sewing craft rooms

[merrilyn]

How do you organise your work spaces or sewing spaces to cater for all different types of work and projects
eg Hand sewing ,crazy quilting, Patchwork, hand embroidery sewing , overlocking
storage etc
any sugestions do you have seperate corners for different projects

[Judy B]

I do try to keep everything for a project together in a box, but which corner of the room it goes in when I am not actively working on it is a different story. Quite often the floor because I want to get back to it soon! (That usually means there is a pile of boxes on the floor and I can't reach the one I want!

The worst thing in my sewing room are the bookshelves. They are too deep, which means when I push the books back there is room to put shoe box size objects in front of them. Sometimes there are just a few carefully chosen tins or perhaps a pincushion or two artfully arranged of course. Other times I can't see the books! Most of teh time I can see some of the books, but never the one I am looking for.

[Rosemary]

I'm trying the project /box method too... then,as you say, what you do with the box?.... I have plastic tubs full of fabric: reds in one, yellows, blues, whites, the boxes of ribbon, beads, lace, wools, stranded cottons, the button jar. Anyway... some of it's down at my mother's house (always what I particularly want at 9 pm: Murphy's Law strikes!)... the rest is a bit of a brothel really I have to admit, in most corners of every room there's something and there's even the stuff in the car for those stolen minutes when (miracle) you get to school for afternoon pick up 10 minutes early or the blissful time when someone else drives!

"My" end of the sofa is potentially dangerous to the unwary... needles and pins in the arm, open containers of beads in the big biscuit tin that lives there... that's where my light is and the little waste bin. The scissors and little projects live in the tin...

I'm lobbying for (a) the garage to be lined or (b) a move.... perhaps the move will happen! One couldn't put a vehicle out in the weather after all....

Rosemary

[Romilly]

I had to laugh about "your" end of the sofa, Rosemary! I was broen of this habit when my scissors fell out of the tin (I think they had help from a cat, actually...) and into the cushions. DH decided to sit there to better see something, and impaled himself on them when he sat down... Think the little stork scissors, embedded as far as they would go into his poor backside. (DH is rather thin, and that meant all the way to the bone on him... Poor guy.) My things now live in a basket under the end table! And while DH might like to see the basket go away - he hates baskets -- it's far better than impalement!

[Rosemary]

OWWWWW.... oh dear. The thought is just dreadful. the poor man. When you think about it the safety aspect of all our sewing equipment is a real issue. And it's not just little children we need to worry about!

[merrilyn]

Oh dear what an accident (poor thing)
My huband hates pins and he would also like to see the basket in the lounge room gone
I have to admit I did cure him of raiding my screw drivers from sewing machine and overlocker
I went over to his big shed and here was my screw driver for my overlocker sitting on the ground I bent down and picked it up and said if you loose this I have to buy a new machine ... never touched them again

[Judy B]

Merrilyn,
Well done! Perfect words at the perfect time!

[Iris]

Oh yes, I do remember the ideal room.
I used to have two rooms, believe it or not - one huge for all my crafts with a large cutting table that incorporated a light box, and another that was just for painting and nothing else other than inspirations all over the walls (who needs a formal dining room anyway?).Those were the good old days - access at my figertips to all the books, supplies, everything I needed and easy to keep tidy.
Now, since we moved house 10 years ago, the house itself is only about 100 square metres in size. That means, like Carol-Anne, I have everything stashed in any nook or cranny that I can possibly find or down in the cellar, with only a small area set up for my current project. Not what I would recommend given a choice. Always seem to spend so much time looking for something I know I have somewhere, only to find it a month later when no longer needed. I find my projects tend to be smaller in size too.
I do have a train carriage perched on top of the hill with the most wonderful view. It is supposed to be my studio, but until the bank balance improves it is just a lot of wishful thinking (it is a renovators delight at present) and only the spiders are actually able to enjoy the view.
But no matter how large or small the workspace, my creative spirit will not be squashed, and hubby is finding that I am moving in on his sacred ground out in the workshop for those 'dirty' or messy projects I can't do inside. Funny how the workshop is 120 square metres in size, even larger than the house. What is wrong with this scenario?
Cheers, Iris

[Judy B]

Iris,
The maths seem a bit unfair, so maybe you could move into the shed. The extra space would be all yours of course!

[Sandra Fox]

You all seem to have missed the perfect solution. Buy the house next door. Don't know what you can use for money but my husband was always telling me that was what we had to do. Dream on girls. Sandra

[Carol-Anne]

I used to live in a 1 bed terrace house, that I loved but it was rather small./ I hoped that my neighbour would move so that I could buy her house and knock through (if I had the money, of course!).

In the end I moved in with J into a house with plenty of space and I still don't have anywhere to call a workspace!

As for the garage, how could be possibly dispose of all the unused furniture, broken childrens bikes, defunked electricals, tins of paint with a small amount of dried up paint from 3 or 4 decorations ago, etc, and use it for something as trivial as parking the car let alone convert it into a workroom!

[Rosemary]

My father used to have a shed three times the size of the house... it was a fact noted by many visitors to the farm.

Rosemary

[MichelleMermaid]

For at least a decade my mother and step-dad have lived in his old house, a tiny thing not even equipped with an oven. The oven is stored in the garage which is newer and, I'm sure, larger than their current abode, so she has to go out there to cook anything of substance.

My mother learned how to quilt not long after she remarried and moved into this house and all this time she has lamented not having room to sew. She offered to make a quilt for me - and I accepted - at least 4 years ago, but the excuse she always uses for not having it done is how she doesn't have room to work on it. Funny, though, how she has room for a guest bedroom, which no one ever sleeps in and couldn't anyway because it's so full of junk. They also have a huge, ancient, decrepit old organ of some kind, also never used, taking up a chunk of space in their living room. But it can't be thrown away because it belonged to my step-dad's deceased mother.

Isn't it amazing how we hang on to old crap? If my mom dies before she finishes my quilt I'm throwing every bit of it away, as there will be too many "excuses" hanging on to it to allow any good memories.

They are building a new house where she is supposed to have a sewing room. Who knows, maybe she really will have a creative space someday, although the building process has been slow as molasses...a good two or three years with no move-in date so far.

I'm very grateful to have my own workspace, even if it is in a rented house and not our own. I've been amazed at how much I get done there and I'm being fairly strict with myself about keeping it neat and tidy. I'm working on the rest of the house, too, getting rid of old junk that's just hanging around unused, unwanted and unneeded.

I talk about my craft room here on my blog.