Sewing Room Tour... part one

I've had a lot of sewing spaces over the years. I started in our first apartment sitting on the floor with my machine on a step stool (younger days!). I've set up in the dining room of our first house, an unfinished basement in another and a 10' x 10' spare bedroom in our third. When we found our current place, one of the things that sold me was a bonus room built over the two-car garage. Huge 20' x 20' space - I could picture it immediately. Reality set in, and since my husband works from a home office (and is really the one who buys the fabric), we built a dividing wall down the middle and I ended up with a nice 10' x 20' sewing room. I love it!

I like that it's somewhat removed from the rest of the house - a little sewing sanctuary. You walk up a set of stairs in the back of the house off the kitchen. Here's the room from the doorway...

I consider myself really lucky to have 2 sewing machines. They're in cabinets placed back to back giving me ample table space for quilting large quilts. I use the larger machine primarily for machine quilting and the smaller one for piecing. This allows me to go back and forth without changing thread or the setup. Crazy how just having to rethread the machine used to stop me from getting to my machine quilting!

Here's the setup from the other side. I love my little TV that swings both ways on the wall...

On the left wall is my design wall. Simply sheets of styrofoam, duct taped together and covered in a white flannel sheet. Easily reachable from the piecing machine...

Just around the corner is a piece of framed pegboard holding my rulers and rotary cutter...

It's within easy reach of my nice big cutting table. I've had this table for many years and I love that it's lightweight and folds down to the size of the drawer you see in the front. I baste all my quilts on this table - it's on wheels and I roll it around to get to all sides of the quilt.

I made the step stool so I could reach to the top of my design wall.

My ironing station is around the corner. It's made from a wire shelving unit (also on wheels) with a 20" x 60" MDF board on top. I've had this board for many years and it's still perfectly flat. It's covered in thin batting with a pillowcase-type cover. I take 2 yards of fabric, sew up the long end into a tube and slip it over the board, folding and pinning under the ends. When one side is ruined, I flip it over on the second side.

The shelves are used for fabric storage...

To the left of the ironing station are couple of small storage cubes from Target. Here I keep my most frequently used books. I'm a quilt book hoarder, so I have lots more stored on a bookcase in the hubby's office right next door.

On top of the books is a bit more storage and my dry-erase board that keeps me on task...

To the left, I have another shelf for fabric storage and 2 cabinets for more fabric storage. (More on that tomorrow). The shelves above the cabinets are shoe storage shelves turned upside down. The boxes hold patterns...

And finally, just inside the door is my desk. I've my books displayed on a picture ledge from Pottery Barn...

 a bit of sewing art and pictures of some of my favorite people...

You can see everything is fairly cleaned up and tidy. I work better when there's not a mess, although that happens when I've pulled a lot of fabric for a project. Mountains of unfolded fabric!

Tomorrow I'll be back with some of the little details and storage solutions.   . . . Cindy