Sewing Room Tour

I thought it might be fun to give you all a tour of my sewing space.  I don't know that I can call it a "room" as I am in a studio apartment, but it is a space dedicated to sewing.  Originally I was using it as a bedroom, but I think it is much more functional to have the sewing stuff all together, and the living area feels much less claustrophobic now.  Even better - the mess of fibers threads and pins is much more contained, which means less cleaning for me!

Let's look around, shall we?

"Hallway" to the sewing space

On the left is actually the wall to my closet.  Cleverly, the closet sits dead center in my apartment, and a half wall acts to divide out the space.  Thus the sewing stuff can be nicely contained in its own area.  You can also see my giant bag of scraps.  I am saving those for a future costume project.

Pressing area, storage, and sewing table

The black wheeled container was a cast off from my grandmother.  The bottom shelf hold tracing paper and interfacing.  The contained part holds traced patterns and the Burda collection.  I store traced patterns in yellow envelopes and keep the original pattern with the pattern stash.

Growing stack of Burdas may soon need new housing...

My sewing table!

The sewing table has an old Singer base, but not the appropriate top.  It was a cast off from my mother.  In the corner is a vintage sewing cabinate, which was a cast off from my sister's "roommate for life."  At some point I would like to have a vintage machine to go inside, but my modern Brother doesn't fit, so right now it is being used as a notions table.

The notions table and pattern storage

I have lots of thread...

In here I store presser feet, needles, snaps and other things

My cutting supplies and swatch box

Pattern storage - up top Burda, Butterick, and McCall's

On the bottom - Vogue, New Look, KwikSew, and Simplicity

My dress form and sewing bag.

I love that the sewing space is now next to the bathroom - easier to look in the mirror, and less pins scattered about the floor.

My cutting table - aka the floor - with pad for knee protection

I do all of my tracing and cutting on the rotary mat because I do not have any other space that is large enough.

Fabric storage

The bins are for specific types of fabric so I can find what I want

I have seen many other sewers with shelves or fabric closets.  I would love to have the fabric out on a shelf and not stuffed into the plastic bins.  However, since my apartment is a single room I worry a bit about the fabric getting smelly since there is no protection from kitchen odors, and I won't be giving up garlic or onions any time soon.  Also, I worry about sun damage and fading, another reason I moved the fabric to the back of the apartment.  Since this living arrangement is temporary at best, I won't be planning on upgrading this until I have a more permanent living situation in a few years.

I have also been recently been cataloging the fabric stash - I haven't yet started on the skating fabric though.  And I haven't gone through my remnants yet either.  Already I am over 275 yards, which doesn't seem possible.  It is amazing how it all fits into such a small space...

In any case, yay, sewing room!  I know it isn't stunning like a lot of other lovely sewing spaces I have seen out in blogland, but it is my sewing space and I love it.  The only challenge is figuring out where to put my theoretical future serger...

Bye sewing room!