Sewing Room 2.0

We moved earlier this year in march and since then I’ve been sewing in a new room. And because I’m a fan of lurking into other seamstresses sewing rooms I decided to let you take a look into mine :)

I wrote a post on my first sewing room, you can find it here, however it is written in German. My first sewing room was tiny, my new one is about twice the old one’s size.I can really use the extra space. One year ago a took a new job and since then I’m working from home two days a week. Fitting a work room and a sewing room into 10 m² was almost impossible. I couldn’t help but use the floor as working space sometimes. Also Marvin found out that he didn’t really need his extra room. So now I have a larger room and Marvin has none.

I think I used the space in my old sewing room super clever. That was possible because I had to buy all the furniture back then and so I could exactly plan what would fit best where and what storage option would take the least place. This time I had all the furniture and needed to fit it into a totally different room. Good thing was that it is a lot bigger. I actually bought some new stuff, but not much.

My huge desk fit perfectly into my old room. In the new room I only had one option: to put it into the darkest corner because that was the only corner it fit into, because of the placement of the doors and window. I use half of my desk for work and the other half is reserved for sewing. The part in the middle is used as kind of a docking station for my laptop when I work from home and  as cutting place otherwise. I like having two monitors. I basically develop software the whole day and two monitors are super practical to keep everything important in view. But they are also great for watching tutorials and looking at sewing instructions at the same time :)

Everything you see in those pictures was bought at Ikea. Well not exactly everything but most of the stuff and all of the furniture. The rack for example is one of those things I bought for the old sewing room, because it is super practical for storing things. An ironing board fits perfectly underneath it. Ikea doesn’t sell the rack anylonger but I still like it. It is super frustrating to hang it up though and it took us a while to do that.

I store all my patterns in the boxes and sort them by garment type. One is for dresses, one for pants and so on. The patterns are then again sorted in the boxes by fabric requirements. So for example I have knit dresses separated from dresses made from woven fabrics. Each pattern is in a transparent envelope. As I mostly buy pdf patterns I have some tools to make the assembly of the pages easier. First of a I have a laser printer. It only prints black and white but it is a lot faster than a regular inkjet printer. We do have an inkjet printer too. On the left top rack you see my paper cutter. You can align about 10 pages underneath a blade and cut off the borders where you afterwards tape the pages together. I use parcel tape for that and I have a tape dispenser for it.

There are also finished garments on the rack. I usually don’t wear them before photographing them for the blog, because otherwise I tend to not photograph them at all. I also store my zippers and haberdashery on the shelf.

Underneath the shelf I have a huge fabric waste bin. I only use it for fabric. Marvin complains a lot when I throw my fabric leftovers into our  waste bin because they use up a lot of space and usually I wait until Marvin clears the bin ;) I also have a rod underneath the shelf where I hang some of the stuff that can be hung ;)

Another thing that usually stands in that corner is my serving cart, also bought at Ikea. I tried to put only stiff in there that I regularly need while I’m sewing, like my scissors and rotary cutter and quilting ruler. But I still have to optimize that. I found out that I don’t need my hammer, yardstick and interfacing on the cart. The red thing you see in the pictures is my tape dispenser btw.

I have two thread shelfs (if that is the right word for that). I’m fairly messy and they really help me keep my thread organized.

I have two pin boards in the room. One is for postcards and flyers and stuff and one is to organize my thoughts on upcoming projects. I pin pattern names on it and if I have a suiting fabric in my mind I pin it there two. Not very beautiful but useful!

I don’t own many books on sewing. Those are all my sewing and knitting books and magazines. I just like reading on my monitor better I think. And looking at the picture it seems like I have more work related books than sewing related ones! How did that happen?! At the bottom you see all my buttons. I really like buying buttons ;) I found that they are way tooo expensive if you buy them in small amounts in stores. It has happened that the buttons I bought for a cardigan cost more than the wool. And so I don’t let an opportunity to buy cheap buttons pass ;)

Next to the book shelf there’s my ironing board and my three irons. I mostly use the small one. It is the Prym steam iron and it is very lightweight and super handy. Pressing darts is so much easier with this thing than with the big one. The big one is a Braun TexStyle 7 and I’m very pleased with it too:) I don’t often use the medium sized one, but it looks good in the pictures, doesn’t it? ;)

I covered the ikea ironing board with fabric from ikea bed sheets. And I also used that fabric to make some matching pin cushions ;)

Now to the hard stuff! My sewing room closet. Ikea Pax. The left side is filled with non-fabric items ;)  the big ball of plastic that looks very disturbing is painting protection foil that you get in every hardware store here. I use mine to trace patterns. That works super well, the foil comes in different strengths. The thicker ones are really stable and they are transparent which makes tracing and altering patterns super easy. Plus the foil is cheap. The downside it that is it really hard to fold it neatly ;)

The other side of the closet is filled with fabrics. Looks messy and it is. Especially those parts where I store my leftovers. I sort fabrics by garments too. So I have one shelf for dress and shirt fabrics, one for pants and skirt fabrics and so on. I don’t store my fabrics flat but roll them. I found that to be more practical and a little less messy.

The part right of the closet is a mess. We moved from an apartment that had a cellar to an apartment that didn’t. And until now we haven’t found an optimal way to store stuff that you don’t want to have in plain sight. As I got my own room and Marvin didn’t those things are in my room no, what is only fair. But I like to keep the door open so you cannot see that corner ;)

Now the round is almost complete. We are at the working part of the desk again. Left of it is the place where my dress form usually stands.

My father in law saw this one very cheap and bought it for me. It is adjustable and the best thing is: it also adjustable in height! You can lengthen it at the waist by 3 cm. That is by far not enough for me but better than nothing. The dress form is produced by a company called AdjustOfForm and the model is simply called Lady Valet. My FIL paid about 30 € for it and I wouldn’t pay more than 80 € for it. The foot and the head of the dress form are wood but the body isn’t very stable and a lot of plastic. The wheels that you use to adjust the width are very thin plastic and you cannot put pins into the body.

The few decorations in this room are all self made. Marvin once gave me the banner blog picture that hangs above my monitors and I painted two drawings for this room. I used up all of my purple button stash for the one above the sewing machine :)

I really like my purple wall and that I have direct access to the balcony. The balcony is oriented north however and there is a roof above it. So, the room isn’t that bright plus I’m sitting in the darkest corner while sewing, so I have a lot of lights as you might have noticed :)

I haven’t written about my sewing machines in English yet. So let me tell you that the left one is a Pfaff Expression 3.2 that I bought two years ago. I love this machine! I didn’t have any problems so far. I love that I have so much space right of the needle and the buttonhole automatic is magic! I’m telling you! The IDT which is an integrated top feet also is such a great feature. Right of my sewing machine you see my serger. It is a very basic model and I really need to get a better one because sewing knits really isn’t that fun to me and I think that is because of this serger.

That concludes this sewing room tour. I tried to include everything that makes my sewing life easier in this post. If you like further details on anything or if I forgot something let me know. I’d be happy to talk a little more about my space :)

Macht’s gut!

Katharina