a sewing space

We moved here into this home almost a year ago already, and I have been trying to get everything sorted out and all organised ever since. Lastly is my little workroom. Its been difficult to get things to work in such a small room (I believe it is about 80 square feet or less) but slowly and with compromises I have been getting it together.

One of my goals with my workroom is to have a dedicated place to sew, since I am doing quite a bit of that these days, and also because I am hoping that my little daughter will pick up this and other interests from me. Usually when I get a bit of sewing done, she is at my feet working on her little projects: arranging her scraps of fabrics, or drawing with her pencils and markers. I hope to be able to fit a small desk here for her, too, somehow.

Since the room is so small, I decided to make the closet into another place to work. I find that my closets just end up shoved full of junk if I am not careful, so I removed the standard bi-fold doors and the unattractive shelf and clothes rack that was inside to leave an open nook. I lined the back of the closet with some vintage tree wallpaper that I had found at a thrift shop years ago and was waiting for the perfect project to use. I didn't actually glue the paper to the wall, but rather just used some thumbtacks to hang it up! I then hung 3 ikea lack wall shelves for storage. I measured out the space and at a hardware store had them cut to size a remnant board to make a desktop. I used some table legs from ikea to form the desk, and covered it with heavy kraft paper. I am still considering covering the desktop with linen or other fabric one day, once I find the perfect yardage.

I have yet to find a brilliant method to storing fabrics, so finally I decided to simply sort them by colour and stack them up on my highest shelf. This has worked well as I can stand back and peek at them all at once, but they are out of the way so they don't get messed up easily.

I also added a small desk lamp, but because this closet is next to a window, on left, there is a lot of nice natural light to work by.

p.s. thankyou to all who have posted in response to making tree quilts with me. If you would like to receive some of my green pieces for your own quilt, please send me an email at sharilyn at lovelydesign . com with your mailing address and I will mail you a little package! Other supplies you should have to make this quilt are a sewing machine, rotary cutter with a clear quilting ruler and cutting mat, other green and brown fabric pieces, and some muslin or other light coloured fabric.