Well Tierney on the road (well in the air) again, this time for a quick business trip to Portland, Oregon for a meeting. So I am going to be the guest blogger on this post.

Do you all miss me? It’s been a long since you heard from me. I was packed away along with Mikelet (I know, I know, you are thinking of reporting Tierney for Beastie-neglect but we should give her a break since she been through a lot this past year…).

Now we have a nice home in Tierney’s new studio:

2019-10-22_08-11-05_364 — It now Autumn in the Denver, Colorado area and getting kind of cold so it is sweater time!

Oh, but if you are new to this blog, I guess I should first introduce myself:

My name is tierneycreates Beastie and I am a Monster, but the good kind of Monster. You can read my story at I’m A Monster!!!. You can also check out the other posts I’ve had to guest blog on (i.e. when Tierney fell off the blogging-wagon) in the series of posts: Beastie Adventures.

I think the last time I guest blogged, I was complaining about the physical spot (in a box in the closet!) where she had me living in her first studio after moving to the Denver greater metropolitan area.

Here is that post if you want to be shocked and appalled like I was: Another Beastie Blogging Intervention: New Studio Tour, Part III.

I must warn you, Beasties are notorious for making things all about themselves (just check out the blogs Crawcrafts Beasties and Tammie Painter and you will see what I mean!) but I am going to try to focus on the primary subject on this post – an update on Tierney’s post from 10/13/19 – The “Madness” Returns (though a post just about me would be much more interesting!)

So Tierney has finished about 14 little wallets so far. It is not a very impressive number but at least she’s gotten off to some sort of start in replacing her previous stash:

2019-10-22_08-12-01_966 — Only 13 in the photo because she already gave one recently as a gift

I inspected her work and provided feedback that she needs a lot more color and fabric combinations:

Do like the fact that I could use one of the little wallets as a suitcase?

Of course I only have one other article of clothing – my warm weather shirt. Eventually I need Tierney to place an order at crawcraftsbeasties.com to expand my wardrobe!

Tierney does have other additional color/fabric combinations in progress:

I guess if she wasn’t flying around everywhere all the time she could buckle down and get a larger variety of little wallets done!

She won’t allow me to use the rotary cutter or scissors so I cannot help her. We won’t talk about the time one of her quilting friends loaned me a rotary cutter at a quilt retreat…(Guest Blogger: October Quilt Retreat Part I).

2018-10-25_15-03-23_912 — Perhaps not the best idea…

Postscript

As long as I am guest blogging, I might as well also give you a follow up to Tierney’s 08/30/19 post New Studio.

Tierney’s been moving things around and playing with a slightly different layout.

Most importantly, she put me and Mikelet on top of this “pre-cut bookcase” so that we are prominently displayed in her studio (where we can closely watch over her crafting):

She also moved some stuff around after sewing in the room a couple weeks, to make it work better for her.

2019-10-22_08-22-09_986 — So many precuts…maybe they are breeding when Tierney not looking…

Tierney loves this colorful display of books and recently found one of the books she was missing from the “Pretty Little” series, Pretty Little Pillows, at a charity yard sale.

Perhaps she’ll do something crazy one day and actually MAKE crafts and quilts from these books on display!

Oh one more thing – remember how Tierney mentioned in her 09/27/19 post A New Way to Organize My Fabric, that she had more fabric to organize?

Well she finally did: she organized her flannels, canvas, novelty prints and panels in the shelves in her studio.

So with the fabric above, plus the pre-cuts, plus the fabric below in this photo, Tierney should give up sleeping and starting crafting/quilting 24/7 (and we will not even mention her collection of fabric scraps at this point).

And I will supervise her!

I am addicted to “Studio Porn” – photos of artists’ and crafters’ studios. At least once a week I settle in with a cup of tea, in a cozy chair, and leaf through publications such as Studios and Where Women Create or various books on craft/art studio organization. These publications are filled inspirations on how to organize, design, and decorate your studio.

My studio is small, but I feel lucky to have a place in my home that I can dedicate to my crafting. It was designed as a bedroom and I removed the traditional bifold closet doors to open the space to organize and store supplies. I thought: “who needs closet doors when you can have more open space?”

Then I saw the studio of Jean Wells in the Better Homes and Gardens book Studio Spaces: Projects, Inspiration & Ideas for Your Creative Place (2011) and I saw what a closet can be in a studio! Ms. Wells turned one side of a closet door into an inspiration board and the other into a design wall. Her closet doors became my dream closet doors! Thanks to a generous gift from my mother-in-law, my dream studio closet doors have become a reality!

Cindi and Rob of CR Construction did an excellent job designing my new closet doors based on the photos from the book. They put sheet metal on the left door and wrapped Warm & Natural cotton batting on the right door. They designed a unique floating track system that allowed the doors to float over each other without touching when opened. This allows pieces on the design wall side not to be disturbed (who wants to redo their design wall every time they open their closet?). Cindi and Rob added strong bright lighting inside the closet – previously I had no light and would aim a lamp in the studio towards the closet to illuminate it in the evening.

My home studio is very simple and a mishmash of furniture and shelves thrown together, but my closet feels really special and inspires my creativity!