Creative Space Tag: My Controlled Chaos

Julie over at Pink Doxies started a creative space blog tag earlier this year, but due to everyone's crazy summer schedules, the blog tag has been on vacation since June.  I'm kicking off the heading into fall portion of the blog tag.  I'm tagging Thea at California Dreamn' to share her new sewing space next week.  

Here's the 180 degree panoramic view of the more active part of my sewing space.   

My sewing space is really more functional, than fashionable. Walking into the sewing room from the hallway, the first thing you see is the big design wall, it's pretty much the focal point for the whole room. It's one of those commercially available free standing design walls.  I love it.  

To the left of the big design wall is my cutting/pressing table with my smaller homemade design wall propped up on it.  

The smaller design wall is just a very large flattened box with an old table cloth taped to it.  It works great and it's nice to have more than one space to play in.  My rulers are on stored top of the plastic drawers on the left, which holds unsorted scraps and a few office supplies.  The tote bins hold fabric that hasn't made it into the fabric closet (more on that later).The stack of fabric under the cutting table is the fabric that's being used in my UFOs. 

Moving past the big design wall to the right, the other side of the room includes a wire rack with all my project boxes and another stack of fabrics associated with ongoing projects.  The TV is there too. I use a small secretary for my lap top.  Off to the far right is a small alcove that holds my only window and a couple of bookcases. If there's any one thing that I really wish I had, it would be more natural light.  But this is my first dedicated sewing space that I don't have to share with someone else, so I'm not going to complain too loudly about that.  

The file cabinet holds my color printer.  In the file cabinet are my half yard and fat quarter cuts. 

I use hanging folders cut in half, covered with acid free tissue paper to "hang" my smaller fabric cuts.  It makes it really easy to see what I have.

The fabric closet is next to the wire rack, you can just see the hinges of the door in the photo above.  

Fabric organization is an ongoing project.  My goal is to get all my fabrics folded and stored in these two wire racks.  I have to admit, I'd rather sew, so this project often goes months without any progress.  The plastic drawers in the far right hold stabilizers and the fat quarters/half yard cuts that haven't made it to the file cabinet yet. My batting is stored on either side of the wire rack at the back of the closet.  

The bookcase with all my quilting books stands on the last wall in my sewing room between the door to the hall and the door to the bathroom that Drama Teen graciously share's with me when I'm upstairs stitching.  The drawers to the left hold scraps sorted by size and roughly by color as well as used fat quarters that are too small to be hung in the file cabinet.  

The desk in the middle of the sewing room holds my 14 year old Bernina. Another thing I would change is the overhead lighting, I've had to supplement that with a floor lamp.  Sadly, my eyes don't see as well in the low light situations as they used to.  

That pretty much covers my sewing space.  It's not a glamorous space, but it's pretty functional.  I'd love to have a long arm, but it won't fit in this space.  The house has an unfinished attic.  Sometime before retirement, the plan is to refinish the attic and move my sewing room there.  I'd have more storage space and room for a long arm there.  But retirement is still a good 10 years away. So I'll just continue to enjoy the space I have till then.