My Sewing Space: The Sequel

Since my post about my IKEA-hacked cutting table & my organized closet drawers is by far the most popular post on my blog, I thought you might enjoy seeing the rest of my sewing room.

Here’s a reminder of what the cutting table looks like:

My IKEA hack: the fabric cutting table

My sewing room is a 10’ x 12’ bedroom in my house.

My sewing room floor plan

My goal was to create a space that was both pretty and functional. I didn’t want to feel like I was boxed in by shelves & tons of supplies but I wanted a lot of storage space.

I decided to put shelves on the wall of the room to make use of the vertical space and went searching for the most aesthetically pleasing yet strong shelving. I found my visually simple solution at The Container Store: suspension cable shelf brackets that can hold up to 100 lbs. per pair!

I waited for a sale at The Container Store to buy the brackets and saved even more by buying the actual shelves at Home Depot or Lowes (I don’t remember which one had a better price on laminate shelves at the time).

One of the best things about these shelf brackets is the fact that you only have to put two holes in the wall to hang one shelf (but I will admit they are a bit of a pain to level when you first hang them).

I filled my shelves with clear storage boxes in various sizes. I find that unless my storage is see-through, I forget I have stuff and I don’t really read the labels.

My assortment of clear storage containers on the shelves.

Originally, my husband and I built a crude table for both my sewing machine and my serger by using a long laminate shelf and attaching six legs to it.  It served me well for many years, but I found myself wishing for a drawer or two.  (I never bothered to take a picture of it even though I used it for so long!)

Then IKEA started selling the BESTA BURS desk – it was literally only about ¼” different in length and width from the table we had built and it had two long drawers! I decided to splurge and buy it (after all, my cutting table only cost about $100 to build) because there would be no hacking involved to get exactly what I wanted. How often does that actually happen??

I discovered that an adhesive ruler fits perfectly on the edge of the table
in front of my sewing machine.

I have my thread storage on the wall over my machine and the cones of serger thread hang behind the door to the room. (Since I don’t change that thread as often it doesn’t have to be right next to my serger.)

My cone thread rack behind the door to the room and next to the closet door.

I plan to expand my standard thread racks a bit in the next couple of weeks (I seem to have outgrown what you see in the pictures), and I will explain how I hang them once I’ve done that – it’s actually really simple to do.

You might remember from this post that I keep my ironing tools on the shelf above the ironing board in my ironing corner.

My ironing corner complete with “backwards” board.

I have since added another RIBBA picture ledge to the wall above my cutting table for storing some spools of bias tape and elastic.

The newer second RIBBA picture ledge on the bottom
(to the Left of the one I had previously hung).

And I have been mulling over the idea of moving the tea cart out of the room and expanding my cutting table, or even setting up one of my other machines in a more permanent way.

Now if only I could always keep it as neat and tidy as it looks in these photos! It’s amazing how fast it gets messy (and creeps into other rooms) when I’m in the middle of my projects!

Of course, when am I not in the middle of a project?

Related posts:

How I Organized My Sewing Room

I’m in a Book! So Let’s have a Giveaway!