Bob: Is there ANY way to move in gracefully?? Some of this stuff is bound for the long room, but most of it will stay in here. Phase II is about to begin, and after moving a bunch of this stuff out of the way...
Nan: Oh, why did I ever accumulate so much sewing stuff? I couldn't possibly sew without it, now could I?
Bob: Now, Nan, that's why we built you this room, remember?
Bob: I put up two of these fluorescent light fixtures in here to brighten up the room and give good light for Nan to work by. They both came out of construction dumpsters, one from our public library remodeling, another from a local gas station renovation. I spent a little time in the attic, and found where all the ceiling joists were, so I could screw the fixtures directly to the ceiling and into the joists (no falling lights for us!). Nan helped prop up the fixtures by setting the cripples in place while I held each fixture where I wanted it. Behind the fixture, you can see the receptacle we had the electricians install (this was our second visit from them) to run these lights. It's connected to a switch at the bedroom doorway.
Nan: The best thing about the lights in here is the cost. Free is best! The second best thing
is all the light they provide.
Bob: So much of this house was substantially complete when we bought it, but there were an endless number of things missing, the little things like ceiling lights... These will give Nan plenty of light to sew with.
Nan: In another life, this house would have been "move-in ready" for remodeling while
living in it, but in this life, we decided to do it first, then move in....so all those
little things about drove us nuts getting them all done.
Bob: Hey, where did those great cabinets come from? Oh yeah, we refinished them back in February and March. The one on the left will hold towels and such for the bathroom, and the right one is our linen cabinet. I hate to think what we'd have to pay for a forty-eight inch cabinet this nice, but we got ours for almost nothing (all we had to buy was a house!).
Nan: These cabinets from the kitchen seem to have managed to filter all over the house. It seems like there were a hundred or so, instead of only eleven.
With the wire shelves (coming soon to a sewing room near me) and these cabinets, I should
have enough storage space for every piece of sewing equipment or fabric I have.
Bob: Happy New Year! We scrounged all the wire shelves already in the house, and used every one of them in here. We also had to buy a few more, as well as all of the angle supports, and some miscellaneous parts. There were about four different kinds, and I sorted and matched them to the various walls in this room to make them match the needs. These here will hold books and miscellaneous when we're done. You can already see the beginings of a rudimentary computer station on the left.
Nan: See, I told you there were wire shelves in the offing. These are but a few of the many
I have in the background. You'll see, just be patient.
Bob: In spite of all our plans, as envisioned on the first page for this room in 3-D Home Architect, we decided to place the long console for the embroidery machine on the long room wall, not the bedroom wall. This set of wire shelves was particularly nice as it will allow us to reposition them as we need. To the left is a nice stationery cabinet for lots of small things. I have special plans for shelves over it...
Nan: I can't wait to see all my stuff on these shelves. I have so much fabric that's been
hidden away in boxes and drawers, that I've forgotten exactly what I do have. Lots of quilt
fabrics and etc. will go on these.
Bob: I built these custom shelves over the stationery cabinet to hold Nan's old TV (now on Dish Network), and the black and white shelf units above it. Top of stationery cabinet is free for notebooks. Black and white shelves will hold yarn. Ah, a place for everything, at last.
Nan: The black and white shelves in the corner will hold my yarns. I already had the 2 white ones, but the black one is a side-of-the-street find. I love rescuing items bound for the dump. There was nothing wrong with that set of black shelves, just someone's desire to no longer keep it.
Remember: reduce, reuse, repurpose, recycle, and it will not ever go to the landfill. If it
ever fails, we'll use it for an outdoors plant stand or something.
Bob: So what do you do with a unique problem? Get lucky, then make a unique solution. The long brass bars on the wall are curtain rods we found in someone's trash. I made a custom frame to mount them on the wall, and now they hold long rolls of stabilizer, available to be drawn down and cut to any length. Another receptacle on the ceiling (also switched) leads to a receptacle on the side of the small gray shelf unit (you can't see the receptacle in this picture, but, trust me, it's there) for plugging in lamps and things. The folded cutting table parks nicely underneath.
Nan: Isn't it amazing what can be salvaged from the side of the street? These rods were
nice enough that they could have been used as the draw drapery rods they were, but I
repurposed them for my use. Now I can also find my stabilizers.
Bob: When we had those electricians in, they installed a reinforced box on the ceiling, wired to a (new) second wall switch. I mounted this $5 ceiling fan we found at a garage sale, and it works perfectly. Under the linen cabinet is a wood slap on the wall with about a dozen nails in it to hang rulers and other stuff.
Nan: Well, not exacty a side-of-the-street find, but for $5, this fan may as well have
been free. Garage sales are my second favorite places for finding things.
Bob: The wall adjacent to the bedroom got shelves, too, and a clock and several spool racks for thread. This is where the U-shaped sewing machine desk ended up, a better choice than our anticipated deployment. I think you'll agree, though, it's time to fill all these shelves.
Nan: My sewing table fits on this wall exactly. The spool racks will make my threads
so handy. Of course, I have at least 3 more spool racks. You say, why so many? Well with
all the embroidery threads I have, trust me, I need a bunch of spool racks.
Bob: Stocking all these shelves took time, but it was done long before these pictures were taken. This rack system got some new shelves added to accomodate all of Nan's fabric supplies. Yarn and crochet thread are in the wooden shelves on the left.
Nan: Now you can see my yarns, and some of my fabrics and sewing equipment. And see the two spool racks? I have at least two more (folding ones). The metal black one with the sewing machine design was a Christmas gift from Charlie. It matches the one she has for her sewing room.
Look at all the quilt fabrics. Yummy!
Bob: Ya gotta just love it, we really did get a lot of stuff in here, but there's plenty of room to work, and plenty of storage space for all sewing life's necessities.
Nan: The picture on the wall is a counted crosstitch that my siser, Judith, stitched for me many years ago. It's a picture of a dressmaker's dummy and, of course, an antique sewing machine. I stitched one for her of an antique spinning wheel, because she owns a huge one.
The clock on the wall actually has a print of a flowered fabric on the face. And it is saying, "It's time to sew!"
I think I will do just that.
Bob: The nook near the long room door ended up being perfect for stack shelves and stack drawers, kind of a catch-all area. On the right, the gray shelf unit on the wall holds some very important knick-knacks.
Nan: The plastic drawers hold all sorts of smaller balls of specialty yarns, my patterns and things of that nature. The wire rack drawer/shelf unit was in my pantry when I lived in Minnesota, but now they house ribbons, quilt battings and fiberfill for stuffed animals.
The picture on the wall over the long room door is a jigsaw puzzle I glued to a
piece of paneling. It is many spools of cone threads. I thought it apropos for a sewing room.
Bob: Here is the wall rack, filled with stabilizer. You can see that electrical receptacle now, on the side of the gray shelves. It even has a cute little LED on it when it's powered up (it runs off the same wall switch and circuit as the ceiling fan), but you wouldn't believe what I had to go through to solder a longer cord onto it (it wouldn't reach the ceiling!) These cute $3 cut-out plug strips just don't have long enough cords. What's a fellow to do?
The cutting table unfolds to over six feet long. We retrieved a large broken cutting mat from Marijo (Nan's daughter), cut off the ragged end, cut the rest into two pieces, and stuck it to the visible wing and top of the cutting table with two-sided tape. Someday, we'll get a new one to go on the entire surface...
Nan: We keep talking about the table, the electrical connection and other things, but we don't mention the rack that holds the drapery rods. Bob specially made this to my specifications. I can remove the rods entirely or just move an end out to remove or hang other rolls of stabilizers. It really does work great.
The set of gray shelves holds my scissors, pins, bobbin boxes and such. It also holds sewing related decorations, like the sewing machine music box that my daughter, Sylvia, gave me for Christmas one year. It has cute little mice on it that dance when the tune, My Favorite Things, plays.
I also have a small collection of thimbles on the top left shelf. One of them is over a 100 years old; my mother-in-law, Lydia Pennington Elrod gave it to me when I first started sewing. She used it as a young girl when she first started sewing. My sister, Judith, and her husband Mike, brought me one from North Carolina; they were at a Honda Gold Wing rally there the year hurricane Hugo came through. Another is a thimble shot glass that says, "Only a thimbleful."
I love thimbles, but they are not easy to find so I really don't have that many. You kids keep asking what to get me for gifts...well, unusual thimbles would always be appropriate.
Oh, and notice the spool rack on the wall; I wanted to put the decorative black one here, but it wouldn't fit.
Toilet paper? What toilet paper? :)
Bob: The computer station on the southwest wall is on the internet with wireless-G. I really didn't want to try and run ethernet up here, so it's the only wireless network equipment in the house (other than the router downstairs. Don't worry, it's well secured!) Wire shelves have room for future expansion, too. That brown cabinet on the right was my mother's sewing machine. The big gizmo on top of it is a t-shirt press.
Nan: I like the computer in the sewing room because it makes a nice place for Bob to
surf when I'm busy in here. But also, I download all kinds of designs for my two computerized
embroidery machines.