A Virtual Tour

of my sewing room. I've had a couple of comments on the pictures of my sewing room so I thought I'd show a more detailed look. I tried to go around the room and 'connect the dots' so to speak, I wish there was a way to see it as a whole! Unfortunately it is still more cluttered than I'd like and pictures seem to make it look worse. I am always trying to come up with improvements that will reduce the clutter and organize it even more, but space is an issue. It's one of the reasons I've been focusing on scrap quilts and using my stash....to clear out some space to contain other items.

Here is the view of one wall. We have a cathedral ceiling in this area so it is a high wall. I hang quilts and pictures here.

The cabinet below with the quilt on it has storage, which right now contains some paperwork, etc, that belongs to my husband. He has once again started stacking things on top (this used to
be a pile of magazines and junk mail...it drove me crazy!) but usually when we have company over he clears it off and it stays clear for a bit before he starts in again with the convenience of putting things there when he comes in the door.

Someday I hope to get him to clear the bottom section out as it would be a perfect place to store bolts of fabric, packages of batting and large stencils. For now, I'm glad that for the most part he keeps his stuff downstairs in the little office area I made for him!



Moving clockwise around the room, this is the 2nd wall. It faces our front yard, so has a nice window, you can just see the door on the left. My ironing board stays there most of the time, when we have company I take it down and the dresser in that space has knick knacks and candles on top so it's decorative as well as functional. The small view is a better look at the lower part of that wall. I keep basted quilts in the bottom drawers, along with my stencils and a few other larger things. The small drawers are actually a bit of a catch all at the moment, though soon I'll be going through those to weed out and organize.

Continuing around clockwise, this is the longest wall in the room. It measures about 13 feet and the upper shelf goes all the way across the room. The cabinet to the left holds thread, it was the leg of a very interesting sewing machine cabinet that was mounting on the wall when this room was still used as a living room.

You can see some of my storage boxes and baskets and my combination pressing surface and design wall. It took two pictures to get a good view of this wall, you can see the continuation as
the pressing surface is all the way on the left of this next picture. You can see that I have a lot of storage! The area by the painted boxes is my cutting area, there is a better picture of that next. Ideally I'd like to replace a lot of the miscellaneous storage up top with more of the plastic boxes, but can't afford the expense right now...and really some things don't fit well into those boxes. I mull this over often, trying to come up with a way to neaten up this area. In the meantime, I know where everything is and it's all easily accessible. Here is a better view of the

cutting area, one of my favorite spots in the room. I try to keep this area open so I can easily cut when needed. The only thing that's difficult in this area is cutting large cuts of fabric as I can't lay them out nicely. I have a cutting mat that is a bit smaller and is stored in one of my travel bags, it can be laid out on the sewing table when I need to work with larger cuts.

Just to the left is a couple more storage boxes, the surface of those has some baskets with various items that I want kept at my fingertips.

Moving clockwise again is this little wall that denotes the 'end' of my sewing area and beginning of the dining area. Our open layout means that I can be working in my sewing area and still supervise schoolwork, tend to dinner preparations (the kitchen is around the corner to the left) and really supervise nearly any activity from right in my sewing room. There is more storage, a pegboard and you can just barely see a little end table that sits next to my frame where I store my purse (on the bottom shelf), can put my quilting supplies when I need to move the quilt in the frame, and in the drawer I store a roll of small bags that line my wastebasket.



On the side of the short wall is my bookshelf. This holds most of my quilting books and the cookbooks I use the most. My frame sits in front of the bookshelf and just up and to the right is the computer, where I play DVDs while I hand quilt. I love this frame, it works as easily as a hoop. The visible wooden rectangle is what holds the quilt in place, I just lift that off, move the quilt and replace the piece and I'm ready to go again.


And finally my sewing table, in the middle of the room. My sewing machine is up most of the time, it gets taken down when we have friends for dinner (kids eat in the dining area, grownups in my sewing room), and when I need to baste a quilt or use my pressing board. I spend a lot of time here as it's not only my sewing area, it's really like an office for me, I run my house from this room, do all the planning at the table and can supervise both indoor and outdoor activites from it quite easily.

While initially I told my husband that there was no way I could use this room because I couldn't keep it company ready all the time, I'm so glad he talked me into it, I don't know what I'd do without it!

After spending this time showing off my sewing room, I'm anxious to get to work! The strip project is calling me, I'm at the pinning stage again, and the frame quilt is getting far enough along that I'm really getting excited about finishing it. This week is fairly quiet in our house, so there should be a lot of time for stitching. So far today the weather is nice and I'm planning on a fire in the firepit tonight with some hand quilting. It's supposed to be HOT the rest of the week, though, so I'll be hiding in the a/c, quilting the days away.

Happy quilting!