Sewing Space

 

Since moving house last Autumn I have had my eye on the spare room to turn into a sewing space and now we have done just that!

It is now a really great space where I have space to lay out my fabric, do all my tracing and cutting as well as sewing and pressing all in the same room without having to move my machine and ironing board each time I want to use them – or anything else for that matter!!

Creating space to cut out fabric has made my sewing life much easier

My main criteria for my new sewing space was that I wanted a space for cutting out pattern pieces and fabric. This is something I have always struggled with either spreading out across the dining table or clearing a big enough gap on the floor and then having to crawl around.

After a lot of searching for the perfect table/desk I realised that it didnt exist, or at least not within my limited budget. So, with a little lot of help I decided to build one. We went down to our nearest DIY store – which amazingly was having a closing down sale and bought a length of wood-effect kitchen work surface for around £20 – bargain! We had to saw it in half to fit it in the car but this was no problem as this is what we planned to do anyway. We then bought three bookcases that were the right height for £12 each and attached the work surface pieces to the wall at one end and used the bookcases to prop the other end up.

It’s the perfect solution as I can lay out a piece of 150 cm wide fabric folded in half no problem and can fit around 1.6 m length on the table without even having to move my sewing machine off. It also has space for my amazing new A1 cutting mat as well as my old A2 one.

The shelves are the perfect place to store all my fabric and yarn stash as well as jars containing all my buttons, beads and ribbons.

I also stapled a couple of tape measures onto the end of the work surface to hide the cut end. One is showing centimetres and the other inches. This is a great way to quickly measure how much length of a fabric I have to see if it is enough for a new pattern.

Above the desk I hung a rail from Ikea which is perfect for hanging my many scissors and rulers as well as a small tray for storing pencils, chalk, pin cushion, masking tape and measuring gauge.

I have also hung a notice board to pin any inspirational material and a white board on which I have written my planned makes in an attempt to keep my crafty plans on track!

Beneath the window I have my ironing board, complete with new cover so it is always on hand when I need to press. In fact, I can just turn around and it is right there! No more dining table and chair obstacle courses for me! I even have my tailors ham and lint rollers to hand on the window sill.

Oh and for the observant amongst you there is a sneak peak of my latest make on the ironing board waiting for a final press.

Now I have the space I can just squeeze in half an hour of sewing whenever I have time without having to keep packing all my stuff away each time so hopefully this will be all the encouragement I need to sew more! I cant wait!

To keep up with my escapades in my new sewing space you can catch up with me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram!