The tufting trend has finally arrived in Switzerland. Our Tuftinglove community is constantly growing and together we are breathing more and more life into the studio! But it's not just the tufting courses that you like, you also like coming back to the studio to continue working on your own tufting projects. However, the more we become, the more crowded it gets and that means we need more space. And as you know, if you want to work creatively, you need space to spread out. That's why I'm showing you in this blog post how I expanded the Tuftinglove studio.

• What do I look for when converting the tufting studio?
• What have we converted in the tufting studio?
• Conclusion of the studio conversion

By the way, if you want to know what you need in your tufting studio, read my blog post: Tufting Material Overview - What material do I need for tufting?

So far, our 96m² studio has always been enough for the courses and your projects. You are coming more and more often to the open studio and tufting bathroom rugs, living room rugs or projects for your art exhibitions. I love how you use our studio and fill it with your creativity. The demand for the open studio, where you can work independently on your rugs, has increased so much that I had to expand the studio to have enough space for everyone.

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Ein Beitrag geteilt von Tuftingmaterialien - Tufting Workshops - Jenni (@tuftinglove_deutsch)

Your own rugs from the open studio are masterpieces.

In the past few months, I have received many requests from you to use the open studio on weekends as well. The big problem with this was that the tufting courses always occupied the room, of course. So it was clear that if there was an opportunity to expand, I definitely wanted to take it. 

At the end of May, the room right next to our studio became available at short notice and very unexpectedly. We were able to take over these 30m² and the connecting anteroom of 25mc in June. 

As you may have already seen on our tufting course Instagram channel, we have changed a lot about it:

What do I pay attention to when renovating the tufting studio?

First of all, it was important to me to be able to resolve the scheduling conflicts between the open studio and the courses. In order for the courses and the open studio to take place at the same time, it is essential that we have two separate rooms after the renovation. On the one hand, the large studio for the tufting courses and another room, which can also potentially be used as an open studio during the tufting courses. The last few months have also shown that the capacity of ten people per course is extremely limited on certain dates, because somehow you all always want to come to the tufting courses on the same dates. (Unfortunately, I haven't yet figured out the system :) ) So the second goal of the expansion was to be able to increase the capacity of the courses. We basically have space for 16 people in the studio. But if we actually did a course with that many people, we wouldn't have room for the test frame where I demonstrate everything and where you can then also tuft your first lines and try out colour combinations. 

If you would like to attend a tufting course with me, you can choose from the following options.

Thanks to the renovation, we now have plenty of space for the tufting courses.

 

Thirdly, the expansion should create additional storage space. You can never have enough of that in a studio anyway. There should be an additional yarn shelf in the room so that, in an open studio, everything for tufting is available without needing access to the other room. If a private course etc. were to take place there, the two rooms should be able to function independently of each other. Furthermore, I have wanted a table at dining room height again for a long time, and not just the high rollable work tables. 

 

The tasks for the conversion were therefore clear:

• The wall from the entrance hall to the rented room had to go.
• Yarn shelves had to go in. 
• Everything was to be repainted in the Tuftinglove colours.

What have we done in the tufting studio?

After the last tufting courses in mid-June, the starting signal was given to turn the two rooms into one and to set it up straight away. My goal was to be finished with the bulk of it by the end of June.

Of course, the logical thing would have been to start by removing the wall that had to go. But we couldn't do that with just the two of us, so we started by opening, insulating and closing the wall that adjoins the existing studio. Then we roughly filled and painted the whole thing. 

Here we are insulating the wall. The 90 minutes take just 15 seconds in time lapse.

On the opposite side of this wall, the yarn rack is placed. I also painted this in a dark violet before I put the yarn rack in front of it. This spot has now become my new favourite place to shoot content for Instagram. The yarn colours look soooo beautiful against this wall!

We were finally able to remove the wall from the anteroom to the newly rented room, but this held a few surprises. On the side of the new room, everything went very smoothly. I was able to take down the wooden panels on my own. However, I then noticed that the grid was not screwed on, but connected with corrugated nails, which made the demolition of the wall significantly more complicated. 

But first, a colleague helped me to dismantle the incredibly heavy Fermacell panels on the other side, before I actually took a sledgehammer to the whole grate. It was a nice anti-aggression programme, but also incredibly exhausting.

However, I left some of the rust in place, reinstalled cross-connections at the appropriate heights and attached nailing strips. And just like that, we have a new tufting frame in the studio. It's so useful that three projects have already been tufted on it in a month. 

The large tufting frame and the yarn wall are a real asset to the studio.

Our free-standing 160x180cm tufting frame has also found a place in the new room by the window where it is allowed to stay. Until then, we always had to unscrew it from the floor and push it out during the tufting courses in the large room, and when someone wanted to tuft again on Monday, we had to put it back in. Due to its size, this was not that pleasant and I am super happy that it now has a permanent place to stay.

If you want to build your own tufting frame, you can find our materials for it via this link.

Opposite the window, we now have plenty of additional storage space, which will be covered with an acoustic curtain, and a large work and dining table for the courses.

Conclusion of the studio renovation

All in all, the renovation has already been a huge upgrade for the studio. We can now easily run all-day courses with up to 16 people and taster courses with up to 24 people. So we are also ready for all your Christmas dinners and team events that you might be planning. 

At the same time, there is nothing to stop us from opening the studio during weekend courses, and we will be introducing fixed opening hours later this year. Until then, you can simply email us as usual if you want to use the open studio.

If you have any questions, you can also simply write them in the comments below this blog post.

I'm so happy <3 
Jenni