Book Review Day: Love Your Creative Space – Lilo Bowman

Love Your Creative Space A Visual Guide to Creating an Inspiring & Organized Studio Without Breaking the Bank
Lilo Bowman
C&T Publishing
8” x 10”
128 pages
$19.95 softcover
$15.99 ebook
images from the book are used with C&T’s permission and are labeled

Y’all. Pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine (or whatever your favorite beverage) and let’s chat. It’s been a while since the last book review. Between traveling all over NY and NJ as a sales rep for Northcott and Benartex, finishing the writing and editing phases of my own book, and making a move to Texas time has been limited. I *need* to get my studio under control, and hey! I’m in the process of moving. The process of packing everything up gave me the opportunity to purge things that were no longer working for me, including a broken sewing box that I’d held onto because I could, and it had stuff in it that had memories attached, most of which will get moved on as it no longer serves a purpose. In preparing for the move and not having any idea of what kind of space I’ll have I had to take a good hard look at all the things and let some of this go. I wish I’d had this book while packing up, Lilo’s tips would have made this easier. She gives tips on purging your fabric stash including working on a big surface like the dining room table where you can see all of the fabric. I’ve purged my stash a few times of fabrics that no longer spoke to me, or were intended for a purpose that no longer exists. In these moments it’s good to refold the yardage and fat quarters and sort the smaller pieces. As there was a move involved I packed up all the fabric, the smaller stuff is in totes in hopes of finding someone who uses scraps in my new home state.. Lilo offers good questions to ask my favorite being, “what was I thinking when I bought this?” It’s a good question, and keeping it because it’s beautiful is good. More on that in another post.

I appreciate that Lilo talks about supplies other than those specifically for quilting as I have a wee bit of a yarns stash and I have my teaching supplies. She speaks of your circle of reach, keeping things most frequently used close to you, and moving out towards what you need but use less frequently. As I write this I see this as key to any space functioning well. I frequently moved things around my sewing room trying to get good functioning in the room, it wasn’t until I was packing to leave that I realized that two key elements would have functioned better in different places in the room.

The whole book, along with the move has me giving consideration to how to set up the next space including order of priority, and a dedicated space for doing office type work that is near the sewing space. And the ideas are flowing, I can almost see this in my head.

I love that Lilo talks storage for mats, rulers, rotary cutters, other sharp things, thread. She goes on to offer suggestions for tracking what we have in Love Your Creative Space. That is what we want to do, love our space and have it function well for us, no matter the size of the space. One of the coolest things is the pressing station set on two drawer units, providing much needed storage and a larger pressing surface.

Even if it feels like you’re creative space is functioning well, adding Lilo’s book will offer guidance to make a well functioning space do even better. As we’re visual, tactile people and there are lots of pictures to spark creative ideas for our space no matter how what the size. It’s all about making what we have work for us. Now, I’m also going to give an absolutely shameless plug for The Quilt Show where this particular part of Lilo’s creative organization began as a series within the show as Lilo responded to the needs of the crafters.

As you give consideration to your own space give Love Your Creative Space a read, and guide you in making your space work well.

Happy Stitching,

Teri