Here are some shots from my old sewing studio at the Continental Gin building (which used to manufacture cotton gins). It was the corner space on the 3rd floor, and it was the only one that came with a built-in loft. Since then, I will not studio out of anywhere that I can’t build up.

The bricks are so old that every time a mouse sneezes, you can hear the skitter skitter of dust crumbling down all over your stuff.

I had just bought two rolls of these plastic sheets and was going through the process of putting it up everywhere behind all the existing stuff when I got the opportunity to move into my current space.

The reason the plastic looks like crap was because as I was installing it, this whole space was filled with shelves and piles of fabric. Also, it looks like crap because it’s plastic and it has to cover some really cool-looking bricks.

It was impossible to keep it not-filthy, though. This was after I pulled everything out of the closet and actually swept. From this photo, it looks like an abandoned building you’d find squatters in. Yup, that’s swept:

The roof of this place slopes in two directions, so my studio was actually the one in the building with the highest ceiling, and nearly the only one of its size with three windows. Which meant that at certain times of day, I would be blinded for several hours while trying to sew.

When I first moved in, the halls in my area were burgundy, and a nearby wall was yellow with windows made from glass doors whose trim was painted red. It was very bright and creative, which worked well, I thought, for an artist space. Eventually, everything was painted a nice, tedious shade of white for some reason. My studio was the only one that came with walls that weren’t white, not to mention floor.