Caryl Bryer Fallert's Studio- FAQ

Click on any picture for a larger clearer image. Use you "BACK" button to return to this page.

Welcome to my studio. Come on in. I work on the floor, so the first thing you need to do is have a seat in the library and take off your shoes. Don't worry about cold feet though. We have slippers in all sizes from very small to very large. The quilt on the wall is "Tabaski Ram" by Hollis Chatelain, and the doll on the top shelf is by Eleanor Peace Bailey.

While sitting in the library you will see the fabrics and patterns we ship all over the world from our Bryerpatch Studio Internet Store.

As you walk past the shelves of hand dyed fabric you will enter our work area. On the way, you will pass our "gym". It doesn't get much use, but it's a great place to hang fabric and store extra boxes. Over the "gym" is "The Problem with Princes" by Ellen Anne Eddy.

Here we are looking northeast at the quilting studio. You can see "Birds of a Different Color" in progress on the north wall. The quilts hanging on the east wall are hanging from tracks in the ceiling, and some of my fabric shelves are behind them. They can be pulled aside when we need to see the fabric.

This is my ironing table, right next to my sewing machine. It's made out of an old hollow core door we found in one of our barns. It is covered in ironing board cover fabric. Underneath are my thread drawers, with each type of thread sorted by color.

Here we are looking back toward the west wall. I usually have three sewing machines set up at all times. Two regular Bernina's and a big customized industrial Bernina. All of the tables are pushed together to make one large surface, which supports the weight of my quilts while I'm working on them.

Here's a view of work in progress, with the ironing board in the foreground, me at the sewing machine, and the quilt in progress on the north wall, where two 4x8' sheets of fiber board covered with blanket fabric provide a "pinable" surface. I also use this wall for photographing my work.

My design wall also has a large open space of drywall. This is where I hang large sheets of paper for the full size cartoons for my quilts. The designs are usually printed from my computer onto clear acetate and projected onto the paper using an overhead projector.

Prior to 2000, all of my quilting was done on a regular size Bernina. My favorite models are the Bernina 1230 and 1090. This required a lot of tugging, pleating, and stuffing to get a large quilt under the arm of the machine.

In 2000 I began quilting on an industrial Bernina 217, which was souped up for me by an engineer. It has 21" between the head and the needle (more scooching room). It's solid cast iron, and the head weighs 200 pounds. I can't even rotate it on the hinges by myself. I do most of my quilting on this machine these days. For more information about machine quilting, see "Machine Quilting"

Here we are looking back to the west at the shelves where I keep all of the graduated hand dyed fabric for my personal use. I keep a 40" x 72" rotery cutting board on the floor and do most of my cutting there. I also do most of the refining of my large drawing on the floor.

When a quilt if finished, I lay it on the 12" tiles on the floor and square it up with a rotery cutter. I also square up the quilt sandwich on the tile floor before quilting, and I do my basting right on the floor

Here we are looking toward the southeast corner of the studio and our office area. There you see Fred and Ethyl, our trusty computers. We have recently added Big George and Helen Wheels to our electronic collection. See "Computers and Quilting" for information about how we use these computers.

This is our shipping department, where Terri, my fantastic assistant, ships the orders that come into our internet store.

When I ship my quilts I roll them inside cardboard "sono" tubes (available for your local concrete contractor supply store) which are covered in contact paper. Here are a bunch of shipping tubes and rods for hanging quilts stored behind our fabric shelves. For more information about shipping and storage, see: Quilt Care: Hanging, Shipping & Storage

QUESTION: what size is your studio?

Answer: My sewing studio is in a separate building on our farm. It is exactly 1000 square feet (26' x 38' plus entry way) I do all my sewing, photography, shipping, and office work in this building. It has an attic with an 8' wide floor running the whole 38' length. This gives me room to store things like shipping tubes, batting, and infrequently used fabric, so they don't take up room in my work space.

My summer dye studio is in the garage end of an old carriage house that is next to my sewing studio. I paint one batch of fabric at a time then drag it off the table and let it sit on the patio or in the driveway until the dye is set. This can be very entertaining for the UPS driver. In the winter I can dye in my basement. We added an addition to the house several years ago, which included a new room in the basement that is large enough to set up a dye table and actually walk around it too. It's not as convenient as my outdoor studio, but it is possible to paint in the winter as well as the summer. Click here for more information on Dyeing and Painting.

QUESTION: What kind of lighting do you use?

Answer: Overhead in my studio I have 14 four-bulb flourescent fixtures. All the bulbs are vitalight (full spectrum) four foot flourescent tubes. These are available from Duro Test Corporation, PO Box 27507 Newark, NJ 07101-8707 (201)-808-1800 (actually if you contact them they'll give you the name of a local distributor in your area). I usually order bulbs by the case (48). If you can't use a whole case, just take them to your next quilt guild meeting, I'm sure every one will want to buy one.

QUESTION: How do you store your fabric?

Answer: My graduated dyed fabric is all stored on open shelves so I can see what I have. I am very careful to refold and stack my graduated fabric in order each time I put it away.

My commercial fabric is stored in cardboard file boxes that have big labels indicating color and whether the fabric is print or solid. My painted fabric is also stored in file boxes, and we are trying to develop categories for it so I can find what I need without getting our every piece I own for every quilt project. Haven't totally succeeded with that yet.