Sorting a studio. Sorting a life.

There’s nothing like moving to clear our your life. And give you clarity. I’ve been preparing and sorting my studio for a move to the new studio building, my husband’s old home in Galesburg. It’s a delightful small house and every day is a new exploration into old stuff. His. Mine. But mostly studio stuff. Fabric I’ve kept. Threads. Books. Endless interfacing. And odd bits of stuff that mark a period of time in my career. The trick seems to be in sorting things in like bundles and then figuring out what to do with them and what to put them in.

But some things just don’t fit in. I found this in a bin of rayon threads. It’s a needle case someone suggested I make as one of several salable things I took to class. They were way too time consuming to consider. But they were fun.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The thing I find most interesting is that I chose to use my Ellenism’s, When I was teaching, there were things I said always in a particular way so they would stick. If you’ve ever read The Tipping Point, it has a discussion of how to make ideas sticky, available for people to hold onto like an internal post it note. They were a huge part of what I wanted students to take away with in their class, whether they could find their notes or not.

Some of my favorite Ellenism’s

• Lefty losey. Righty tighty
• (how to adjust a bobbin case or turn a screw)
• New day, new needle. New project, new needle.
• Everything worth doing, is worth doing badly
• Stop for bad noises
• Perfect this time if only different next time
• Thick thread, straight stitch.

The Point

The point to all of this was that it was for teaching. So much of my time was in classroom, that I’d stylized how to capsulize information into phrases they’d repeat and remember. I think they thought I was being silly. That too. It doesn’t matter. They could remember it.

This new studio is not for me to teach in. it’s a space to go back to my work. So perhaps someone will come visit and I’ll dust this off, so they can remember the things I thought were important for students to learn. If nothing else, it reminded me.