Sewing Room Storage

I'm lucky enough to have my own sewing room.  I have been working for a while to get it all organized the way I want.  I'm still working on painting out the sewing machine cabinet. ( I might have already finished if I stopped changing things on it.) Since I'm unable to show you the whole finished cleaned up sewing room I'll show you my storage cabinet.

I have been able to add storage along the way to my sewing room .  This is one of the first things we did in my sewing room when we moved into the house. There was a wall that had a bump out in the room, the room in fact has a few bump out and bump in.

This cupboard started with IKEA book cases.  We used two different sizes  of bookcases for this.  The centre one is a wider one with two smaller ones used to the outside.  The small cupboard doors you see to the left is the pull out drawer that was made to store all my acrylic tole paints.

My husband designed the pattern of the doors. I wanted a wall of doors with no hardware visible.  He came up with the pattern that I really liked. We cut all the doors out of MDF, rounded the edges, primed, and painted them all.  It took a while to do, but they turned out great.

We used push latch hinges, so I just push on the center of each door edge and the doors pop open.  This way it is very easy to open up the cupboard doors without visible hardware.  Door open to the left, to the right and one opens up!

The shelves are lined up so that they line up with the gaps between the doors, so that when you look at the wall you see the white shelves in the edge of the door not fabric.

I didn't get a good picture of the full width shelves, the center shelves are wide enough to fold fabric full width.  Initially I stored a sewing machine in the middle of the centre shelf, but as I added more machines I added more furniture to store them. Of course I have added more fabric to fill up the shelves I took the machine off.

This is the pull out drawers for my tole paint, we figured out the size of bottles, drilled the holes so the bottles will sit on an angle in the shelves.   I can see the colour name at a glance.

I'm very happy with the way it has turned out and it is great to be able to see my fabric at a glance.


Come back again to visit and see more of my sewing room.

The Woman's Cave

If men are allowed to have  Man Caves then I think the Women can have the same.

Hey I have a fire place,  a TV,  enough fabric to sink a small boat  ship and a few sewing machine in my Sewing Room.  It is in the basement so I can't see out the windows unless I use a chair. I at least get a lot of sun in it during the day.

Now I really don't know if I want to call my Sewing Room my cave, I hope it will would be called something different.  To start off I would not use the fire place at all.  For two three reasons  - The room is way too small to use a fire place in, as I would die of heat.  -  Also since it hasn't been used since we moved in 9 years ago it most likely has something that has nested in it so I would smoke myself out. - (Since I started writing this post a ew weeks ago something did move in, unfortunately it didn't leave so we had to get a chimney sweep in and then a cap added to the chimney.)

The TV is great during the day when I have control of the remote, it is on the same receiver as the one upstairs.  I do get exercise with the TV as I have to go up stairs to change the channel.  I watch lots of hockey and other sports during the evening when I sew as DH has control of the remote when sports are on TV.  I'm so glad he doesn't want to watch Baseball.


I'm very lucky to have a sewing room, that is pretty much my own to use.  I have had the family computer on a desk in here until a couple of weeks ago. We have now gone to a lab top that the boys use so the room is now my own.  The boys are now upstairs using it and don't have to worry about what the are sitting on or what they might step on.  Now I can pile as much fabric as I want on that old computer chair.

Don't get me wrong it wasn't that bad having them visit when they used the computer, catching up on Mindcraft or what ever else they were playing. But it hard to share the space and computer with them when you are trying to sew a bag or purse and the PDF pattern is on the computer and you need to have them keep pausing their game so I can check the pattern.  It will be different now.

I was going to reuse the computer table move some furniture around.  That would have been the easiest thing to do.  I decided to make a sewing desk where you cut a hole and sink your sewing machine into so it leave a nice flat surface to sew on. Pinterest has such great tutorials.  I thought it would take too much time. So in the end and decided to buy a used sewing cabinet off Kiiji ( made since at the time) maybe because it was a great price and I would get a working sewing machine with it. Of course that was just what I needed another one.  I  was very happy when I picked it up got it home, I went through the drawers the only exciting thing I found was the ladies secret stash pack of smokes from the 70's never been opened they had been jammed in the back of the sewing cabinet.  Ok that was my first sign that it wasn't a good thing.

I should have known better.

So now it is a couple of weeks later I have been working on the cabinet in my spare time it has been taken apart as far as you can and I have been sanding and painting it with Kilz sealer it is guarantee to cover up the smell of cigaret smoke. I still haven't got two coats on it all yet, once it has all been coated, then dried for a few days, then it is lightly sanded.  Then the fun of starting all over with the paint.  I can't decide what color to use. Most likely black. It will match a few other pieces that I have.

So my idea of writing this post (that I start writing a month ago) is not going to be a witty post about how it is fun to clean the Women Cave. Take a change to work on a new sewing table and sort through stuff and purge the stuff you don't need.  I was going to say it takes a few days but it is great to get rid of stuff, find lost stuff and find room for more fabric. 

Well I can't say that the sewing room look better it looks worse.  There is a cabinet in pieces all over the floor. Most of the fabric has been put away most of it.
I have purge everything.  But I can't find my old sewing table as it's covered with the stuff I can't put away right know because the pieces are in the way.

IT TAKES LONGER THEN YOU THINK IT WILL. SO IF YOU CAN LIVE WITH YOUR OWN MESS IN THE ROOM, AND DON'T NEED THOSE MISSING SEAM RIPPERS OR RULERS BACK OUT OF THE ROOM AND CLOSE THE DOOR.

This was the pile on the sewing table when I started

Someday hopefully in the near future, I will be able to post a great picture of my Cave.  Right now I give you a few shots of the scary cave.

The Sewing Summit...here I come.

OK I'm doing my Happy Dance.  I have my tickets to The Sewing Summit  in Salt Lake City Utah.

 http://sewingsummit.com/

I still can't believe I'm going, I wanted  to go but not by myself so who better to ask to go then Janelle  from  emmalinebags.blogspot.com/.   


So we are all booked still need to get my flight booked, but when I come off the ceiling I will do that.

I have to make some funky bags before then.  Oh the pressure. lol

Bag Pattern and Hardware Giveaway at Emmaline Bags!

Bag Pattern and Hardware Giveaway at Emmaline Bags!

Emmaline Bags is having a giveaway for her new bag pattern.. It looks like a great bag and will be on my list to try.  The giveaway also includes a hardware kit for the bag! Check out the blog for some pics of some great bags by Janelle's testers

Pattern testing Boyd St. Bowling Bag

I was lucky to have been able to have been a pattern tester for  Boyd St. Bowling Bag which the talented Janelle at www.emmalinebags.blogspot.ca made up.

I had so much fun sewing this pattern, the instruction were very clear and straight forward.  Also she is great about including lots of pictures of the various steps.

I always like to use different types of fabrics when I sew bags, I'm never one to stick to 100% cotton.  So the choice of fabric is a big thing for me.  I usually sew on my industrial walking foot machines.  I can sew just about anything with it. I can sew cottons, and then go onto sewing canvas and leather just by changing out the needles. When I saw this pattern I knew I had to use Textilene and leather, two of my favorite fabrics to sew with.

I had no problems with  the pattern instructions at all while sewing this. Everything went together right the way they were suppose to.  I'm very happy with how my bag turned out. The only snag I ran into was trying to take a shortcut while making the straps and tabs.  I always use rubber cement, but thought I would try to use wonder under.  Needless to say with the upholster weight leather I used you really need to use rubber cement and a mallet. Once I went back and glued and beat the leather with a mallet everything turned out great.

This is such a great pattern to try and I have learned a few new tricks about keeping my lining fitting properly, and staying at the bottom of the bag. Also a chance to add some feet to the bottom of the bag. I will have to make more bags using feet.


Look for Janelle PDF pattern as it is available now at thru her website.