Craft Spaces Tour, Part Two

Yesterday I said I would post pics of my quilting space, so here they are. My quilting room is our former dining room. The front entry door opens onto a large combination living and dining room, so when I decided to take over the dining half, we put bookshelves up to divide the room and hide “the mess.” Our guests still have to walk past the quilting room, but it’s not the first thing they see when they walk in the door.

I’m really happy to have a whole room for my quilting endeavors, but I miss our pretty living and dining room combination. It’s a classic case of beauty v. practicality, and it really is silly to have a formal dining room that we never used. Otoh, I really dislike the bookshelves that divide the living room from the quilting room; they’re big and dark and make the living part of the room seem even smaller and cut off, so I’m still working on a more aesthetic solution to the problem.

At any rate, here’s the view of quilting room after entering the front door and passing the bookshelves (note the entire bookcase filled with quilting and craft books and magazines; I TOLD you I had too much stuff):

The sewing table is made from four inexpensive dressers from IKEA, covered with a 4’x8’ piece of painted and sanded plywood. The dressers each have 3 drawers, so I have tons of storage space for fabric, thread, etc. In fact, most of my fabric is in these drawers, divided by type (commercial/printed, batiks, hand-dyes, sheers, painted, etc.) and sorted by color.

Large pieces of fabric, along with a bin for scraps, are stored in an old armoire:

The bins on the floor are just temporary and need to be relocated. They used to hold fabric until my sweetie made the nifty sewing table. The bags and boxes under the table are also temporary :-) The wood strips on the floor will eventually be used under the table to form a frame and drop the sewing machine down level with the tabletop.

The tabletop is not usually this cluttered, but when I cleaned the craft room I moved anything sewing related into this room and set it on the table (and, I’m in the middle of several small projects). In fact, here’s a better shot of the table I took a few weeks ago, when I cleaned it off in order to create a quilt sandwich:

My “pressing space” (currently an ironing board) is the next project I want to tackle. I want to buy or build some low shelves or, ideally, metal frames and baskets, if there’s enough room, then lay a pressing board across the top.

We covered the laminate floor with those spongy tiles from Sam’s (they’re colored blue, red, and yellow on the opposite side, but I like the black). These have been great for both protecting the floor and giving me a little cushion to walk and stand on.

Moving to the right, here’s my design wall, which, as you can tell, is too small (is it EVER big enough?):

I just put this pic in to show off the quilt top I’m currently working on :-)

Finally, here’s a view of my sewing space from the center of the house:

I’ve taken advantage of the backs of the bookcases (and lightened up the darkness a little) by covering them with a flannel-backed plastic tablecloth that I cut in two and now use as additional design-wall spaces.

So, that concludes the tour; I hope you’ve enjoyed it!