Sewing Room Makeover

When we bought our house in 2015, I immediately claimed this room for my sewing room.  You must be wondering why.  "It's the laundry room!", I can hear you say.  Yes, but it's so much more!  It's bright and it has closets galore!  It is a converted bedroom.  And that counter!!  Perfect cutting height. That closed door leads to a partial ensuite off the master bedroom which I don't need access to from this room.  So it's a good candidate for adding shelf space.

So...the closets... the only issue I have had is that one of the two closets was entirely dysfunctional for my purposes.

Both sides were the 'skirts & shirts' style of closet which is great for your wardrobe but so much wasted space for my application of fabric and bins of projects and tools.

I decided that during my scheduled time off after getting all my customer's Christmas gift quilts done and delivered, that I was going to:

1.  Reorganize my sewing room;

2.  Get a head start on year end bookkeeping; and

3.  Get some of my own quilts quilted.

I'm going to load one of my quilts at some point today and I've indeed started on the bookkeeping/paper clutter but most of my time has been spent ironing fabric and putting it on comic book boards in anticipation of getting these four cubes I ordered from Walmart online.

With the exception of the baseboard on the left, they fit exactly in my space.  Hubby found some 5" bricks in the yard which we cleaned off and used to prop up the shelf that was too snug because of the baseboard.  Voila!

My family put the four cubes together while I was ironing fabric and long story short, the makeover is now done!

I will spare you all the boring stuff about all the dust bunnies encountered along the way.  I will however show you some before and after pictures so you can get a glimpse of how happy I am now that it's all organized.  

At the beginning of the Covid issue just before the lockdown, I was the beneficary of some fabric when another quilter downsized her home and had to destash.  With this addition, my room was bursting at the seams and it was just a giant mess.  I was so grateful for the fabric but so overwhelmed. Worse yet was the fact that I really didn't know or appreciate what I had in my palette of colours.  While standing and ironing for hours and days is hard on the body, the results of getting reacquainted with some pieces I had forgotten about was great.

So without further ado... the BEFORE PICTURES...

One of my iterations of trying to store my fabric.  This was before the latest gift of fabric arrived. And design walls were in the hallway.

Yes, the floppy bolts.  I had the right idea but this space needed help. Also before the gifted fabric arrived.

My workspace on any given day.  I didn't say I was neat. ;) This does not bring me joy.

View from my sewing chair.  Love my cutting counter above the washer & dryer but I don't love the clutter on top of the counter but there's nowhere else to put stuff! 

Yes a quilter lives here.  And so do these adorable doggies who love to be with me on something soft. I'm planning on making a lovely jelly roll rug for their comfort and to add some colour to my room.  It will be purple and teal most likely.  Or maybe scrappy...she says as she's thinking of her 2 1/2" strip bin that is filled to the brim! 

Bins and bins and bins... Imagine trying to get something out from the one on the bottom.  And yes they crashed to the floor more than once. Ugh.

Also another early attempt to quilt storage until I realized that they would like fade being next to that window.

Long view from the hallway into the sewing room.

Are you ready for the reveal of my new and improved happy place? 

Small pieces sorted by colour in shoe box bins.  Closet door closes to keep light from fading them.  These include fat quarters and half yard cuts. Also now have room for laundry soap etc. in a bin instead of on the floor or on my cutting counter.

These tubs are filled with random cuts made with my Accuquilt GO cutter when I was cutting just to deal with the scraps with no plan in the works.  I don't do that anymore.  I now cut them when I have a project in mind.  These take up too much space without a plan so in my books that's not smart. (Exception is cutting strips...they are always useful!.  I mean shapes like tumblers, bricks, etc.)

This is the right side of my reformatted long closet.  This has two cubes stacked and anchored to the wall.  This side has my tools and notions/rulers plus my UFOs in tubs in the bottom.  Notice the lids are off.  This makes it easy to see them without digging.  Besides the lids didn't fit nicely in the 11" width but the bins did.

This left side brings me joy.  My whole yardage stash, all tidy.  The bottom row is bins of precuts.

I now have my quilts hung on the right on the closet pieces that were already there.  The doors close to keep the light from fading them.  That hanging organizer holds all my projects and kits that are ready to do when my UFOs are history.  I'm beginning to see the finish line and it feels so good.

Hello counter!  Nice to be reacquainted.  See where the idea of purple and teal happened for my rug?

This is something I need to deal with.  I'm keeping the lid off on purpose.  Those are my scraps that need cutting.  It's higher than a large pile of laundry.  I added a bunch to the pile as I was ironing my gifted stash.  The previous quilter was an art quilter and there were pieces with bite missing, so I just trimmed past the chunks missing and added those pieces to the scrap pile and folded the rest for my shelves.

I also used Velcro with adhesive back to affix my design walls to my sliding mirrored doors.  The mirrors made the room look bigger but it also magnified the clutter x 2!!  And I'm happy to have my design walls right beside my sewing machine.

Well that was fun!  You can see that I've used all my available space in my makeover.  This cost me less than $300 to do with the help of my family to assemble my shelves.  I do love order even though I'm not the tidiest of people (especially mid project).

I'm going to stare at it for a bit before I get my GO cutter out and cut some triangles for my Simply Triangles project for the new year.  You can read about that post here.  But there are some luscious colours in that scrap box that will add some warmth and brightness to my quilt and I'm really excited to get started on it...but not before those UFOs are done. ;)

Until next time, you'll find me in my happy place. Happy New Year!

Mavis