Improved sewing room

My sewing room is not the kind that people ooh and aah over with a cute shabby chic decor and some old, antique hutch containing all my colorful fabrics.

My sewing room is also the computer room/office. And it also holds thousands of record albums. I previously wrote about a sewing cabinet I found on Craigslist, and we talked the people into delivering it to us, since they had a truck and we didn't. They wanted $100, and we got it for $90. It's used and has its dings and scratches, but overall I really love it. It looks so much better than the folding table I had, and there's lots of room for storage inside, which really cleans up the room.

The downside is that there is no room for my serger on this table. But as I cleaned up this room (which took hours) and moved stuff out of it, I found a spot on the filing cabinet, and I'll just have to move the serger and plug it in when I want to use it.

OK, ready? Here is the before:



A folding table and plastic cart of drawers.

Here is the after:




Look at all the storage! I was even able to put my sewing related books in there, clearing room on my regular bookshelf, which is jam-packed. Of course, there is not room for one more book.



I like to use a rolling stool to sew because I found an office chair with arms to be too cumbersome and in the way. Plus, I don't ever use the back of the chair. Downside is that when the cabinet is closed, where do I put the stool? I'm just rolling it under the other side of the computer desk, the side where you don't sit.



As I cleaned and decluttered, I thought of an excellent way to manipulate my husband into getting this stupid Mark Twain figure out of here. His sister gave me this maneki neko (lucky cat) that she brought from China several years ago. He hates it. So he agreed if I took that out of here, he'd take all this other crap out.



Next up is getting this TV out of here, because with the digital switch, it can't be used anyway. We don't have a satellite receiver in here. At the very least, I'd like to put a flat screen in here that takes up less room and looks better.

But back to my sewing area. I took down two ugly hooks I had on either side of the window that only some of my measuring tools would hang on because many had tiny holes. I put one single nail to the side of my table and hung all my rulers there.



You can also see my office caddy there. I keep a huge amount of my tools in that caddy. I can't believe how much stuff I have in such a tiny space. It's really convenient. Those plastic bins are what I use to collect threads. I put one on my ironing board, where I do most of my pinning and trimming and snipping, and one next to my machine.

Sloppy sewing

I like matryoshkas, or Russian nesting dolls, so once upon a time when I saw this fabric, I bought some. Then it sat around for a few years while I couldn't figure out what to do with it. It's very wrinkly and sproingy.

I finally decided to make this top, using Simplicity 3750. I can't say I love it, but it's OK. I'm glad I finally used the fabric.



I pretty much hated every minute of this project. Cutting was a bitch, since the fabric won't lay flat. I stretched it out and pinned it to a cardboard cutting mat and cut it that way.
Then, I found that I couldn't mark on the fabric, so I just sort of winged things. In the end, I set the sleeves in differently, so in the front, one sleeve comes down more than the other. I'm hoping nobody notices, since I am not willing to fix it.



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Look what I found! A beautiful wood sewing table on Craig's List. Unfortunately, it was way out in the South Valley, probably a good 45 minutes from my house. And we don't have a truck.
Mark haggled a bit and got them to deliver it and knock $10 off the price. They are bringing it tomorrow. It is only $90!

It closes up neatly when not in use



And opens up to a nice workspace and storage



It even has a place to set in your sewing machine to make it flush with the table, but this completely closes up, as well.



It will replace this folding table setup



although there is still no space for my ironing board. I don't know what to do to make that look better. It's so huge that it can't hand on the back of a door. I've thought about one that folds down from the wall. It wouldn't be as big, and I use my board as my primary workspace. I just don't have a place to set it up where I could get at it.

Any ideas?

One more thing I should consider cleaning once in awhile

My sewing machine has been acting naughty lately. The bobbin gets all messed up for no apparent reason. Finally, I unscrewed the plate and took out the bobbin holder. Dear God, there was a lot of lint in there. Like pounds of it. And it was packed into solid formation like this lint here, which I broke in half. That's right, I broke lint.



I used a little brush and some tweezers and got most of it out. Then I used canned air to blow everything else out. No wonder the little cogs and gears couldn't turn properly.

After I put things back together and resumed sewing, it purred like a kitten. I hadn't realized that it wasn't supposed to sound so loud and clunky. I had to actually stop and check that it was really sewing because it was so smooth and quiet. Yay!

Getting organized

Slowly but surely, we are getting things situated. Remember these photos of my sewing/computer room that Mark likes to call his music room?




(Here's the post)

As a reminder, all those boxes along the wall are record albums. Thousands of them. Now, we are getting shelves built! So all those records will at least be on shelves and look better than a bunch of boxes. To avoid just having my sewing table blocking the shelves, I got a smaller table and moved things around a bit. Here's stage 2 of the project:



And now the cubes are in the closet instead of on the table. The only thing that will now be blocking the records is my giganto ironing board, but that's lightweight and can be moved easily.


I suppose it may be hard to see through photos, but there is so much more room! I'll post phase 3 as the shelves are built.

I have hope for this room

It is difficult for me to allow the public to see this room. If you know me, you know I am very organized. You might wonder how it is I can stand to work in this room. Well, I can't.

This is my sewing room, and my computer room. All those boxes along the wall are my husband's thousands of record albums. Well, good news! I think after almost 5 years I have talked him into letting me move these boxes out of this room. Ultimately, we want to have a carpenter build sturdy shelves in the living room and take them out of boxes. But until then, I'd really like a comfortable, organized, less-cramped work space.
So in my mind, when I look at this room, I see something entirely different. I see access to the walls, where there will be shelves and a magnet for my rulers. I see a folding, waist-high cutting table to work on (it's hard to draft patterns when you're sitting, and hunching over a regular-height table hurts).
I see this table here being just for my sewing machine and serger (which I still haven't used because I'm still scared of it). I see space for my ironing board (which you can't see here -- it's to the far right, blocking the closet). Oh, and wouldn't it be dreamy to have the kind of ironing board with a little shelf under it for my pressing hams and seam roll? Dare to dream, I say.