My New Sewing Studio!

Okay so perhaps it's not a "studio" but to me it's perfect.  As you may remember, we decided to finish our basement last year.  Up until then, I had been working in whatever section of the basement I could find that would hold all my stuff.  Because of a lack of storage and organization, my sewing stuff spilled out of bins and spread throughout almost the entire basement.  It was a mess!

My sweet and handy husband decided that we needed extra space in our house and that I needed a more permanent area to work.  Since my Etsy shop has really taken off, this has clearly become a necessity.  Even though I have a pretty successful business now, I still view sewing as a hobby so I had some serious guilt about using too much of the basement (our living area) for just myself.  My husband convinced me that even hobbies deserve their own spot, especially since I had been doing this for so long.  Clearly this is not a hobby that is just going to blow over when I find something more fun.

Last Wednesday the carpet was installed and by Friday I was at IKEA trying to buy the finishing touches for my space.  Now, my area is small (10' x 5').  My 7 year old refers to it as my sewing nook instead of a studio.  I really needed to use the vertical space as much as possible.  Are you ready for the reveal?  Here goes!

This is an overall look and I will show you the other areas a bit more close up.  The two main table areas are some inexpensive tables I had from Joann's.  One is a cutting table and the other is a sewing table.  I am not in love with them because they fall apart when moved but they are working well for me.  I still need to get some art and color on the walls to make it a bit more personal but you get the idea.  Now, I will admit that you are not seeing the bins and bins of finished projects, minky dot fabric, upholstery fabric, and off season fabrics that I have.  Those I am storing in the crawl space section of our basement so they are out of the way.  I am not sure how that is going to work since I do use that stuff almost daily but it's working out so far.  Now let's take a more in depth tour :-).

I have had this thread thing forever and never had a place to hang it.  I put my most used threads on here and it is so nice being able to reach up and grab what I need.  The best part, I actually put the threads back when I am finished with them.  Miracle!  I have extra embroidery threads in cases down below.  My small computer is right by my machine which is a must since some of my embroidery designs come off the computer.  I also have that magnetic board which holds all my product labels so I never forget to grab one when I am stitching something together.

This is the majority of my fabric.  I used comic book boards to wrap all the fabric which makes them stand up beautifully.  The tops of the shelves are a bit too short for the boards so I have all my pre-cuts and quilt bundles up there.

Welcome to my shipping area.  These IKEA kitchen storage things are perfect.  I have my rulers hanging since this is also near my cutting table.  Some of my rulers didn't fit quite well so the hubs promised to drill a couple new holes in them to make them work better.  The rest is all the stuff I need for shipping...business cards, thank you notes, tape, string, stickers, etc.

This is the rest of my shipping area and some more storage.  The drawer cabinet holds my poly-mailers, as well as half completed projects.  The magnetic board is perfect for hanging up my pending orders so I can keep track of what I need to work on next.

 The two shelves at the top hold all the bins of supplies that I have.  The bins are clear so I can easily see what's in them.  (What isn't shown is that the shelves fell down the night after these pictures were taken because I installed them wrong.  Oops!  My hubs has promised to fix my mistakes but he is going to let me live with a downed shelf for a couple days as punishment for not waiting for his help in the first place.  Love it.)  My ribbons were a huge problem before.   I used a curtain hanger from IKEA for storage.  Now I just unwrap a roll when I get it and put it on these cards.  This way I can see exactly what I have and what I need to buy.  The cards easily un-clip when I need to use them.

To the right is another kitchen storage bar thingy.  This holds my scissors, rotary cutters, and other necessities.

All in all, I am SO in love with my new space.  I have a ton of work to do and this makes it an absolute pleasure to do anything.   The rest of the basement has room for our new couch and TV (coming later this week) and some of the kids' larger toys.   Well, I better get back to sewing!  This room is screaming to be used.

I LOVE seeing other people's work areas.  If you have any pictures of your work space, please feel free to post them here.  I will be sure to check them out.