My New Sewing Room

I have this spare room in the garage that's not a great space to use as an office.  It's cold and the floors are concrete.  But it's sunny, and there is a slow-working heater that eventually gets the room to a decent temperature.  My husband had dibs on the space, but he's only in there to do paperwork about twice a year.  It's now my sewing room.

Sewing is one of those hobbies that require a lot of work and storage space.  Without it, I lose things, and most importantly, I get a little discouraged about sewing in general.  So for the first time in 20-plus years, I've got some space to be my creative self.

It's a sewing-space-in-progress.  I'm still shifting things around, organizing every few weeks to make room for more things, and reorganize existing projects.  I'm trying really hard not to build up a ridiculous amount of fabric and notion stash.  I used to have ten boxes of fabric that I didn't know what to do with.  Never again.  I'm trying to use everything I have, and then some.

A great Craigslist find was my padded cutting table.  I have a  cutting mat on top right now.  This table is really unstable, so its held up one end by another cabinet and a bunch of books, but it was $40, the right height, and doubles as an ironing table.

This is a second-hand Horn sewing table that is actually too big for the sewing room.  It happens to fit my old Bernina 1130 perfectly, and is the same cabinet that I gave to my sister 20 years ago.  I've missed it, and one day I found this on Craigslist.  It was a great buy!

I do most of my sewing on my single stitch Juki...my absolutely favorite machine of all time.  I never thought I would love any machine more than my Bernina, but here it is!  It's fast and reliable.  I wish it could do zig zag, then my sewing life would be complete.

To the left of my Juki is my ironing station.  The shelves are actually a lot neater since I took this picture.  I'm planning on upgrading to a professional iron.  But I just don't have the time to hang a chain from the ceiling for the water tank.  I'm okay for now.  I'm not doing much heavy ironing anyway.  

My room from another angle.  You can see that it's a decent size, but of course, I wish it were bigger. I converted my old office shelf into a fabric storage unit.  I only use the top shelves to store things.  I have paper and other supplies in the drawers below.  I have more fabric stored in another plastic bin under the cutting table.  That's the bulk of my stash, and I want to keep it that way.