Hi All!

Second post of the day *does victory dance in head*!!

So the past couple weeks that I was sick (I am better now 😀 ), I left my apartment to the warm comfort of home and my mom taking care of me- which meant a lot of time spent in the home headquarters sewing room. A room that until very recently looked like it belonged on an episode of hoarders… but through some determination and organization, my mom and I managed to make it inhabitable again and ready for all of our new sewing endeavors! So I thought I would give you a little tour and show some of my favourite parts and generally allow you to nosily look through my stuff like I like to do with other people’s stuff lol.

The biggest challenge to our sewing room is definitely space- it is a corner of our unfinished basement (think cement floor & duct work overhead) that is shared with a hot water tank, water softener, washer&dryer, a fridge, 2 freezers (mom has a food freezing addiction) and the furnace…. so not really one of those super posh big open spaces to work with, but alas, I will take what I can get!

First order of business was organizing the fabric stash on our shelves. This was a challenge- as I have a huge stash of fabric that I inherited from my grandmother, who was a seamstress/fabric hoarder. This shelf contains a large amount of the fabric at home.

So the top shelf is denims, corduroys, and some woven wool types. (kind of like jacket/purse stuff)

Next is all the ‘Home Dec’ fabrics to use for seat covers/ pillows/ curtains etc. 

Next is my fav- fashion fabrics ranging from cotton to linen, crepes, rayons and some knits, all intended to be used for clothing

Next is kind of more of a type- on the left is all cotton velvet (with the velvet side in), and on the right is a bag with really nice fine wools that my mom and I bought and are waiting for a perfect project!

Now this bottom bin is full of wool, mostly light jacket weight, but there is some boiled wool in the bottom and other slightly heavier jacket weight.

Now above this shelving unit I have stacked all of our bolts of fabric, which range from a collection of satins, to poly linings, and wool plaids, with some denim.

 The other shelving side is not quite as full- containing mostly knits

This very disorganized top bin contains all swimwear- because there really is no way to keep swimwear folded, and the two bottom bins contain other stretch cotton knits and very slinky fabrics that cannot keep themselves folded lol. – Also under this in a larger bin (not pictured here) is a huge amount of sweats type fabrics, like fleece, flannel and stretch cottons to make sweaters, pjs and leggings.

These shelves hold pretty much all the sorted fabric- although I am slightly embarrassed to say that I also have more than one large piece of hanging silk velvet, that our very large bolts of denim, canvas, flannel and cotton underlining are under my bed upstairs, and that in my apartment I have upwards of 10 bolts of fabric, along with under bed bins and tubs of fabric….. *Hi, my name is Erin and I have a problem*….. anyways

Between these two shelving units is a short filing cabinet filled with patterns- mostly vintage- and I may or may not have some in storage too..

 On top of this cabinet is a very well cushioned basket for my dog to lay in while I sew- perfect petting height when I am at my sewing machine- and he likes to just chew on his little frog.

That is when he isn’t sitting directly on my lap like he seems to enjoy while I’m sewing 

Now moving on to the desk! The wall above the desk is the thread/inspiration wall! And yes, there are two home-sew Berninas, which, with my Bernina at my apartment and the industrial brings the total to 4 Berninas… I think I have an addiction…

This is where all of our threads go (except for some serger thread) and my cork board where I pin sewing inspiration!

Yes – you saw right, in the bottom right corner of the cork board there is indeed a picture of my grandmother riding a camel.., which may or may not be my favourite picture of all time

Below this pic is space for some bead trims, vintage pin cushions, our seam binding collection and a very essential hammer (sewing women are tough women) 

And to the left is a shelf that contains serger threads, sewing machine oil, sewing magazines/ manuals and little organizers with sewing machine feet, needles, snaps, studs, hand needles and all manner of other things (can you tell my mom has an addiction to labels?) – And hanging on the unfinished wall are yard sticks, curved rulers and a fly swatter- nobody likes a fly…

 Then there are the desk drawers- which I can proudly say are organized AND that only 5 of the 6 drawers are actually occupied! leaving a little wiggle room for future!

Inside drawer #1 we have: elastics- narrow elastic, wide elastic, clear elastic, fold-over elastic, lace elastic….. my mom is really into elastics….

Inside drawer #2 we have trims & ribbons- lots of lace, lots of velvet ribbon, lots of kinda 70’s looking stuff 

Inside drawer #3 we have zippers (organized into the sadly separating, truly invisible and regular varieties), also in this drawer we keep velcro, interfacing and the glue gun stuff.

Inside drawer #4 we have fancy threads, and other vintage buttons and really fancy delicate vintage lace and trims from my grandmother.

And finally inside drawer #5 we have ‘home dec’ trims or other large quantities of trims, along with some purse handles.. just cause I didn’t have another place to put them…

I found that after going through so many of our trims and ribbons (and there was a mountain that we ended up donating)- there were so many ends and little bits of pretty ribbons that I squashed all into one bag for inspiration and to get out when I have little projects!

And with that concludes the official tour of the home sewing room- and I feel like even in this long post I missed out on some parts! I realized sifting and sorting through all of our sewing things, that I really does take a lot of things to sew- from patterns and fabrics, to scissors and pins and rulers, machines and manuals– whew–

Anyways I hope you enjoyed snooping through my sewing room- I know I love when other people do posts on their sewing rooms and sewing stashes or shopping hauls – maybe I’m just really nosey lol.

Hope you are all having a wonderful Tuesday! and that you have your sewing space under control too!

xo erin