Small Studios?

[Jill B.]

I love looking at the studio tours you post from time to time...what lovely spaces! I wish, though, that you would sometimes feature *small* studio spaces. My sewing room is very small with slanted ceilings and limited space, so I can't really incorporate many of the ideas from the big studios. It would be fun, and helpful, to see what others do with less-than-luxurious studios!

[Renata L.]

I love looking at the studio tours you post from time to time...what lovely spaces! I wish, though, that you would sometimes feature *small* studio spaces. My sewing room is very small with slanted ceilings and limited space, so I can't really incorporate many of the ideas from the big studios. It would be fun, and helpful, to see what others do with less-than-luxurious studios!

Totally agree with you, I would love to see more small spaces too. My room is 8"x11" and one of the 8" walls is occupied by a large door, the other 8" wall has a floor to ceiling, 6" wide window. Beautiful space, but tiny! I have decided to spend the next year sewing in this room and getting a feel for how I am using this room. I am maintaining a sewing diary which will help me understand the best flow of activity for me and will help DH design and build the best furniture for this small space. But I would LOVE to see how others have approached small spaces.

[Lynn K.]

Renata,
Great idea to do the diary. Now to DO it! ha That would be my downfall......rather sew than write in the diary.

I have changed my workflow arrangement several times...and just recently did a minor adjustment in my small dedicated room. I feel lucky to have a dedicated room which I know many others don't have. But getting it 'right' is an amorphous concept!

Lynn
PS: Someday I'm going to take the time to create a signature here!

[Renata L.]

Lynn, my laptop is in the same small room as my computer :lol: so I just roll my chair over to the laptop and type in commentary as I go along. I have Microsoft OneNote and it allows me to do screen clippings of pictures that interest me as well as saves everything automatically. It also allows me to set up a "book" with "sections" and "subsections" so it is almost like writing a book! I am able to annotate anything from lighting to workflow to wishlist to storage, to how many pair of scissors I own and comment that a storage requirement for 13 pair of scissors exists, etcetera, in sections of the "book" I set up. It also has a search capability and the ability to do "unfiled" entries so if I don't know where to stick a comment, I can wait and place it whenever I am ready to. At some point, I'll read it, organize it, edit it and sit down with DH with it so he doesn't have to try to read my mind, though he's pretty good at it by now... :lol: If I did not do this, I would forget a lot and then not really get the custom furniture I need to make this very small space work.

[Renata L.]

Well i have just discovered that I have microsoft onenote on my laptop - only owned it for about 18 months !!
I have another tool to play with, the things you learn about on this forum always suprises me

[Lynn K.]

If you are like me on a Mac, I've looked on line and a program called "Growly Notes" is supposed to be a 'clone' and is free!

[Renata L.]

Lynn,

OneNote is a decidedly Microsoft product so I doubt it is made for the MAC. However, I did go online and found that the rough equivalent of the OneNote for MAC users is a product called Growly Notes by GrowlyBird Software. There is a website for it

http://growlybird.com/GrowlyBird/Notes.html

It is a free downloadable app and according to GrowlyBird's description it feels and acts just like Microsoft OneNote. If you download and like it, they simply ask that you consider making a donation. It seems worth the try for MAC users. Perhaps someone in TQS ForumLand already uses it and would comment? I had to purchase Microsoft OneNote because it did not come with my laptop.

[Renata L.]

Well, Lynn... you beat me to the punch! I'm not a MAC user but I love OneNote, have had it for years and used it a lot, especially when I was writing for publication. It is very good at helping keep track of sources. For quilting, for example, if I find I picture of something that inspires me and I make a screen clipping of it in OneNote, when the image is copied into OneNote, the source URL prints immediately below it so that if later I need to find where it came from, it's there; if I need to make attribution to someone else's work, the source is readily available by clicking on the URL and I never had to type a word.

[Renata L.]

Since you are talking about One Note, I thought that I would share how I use it. I use it for recipes, as well as for quilting stuff. But I have found that the best advantage of One Note, for me, is creating PDF documents. With Windows 7, I lost the ability to scan directly to a Word or PDF document. If I send the scanned document or print a document to One Note, then I can save the One Note page to PDF.

[Norma H.]

You learn a lot on this forum. I did not know about the PDF possibility with One Note. I found a PDF writer, when I needed it. It works like another printer on your system. I use the One Note all the time just like Renata describes. I keep track of my thread collection and just make a note when I need to replace a spool. Then when I order I always know what is needed.

[Rita C.]

Thanks for that information Renata. I have now downloaded Growlybird and when I have finished reading all the information (which will probably take about a week!) I will give it a try.

As for small studios, I have a very small sewing room too. DH wants me build on a dedicated sewing room for me which would be attached to the kitchen (which is the heart of our home). My dilemma is that I am very messy and if I have a bigger space I will make a bigger mess! :roll:

[ANNE E.]

Rita,
Who cares how messy it is, that shows that it is used.
If your DH wants to build you a bigger studio go for it, I would.
I've seen the photo's on your profile and you have made some beautiful quilts, you are much more prolific than me I haven't been near my sewing machine for weeks I seem to have lost inspiration, plus too much time wasted on the computer.
Hope the weather is kind to you in Ireland
Anne

[Rita C.]

Thanks Anne. The weather has been good for the past few weeks but turned cold yesterday with a cold wind. I have had to put back on the heating Very Autumnal now.

[Rita C.]

I hate to sound ignorant, and don't want to hijack this posting, but I don't know what One Note is. I use a PC laptop running XP but couldn't find it listed in my programs. Our desktop is Windows 7 and brand new - not sure if it's on that one. Or is it something included in Office or something like that (I don't have that on my laptop, and the W7 is running an old version of Office).

Is this something that is free to get?

[Renata L.]

Sorry, Michelle, it's not free. It's a Microsoft product that you normally purchase either as part of a package or singly. I have never seen it here in the States come as part of the laptop. Someone from Growlybird created a free app for MAC users based on Microsoft's OneNote that approximates OneNote but does not have all the capabilities of OneNote. Can't remember how much I paid for mine because it was years ago. You can google it for prices, if interested, I think I purchased mine through Amazon...? Too long ago...

Rita, I had the opportunity to move my sewing room to the basement (large space, no windows, next to my husband's well-insulated for noise and dust-free--because I insisted on very efficient air cleaners and dust collector systems-- wood shop). I tend to get messy too when preparing a quilt and I would have had to share this open space in the basement with a wonderful set of huge Klipsch speakers (the cannons in the 1812 Overture sound like cannons and Pink Flloyd's Money sounds like coins dropped in a slot machine), TV, video, music, my DH's office and other paraphanalia so there would not be as much sewing space as I would like in the end but more than I have. I opted for the teeny space upstairs because I can close the door when I want to, I have plenty of sunlight during the day, I don't have to clean up in the middle of a project just because guests are coming and I love it! Of course, if you can have your sewing room open onto the kitchen with a pretty set of French doors that you can close when you want to, being next to the kitchen would not be such a bad idea... hard choices... :? Let me know how GrowlyBird Notes works for you.