Five years ago, I gave my sewing room a total make-over. I cleaned it up, re-organized the room layout, and bought new storage items. Several years later, it became a mess again, and I wanted to give it another make-over.
My husband suggested that we actually move my sewing room, so we could use its spot for the nursery. I was open to the idea since we did have a spare room we weren’t using, and this would give me a chance to start over. That’s what I’ve been busy with lately!
There’s still a couple things I want to do, but for the most part, I’m now moved over to the new room. Let’s take a tour, shall we?
From the photo above, you can see that there’s a weird narrow entryway before you reach the room itself. This gave me some more wall space to hang things, but it also cut out some space in the room. I found out this new room is narrower than the previous room by 2 feet. I still made it work though!
On one side of the entryway, I made use of the wall space to hang up keychains and cellphone straps I’ve been collecting. I do actually use some of the ones I buy on keys, bags, and my phone, but… I also buy way too many. (I have artwork by Rezina hung up here too!)
I tied jewelry hemp string to small metal rings and then hung the rings on nails that I put in the wall. This gives me an easy way to add/remove things on each row.
I used the other wall of the entryway for posters, which isn’t quite filled out. (Shout out to a couple of my favorite artists, Lowah and Zzyzzyy, for those posters.) By the way, you’ll see a lot of posters on the wall as I show more photos! Most of them are collected from the years I’ve been to Anime conventions. While a few are official art, most are fan art by very talented artists!
Now let’s get to the actual room. Right in the middle, you’ll see a table, which is where I do most of my patterning, cutting, and craft work. The mat on top is a cutting mat that I can use a rotary cutter on.
(I often get comments about the Ghibli prints I have on my wall. They’re by idrawrainbows, sugarmints, and Tachik.)
As we start from the right of the room, you’ll see where I store my fabric, props, and wigs. The shelf on the right is new! It’s a 4-tier shelf that I just ordered from Target. I used to use one wire shelf for fabric and the other for wigs and props, but my fabric collection grew too large. Now I use both wire shelves for fabric. (Wire shelves are also from Target.)
I also bought some plastic containers to store things in, so that they’re grouped by similar items and don’t get dusty. The top shelf has 2 large containers that are all of my wigs. The shelves below store materials and props.
Moving to the left, we get to where my sewing machines are: the left is a sewing machine and the right is a serger/overlock. The tables and chairs are new!
The tables are the Ingo from IKEA, and if you look it up, you’ll see that it’s actually a dining room table. I found that the dining room tables were less narrow and less expensive than the office and craft desks, meaning I save money and get more table space. The chairs are from Amazon and are dining room chairs as well! In other words, dining room furniture can work quite well for a craft room!
Here’s a closer look at each table, though the items on the table aren’t new. Most were storage items I had bought in my previous room make-over.
I’ll group the next two walls together, which is where I put my dress form, ironing board, and whiteboard.
A neat thing about the cat-themed Yuri on Ice prints to the right is that they’re actually folders. They double as decoration and a place for me to store note cards that I jot measurements down on. (Also below the whiteboard is another drawing by Rezina, and the little Yuri on Ice polaroids were from Tara!)
As for the closet, it’s still a mess, but it stores all of my cosplays. We’re also using it to store some things we plan on recycling and donating. The recycling center for electronics and large items is a bit far from our house, so we’re storing things up until we have a large collection to bring.
And there you have it! My new sewing room! Though I can’t cosplay for a while, I’m excited to start using it to prepare new projects for next year’s Anime conventions 🙂
What a great room, it’s much more organised than most professional theatre costume departments I’ve been in! You’ve put so much care into it. I love the posters, and how much colour they bring – the Appa poster is my favourite!
Using dining tables is so clever, and the work so nicely in the room too. The lamp to the left of them is amazing! Did you buy it with different coloured shades on or did you customise it?
We store all our electronic recycling under the kitchen table, it’s a bit of an electronics graveyard under there!
Thanks Katy! The lamp actually came like that with the different colored shades! It’s one of the reasons why I bought it because I liked the combo of colors too 🙂
Wow Cat! I love how you’ve organised the room – it seems really easy to get things and definitely helps with being productive when you need to create things! It’s such a welcoming room too – I love all the colourful decorations. Having your keyrings/chains on the wall like that IS SUCH A FAB IDEA. I collected loads of keyrings over my travels last year but don’t like putting them with my keys because it gets messy! So it’s lovely how you’ve done it – I might try and incorporate it into my new apartment!
I can’t believe that makeover post was just five years ago! With the baby coming, all of the moving makes sense. I love the wall keychain/cellphone straps decor you have going on. I like that you still have a lot of space to do whatever you need to do. The longer table seems appropriate because you can push things to the end and still get workspace. 🙂
Wow I love your sewing room! So bright and organized. Its so efficient and easy to find things. So colorful too with everything you have hung on the walls. I wish I could have a sewing room. We have a spare bedroom as we are in a 2 bedroom apartment but it is just full of junk and storage right now. Can’t even get inside it really without stepping over a bunch of stuff that has fallen (almost a hoarding situation lol) but I wish I could do something like that with it. At least until we finish the foster/adoption paperwork and get the room set up as a kids bedroom if we get approved. You’ve given me a bit of inspiration to want to tackle our spare room now 🙂
Wow a room dedicated for sewing! It’s very bright and organised. I like how you split the fabrics into the main colour theme. Makes it so easy to find the right fabric for your sewing!
Wow! I love your sewing room 🙂 It’s so nice and bright. The keychain and phone charms on the wall is SO cute and I love how you have them hung up!
Everything looks so well organized 😍 I’ve been meaning to declutter my room and office work space and this has given me so much inspiration!
I love the new chairs you purchased! I never think to look at Amazon when it comes to furniture, but I think I’ll have to check them out.
I think your idea for displaying your keyrings is really clever. It looks like it makes them really easy to access.
I can’t wait to finish decorating my office. It’s been an ongoing job since the start of the year because we’ve had problems with the ceiling. But once it’s done I plan on setting up my sewing machine on it’s own desk in hope that it will encourage me to start using it more!
Are you planning on decorating the nursery? If so, I can’t wait to see what you do with that. 🙂
Amazon is actually pretty good for furniture! There’s a lot of variety on it, and Prime shipping still works for most items.
And yes, I’ll be decorating the nursery! I’ll have to show it later because I ordered some cute things, and I’m also doing a few paintings for it 🙂
Awesome! I loved looking at this room. It would be such a cool place to work and focus on sewing, with enough space and be able to get to the things you need! 😀