Sewing Room 2013

It seems fitting to celebrate Independence Day by posting some photos of my newly restored sewing room. Afterall, now I have both independence from graduate school and the clutter that took over my sewing room during the three years that I was in school.

My sewing room has always been bursting at the seams. There is little storage space in our apartment. The sewing room has a tiny closet that is half as deep as a normal closet...not very helpful for storing the large garments that I create! It took awhile - and many failed attempts - to get the sewing room organized. On top of being a sewing room, I also store all of my decorating items in this room...and I like to decorate, so there are a lot of decorating items. Some of these had to go - for example, I had several candelabras too many.

It took me an entire week to reorganize everything in the sewing room. It went from being a space that I could barely set foot in to finally being a functional sewing room once more. I will miss working in our dining room with its two walls of windows, but it will be nice not to have to throw everything back in the sewing room every time I host a dinner party!

Here are a few detail pictures of the sewing room...

Magnetic chalkboards in antique frames - created using Galvanized Sheet Metal and Chalkboard Paint. A great space for inspiration photos.

After cleaning out the sewing room I realized that I will never have to buy pencils and pens again for the rest of my life. So many. Heh.

I found this fabulous crystal lamp at a local thrift store. So beautiful.

Vintage business card holders.

A mini dress form! Great for trying out draping ideas on a smaller scale.

Vince thought that it was funny that this penguin (wine bottle holder) was squished in between books on my bookshelf.

I found these vintage sewing table drawers at a thrift store! They're perfect for storing my patterning supplies.

New business cards!

Push pins reside atop the patterning table.

Sewing table.

More vintage sewing table drawers - a Christmas gift from my parents - store sewing tools.

I found the perfect place to store my large glass object collection - atop of the giant bookshelf.

I love collecting vintage tins to store my pretties in.

My dad built me this giant shelving unit specifically for this space. It's even bigger than the largest available unit from Ikea. It houses lots of fabric!

I had to get creative in making a patterning table that could double as storage space. A large metal shelving unit (that can be set up in two pieces) was purchased from Costo - these units formed the bases for the table. A sheet of Plywood was placed on top of the units and a sheet of Homasote placed atop that. The Homasote was covered with brown paper that can be removed when it becomes dirtied. Now push pins can be placed in the table to hold pattern pieces and fabric in place. Underneath the table I store decorations, and on the shelves on each side I store fabric and sewing supplies. The sides are covered by fabric to hide the storage.

I can't wait to get started on my next sewing project!