This is where I sew

Sometimes people come over to my house, and they see where I sew.  And they often say, almost incredulously, ‘This is where you sew?”  So I am little defensive about my sewing space.  I don’t have my own sewing room, so I have claimed little (yes, I literally mean little) spaces around the house to sew.

This is my sewing corner. It measures 41″ x 50″. Before I claimed it, it was an empty, useless space. Now it is creativity central! I found a nice narrow little desk, and there is just enough room for me to push the chair back and swing my legs out without hitting my head on the wall. My rulers are stored on the pegboard behind me. There are also some clothes to be mended on the pegboard. They’ve been there awhile, since mending’s not as much fun as quilting. On the other wall are some sketches of possible future quilts. There is a pile of fabric on the floor.

I do most of my in-progress pressing on this little ironing board that I made. It measures 22″ square, so it fits fat quarters and my finished block sizes perfectly! This sits on my kitchen counter. I have a larger ironing board downstairs in my basement, and I press there when I’m putting tops together or ironing larger pieces of fabric. I also cut my fabric on this counter.  The basket holds the scraps from cutting and squaring things up.  Please do not be jealous of my awesome, 70s inspired tiled counters and back splash.

This is my design wall, which I have posted before. The ironing is on the counter to the right. I have another design wall in the guest bedroom downstairs, but the light there is awful, so use this one much more. The sewing corner is behind this, past the kitchen table. I can see the bottom right corner from my sewing, but not the bottom left, which is why the blocks skew to the right. Please note how the wonderful tiles extend to the whole wall!

My fabric is stored in the boxes that my kids’ diapers came in. We moved four years ago, and these are the boxes the fabric moved in. They are sorted by colour and the boxes are labelled. This is downstairs in the basement.

My husband is in the process of renovating the basement and he is building me the most amazing closet ever where I can store all my sewing stuff in one place. After all, functional craft spaces are much more important than an up to date kitchen, right? 🙂