Sewing Room Update #2 (and a Lighting Review)

I have been trying to squeeze in a few minutes every day to continue working on my mini-sewing room remodel and I can't believe I waited this long to make changes.

The latest changes have involved the area around my cutting table and have probably made the biggest functional, daily difference in my life. Here is the breakdown of what I did:

• Removed both (uncentered, oops!) shelves, patched the holes, painted over the patched area, and re-hung one of the shelves (now centered!) a little higher.
• Hung an Ikea pegboard above the cutting table. I am still working on the exact configuration of how I want things here, but it is nice to have somewhere to hang patterns (normally these get buried on my cutting table) and to have an accessible location for thread and other tools.
• Installed a Daylight Company Slimline 3 lamp (technically this is in the before and after photo, I got a little excited and installed it before I took the photos). More on the lamp below.

I hung the (uncentered) shelves a couple years ago and it has driven me crazy ever since. Hanging shelves is not my area of expertise. My original plan was just to just leave the top shelf and then use the pegboard to cover the holes left by the lower shelf, but then that would have been uncentered too. So I took everything down to make everything centered. This change alone has made the space so much happier for me.

The pegboard is awesome, I wish I had added it sooner.

The biggest difference has been the lighting change. Because I live in Oregon where it is frequently gloomy, the daytime lighting is not great. Plus most of my sewing actually happens at night so I had a small lamp hanging in the area, but it was insufficient.

See the above photo? The lighting looks ok. But check out the cutting mat area once the lamp is on.



Pretty great, right? As much as I do not want to admit it, I am not getting any younger and it was getting more and more difficult for me to see the lines on my rulers when cutting fabric (especially darker fabric). Getting a Daylight Company lamp has been on my wish list for a while but I knew that they were an investment. I reached out to them a little while back and asked if they would be willing to send me a lamp in exchange for an honest review and they kindly said yes (yes!). 

Let me tell you a little bit about what I love about this lamp.

• It clamps to my table so it takes up almost no space. Since my sewing room is small, this is very important to me.

• The lamp bends and flexes like crazy so that I can shine it toward different parts of the room when I need additional light (particularly my ironing board which is close by).

• There are different brightness levels.

• This one is a bit of a positive and a negative - it is bright enough that it keeps me alert when I am sewing at night. I hadn't really considered this as a possibility, but I found that I was consistently staying up later when using the lamp (oops!) because I wasn't getting tired as early. 

It also just looks really cool and minimalist. I have a lot of crazy color and pattern and mess going on in the room that it is nice to have something cool and understated.



Do you want to know how much I love this lamp? I have already ordered another one for my sewing table.

Want to pick up your own Slimline 3 lamp? Check out The Daylight Company website, Amazon, or click here to find a local dealer.

I have one more big change that I am working on in my sewing space and will hopefully be able to share that with you next week!