sewing room (?) tour

We are in the middle of the super fun process of refinancing our house and today we have the appraiser coming over so my sewing room really needed to be straightened up.  I figured this was a good time to take some photos.

It is not exactly a room, I don't really know what you would call it.  When we were looking at houses we tried to make it a priority to find a house that would have 1) a home office for my husband since he works very long hours and this way he can work at home sometimes and 2) a sewing space for me. The house we ended up buying has an addition that was made for the previous owner's parents to live in.  It is basically an extra bedroom (my husband's office) plus an extra space between the living room and the office.  I don't know what the previous owners used this space for, but it is my sewing room.

 A couple challenges of using this space are the lack of a closet and the number of doors and windows in the room.  There are 4 doors (one is a giant sliding glass door), a window, and an opening that looks into the living room.  Because there is so little wall space I have had to put my design wall behind my desk and sewing table which has made it a little difficult to reach.



Because I was previously sewing on the kitchen table, I needed a new sewing surface.  I bought 2 identical desks from Ikea which are great because you can actually raise the table top a few inches to make for easier rotary cutting.

Underneath my cutting table I keep 3 plastic drawer containers which hold most of my fabric.  They are FULL.

 And to make up for the lack of closet I bought this media cabinet from Ikea.  It holds larger cuts of fabric, batting, and some other supplies.  It also has batting on top.  you can also see some plastic bins which have additional fabric.  In the background on the left you can see the kitchen.  I would really like to get some sort of drawer system to replace the plastic bins, especially since I would be nice to have another flat surface in the room.

The space already had built in cabinets.  They are nice to have, but not as nice as I anticipated since they are so deep that if I put things in them it is difficult to reach.  I have some bins with my solid fabrics, scrap bins, interfacing, and other supplies in them.  The drawers are great and hold all kinds of other supplies like ribbon, elastic, zippers, etc.  

The counter has been great for my iron since I don't have room for a full size ironing board in the room. I like to keep my current projects on the counter, though they normally get buried under other things. It is not normally this orderly.  The door in the photo below opens to the side yard of the house.

I love, love, love having this room.  Despite the ugly brown paint color and the hideous tile floor, it has been really great.  Even though my sewing room is very visible when people come over and I don't have an option to close a door to the room, it is nice to be able to see my kids when they are playing in the living room and the backyard.

Since I am no longer quilting at the kitchen table anymore I considered changing the name of the blog, but that is how I got started so I think I'll keep it :)