Thursday 8 March 2012

My sewing space

I've been wanting to put up some pictures of my sewing space for a while. I've seen a lot of pictures lately of pristine, extremely organised spaces that people describe as messy. Well, I'm about to show you my cleaned up sewing room - this is my version of tidy and organised (which isn't really very organised or tidy...) Be warned this is a photo-heavy post!

Why now? Well I spent an hour or two today sorting my scraps. They went from this:


Via this (Zoe had the best time 'helping' me - I'm sure I'll find lots of scraps scattered around the house over the next week or so!)

To this:


These are drawers that slide in pairs into a casing, and the casings stack on top of one another. This was by no means all of my scraps - I've got all the white and cream solids in zip lock bags. There are a few other zip locks full of 6" squares, and collections that I've kept together. But this is the scrappy scraps - all ready for some sort of scraptastic project.

So once I'd done that I did a quick tidy of my sewing room and took some pics. My quilty books - love pretty much all of them.


This one my mum gave to me (to borrow) last week and it's an oldie but a goodie.


It doesn't have cutting instructions etc for the blocks, but teaches you how to draft them yourself (and then figure out the piecing too :) )


I might make a sampler quilt using some of them at some stage I think - it would be a brilliant skill builder!

Anyhoo, back to the sewing room. This is under my sewing machine desk (tidy, hey?) All those boxes are full of sewing patterns - mostly vintage (60s and 70s):


My sewing machine table:


My threads/sewing machine accessories/fabrics pulled for WiPs/general crap.


Shelves above our computer - more sewing patterns (mostly ones in my etsy shop), more WiPs, finished quilts and some of my neutral fabrics.

My second desk - usually used to stash stuff I'm working on and used for pinning/trimming. Lots of drawers underneath full of more stuff. Not sure what (apart from the top two which I use all the time) and I'm too scared to clean them out. I don't use it for cutting as it's too low and not all that flat. Love my view of our garden though :)


So that's it. Cutting and basting happen on our 8-ball table - my long suffering other half bought two massive pieces of MDF board that sit on top. He bought them so he could play Warhammer on them, but they are conveniently perfect for cutting and basting. So yet again I win, and he gets to complain about my quilting stuff spreading even further :o)

I'd love to see some other people's sewing areas!

xx Jess





7 comments:

Danny Heyen said...

Thanks for showing us your room! I want to post mine sometime this month. I've been inspired by all the brave souls showing off their rooms!

Jess @ Scrappy n Happy said...

Nice to see your room! I am going to tidy mine as it gets moved around during our tiling work....will do a post when it is done.
The book your mum lent you looks great, I love the blocks! Will have to google it!

Katy Cameron said...

Rolling around in the scraps looks like loads of fun, can I come play? :oD

felicity said...

My sewing space has to be kept relatively tidy because it's open to the rest of our space. But I definitely have piles of random crap/WiPs etc.

I always feel so virtuous after sorting my scraps....

Lucy | Charm About You said...

oh thanks for the great nosy!! I tided up my sewing desk today and I'm inspired to sort through my scraps, they're growing like crazy!!

Anorina @SameliasMum said...

Your room looks great! I need to do a tidy. Or a cull. Or probably both!

Alyce @ Blossom Heart Quilts said...

Ah, I see what you mean about the non-pristine club ;) But at least we're lucky we can leave it like that, hey?!

And if there's a big, flat, empty space it is totally fair game for quilting ;)