipal Tower, Part III) The Wardrobe Meets the Wall. (And no new body of work has occurred in my large studio!)

I made that entire The Wardrobe Meets the Wall collection of 12+ quilts in a tiny little back bedroom of my house in Oregon where I had to use part of my hallway as my design wall.

I know of course I traveled a lot in 2025 but this has been an ongoing problem – I don’t seem to be as “creatively inspired” in a large space. I just had a gut feeling that I needed a cozy little space of creativity again.

So we switched the rooms back and Chaos in the Craft Room ensued:

Moving the contents of my large studio and walk in closet into a much smaller space was quite the undertaking!

The good thing of this move is I spent a couple days preparing for it and purging what I didn’t really need. It seems that I thrifted stuff to fill the space – I expanded to fill the space…

It took a couple days after we switched rooms to settle into my new room, which is less than half the size of the space I had in the primary bedroom, and here is what it looks like now:

Yes my design wall had to be split into half as it wouldn’t work in the room in it’s full size.

Besides giving me a small cozy space to work in to stimulate my creativity, John and I also made this switch because we are considering selling the house someday and moving to a smaller Ranch-style house. We recently toured houses in a cool new development in another section of the Denver Metropolitan area and fell in love with a one story house with a basement that could be finished however we liked.

We aren’t ready to sell/move just yet, but we were going to have to switch the rooms back anyway someday in order to put our house on the market.

So what became of my huge stash of craft supplies (most of them thrifted)? Well I moved all the sewing related supplies that didn’t fit in the studio shelves into the closet in my new studio:

The non sewing supplies got moved to the closet in the upstairs guest room which had previous housed my clothes, which are now moved into the walk in closet off the primary bedroom.

And…

As far as the Primary Bedroom, John and I took a couple days and turned it into a relaxing bedroom sanctuary. I want it to be our private sanctuary so I am not sharing any photos. (I recently saw on YouTube a tour of a Hollywood actor’s home on the Architectural Digest channel and she wouldn’t show her bedroom because she said that was her private sanctuary. That inspired me!)

Well here’s to getting into my cozy new studio and creating!

From the Woodshop, Studio

Peg, Peg, Pegboard

February 25, 2021October 26, 2021 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Yup. So much for my plans to do daily postings to my blog. I even asked Mike the Miniature Schnauzer, who guest blog posted on Sunday 2/21/21, to fill in like he did in the post Guest Blogger: Obsession with Making Crocheted Dishcloths, but he was busy napping and still seems irritated over some dishcloth-crocheting-while-riding-in-the-car incident… (I have a hashtag I use on Instagram sometimes for posted pictures of Mike: #miniatureschnauzerfirstworldproblems).

Rulers Gone Awry

This is probably not unusual but as a quilter I have a lot of different rulers and templates. I have the standard cutting rulers and then I have special rulers and templates I’ve collected over the years for various projects (or being lured by a demo at a quilt shop into buying a ruler/template I thought I might need someday!).

My organization of these rulers and templates was sort of haphazard and irritating to me. I thought that adding pegboard to my crafting studio would help resolve this – so I consulted with my partner John, aka “Mr. Woodworker” and he figured out a solution.

First he installed a floating shelf he built above where the pegboard was to be placed:

Then he cut the pegboard to fit the area of wall; and painted the pegboard to match the wall:

And then he installed the pegboard. Here is my original set up with the pegboard hooks and pegboard baskets were bought:

At first I tried giving tierneycreates Beastie and her dog Mikelet (see series of post Beastie Adventures) their own little balcony on the pegboard wall but they did not like it.

So I moved her to another area on my studio (she will probably do a guest post in the future to show you her new home and other changes to my studio) and repurposed that “balcony”:

The pegboard has been wonderful to organize my commonly used and miscellaneous rulers. For now I still keep my very large rulers (like my 15″ x 15″ ruler) on my cutting table:

“Mr. Woodworker” is building me a new cutting table in the future which will have slots for my large rulers underneath the cutting surface!

Postscript

My friend Dana was inspired by my new pegboard and recently she had her husband install one in her studio!

At first she was going to have the pegboard painted a neutral color like the color of her studio walls, but then she decided she wanted a pop of color: