Em over at Sewing by Moonlight is hosting a Sewing Room Cleanup Along. I wish that I could say I don't need to participate in something like this, but the sad part is I really do. I am extremely embarrassed to show you the picture below, but she asked us all to be honest and I couldn't possibly get more honest than this! I don't have any excuse that I just moved like Em does. The only excuse that I can say is that I work almost full time and I have 2 little girls that my husband and I are extremely busy with!!! So please forgive me.
The view in the picture above is what you see when you walk downstairs into the basement. Our basement is pretty much finished and is all open. I pretty much have the entire space for my sewing area because the girls do not like to go down there by themselves. They only like to go down there when I am down there.
In the next picture you see my actual sewing desk which is right next to the stairwell. It is pretty nice and is built right into the wall so it is really sturdy especially when I am using my embroidery machine which needs a very stable surface. As you can see I have nothing hung on the wall above my embroidery machine. I did purchase a bulletin board about 3 years ago, which I still have and never hung up! I wish I could figure out a good method to store all my thread. I keep my embroidery thread in the bins, but now I am collecting the huge spools of thread for my long arm quilting machine, so if anyone has any ideas please share. I am very much open to any ideas you can give me!
Right next to the sewing desk, my husband did put up some shelving for me where I was storing my fabric in totes. Now my fabric is pretty much all over the basement in various shopping bags, so I definitely need to figure out a better fabric organization plan. I am not sure if the tote idea is working. Maybe baskets would be better? Ideas? Again I am open to suggestions!
The next stop on my messy sewing room tour is my long arm. This area is pretty much cleared out so I have room to use it. As you can see I should probably take care of my exercise ball. My kids like to play with it while I am sewing. I also have a lot of wall space directly behind my machine that could really be utilized better with some peg board to hang my notions on and a design board. I really want a design board. It would make laying out quilts a LOT easier for me I think.
Right across from my long arm I have two 6 foot tables set up for work space. You can see these two tables better in the picture below.
I use this space to cut projects out and layout my blocks etc etc. The nice thing about it is that I can leave stuff out and come back down to it even if I only get a couple of minutes, which is very nice. However, as you can see I am running out of room and my daughter has even started to take over some of the space with her perler bead collection! She likes to come down and "craft" with me!
The final stop on my messing sewing room tour is the last 1/3 of the basement. This is the part of the basement on the other side of my long arm. We have a bed down there in case my husband gets calls during the night and he doesn't want to wake me up for each and every phone call from work. We also have a TV area for the kids to watch TV while I sew. However, it has become more of a "junk" space to store more fabric. I will say though I did just purchase a part for the excercise bike and this is finally being used again by me, but that is the only useful part about this area. I do have some ideas for how I want to set up this area a little bit better for my workouts and for the kids to watch TV.
Sorry for the picture quality. It is a basement, so natural light is literally non-existent! So there you have it. That is the honest to goodness tour of my messy sewing room. You cannot get more honest than that! I think I have made Em feel A LOT better about her space. She has challenged us to work on "cleaning up" our spaces to make them more functional, useful, etc etc etc. My goal is definitely to do this. Half the time I spend more time looking for things then I do actually sewing and now you can see why! To be realistic, I probably won't be able to get it all done in the next several weeks, but I do hope to make some very serious headway! Anything would be better right?
Now my request for you guys is after seeing my space do you have any suggestions for thread storage and fabric storage. I just can't figure out a "good" method for storing all this stuff. Do I store it by collection, or color? How do I handle scraps? When do I just start throwing scraps away? What do I do with the stuff that I will never ever use? You get the idea. Please feel free to leave me your tips and comments. I would be extremely grateful for whatever feedback you have to give me. I need as much "help" as I can get. Where are the Property Brothers (from HGTV) when you need them? Anyways, wish me luck. I have a LOT of work to do based on what you see above!
Happy Quilting!
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