an inside peek

I FINALLY finished those curtains! I had a nice chunk of free time yesterday afternoon, so I managed to drag my way through the rest of the lining sewing. They’re just giant tab-topped rectangles, really nothing that exciting to write about. And it’s really not my best sewing job, to be honest. I kind of put myself in a corner on these–the problem is that I’d bought the fabric ages ago, when we first decided what colors to paint the bedroom, but there weren’t any curtain rods at the time. So when we finally bought them and Doug got them hung up, he had to put them higher than either one of us had expected. Which meant that I barely had enough yardage to do all four panels. These have the absolute smallest hem I could do on home dec-weight fabric, and I do think they’d hang better with a deeper hem, but it was either that or buy more fabric. Fortunately, no one will be looking too closely at these except for me. (I’d say and him, but he’s a guy, you know?) I couldn’t get a good shot of the whole room, but it looks the same on the other window.

And I’m not having to do this anymore, which is how I was attempting to block the light enough that I could sleep. (It didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. But the room was still pretty dark when my alarm went off today. It was wonderful.)

The one slightly creative thing I did with these was to make the blackout lining detachable. This was mostly so I could wash them when the dogs inevitably shed all over them, and partially because blackout lining is expensive and this ups the chances that I can reuse it at some point. Of course, this effectively meant that I had to make eight curtain panels instead of four, which is not very exciting at all. I’m going to be quite glad to move on to a different project, even if I can’t quite get back to selfish sewing yet!

So, curtains. Yeah. On a more interesting note, want to see my new sewing/craft room? Okay!

Disclaimer: The majority of the good organizing ideas in here are courtesy of my husband, who thinks that organizing is fun. Which makes me a never-ending challenge for him!

Here’s a basic overview of the room, in all of its turquoise cheeriness! (I was working on the Hummingbird top when I took these pics, obviously.) I’m pretty excited about that cutting table under the window. It’s actually a fold-down kitchen table from IKEA, with a couple of risers on the legs to make it the perfect height for me to cut on while standing. It has storage drawers on either side of the middle column, the one side is permanently set up for cutting, and the other side can be folded down to make the table bigger or smaller, whichever I need at the moment.  I measured it out, and it should be a good length when entirely opened for anything up to pants-length pieces. That window may get a curtain sometime–I was gifted some fabric to make sewing room accessories for Christmas by my mom, who knows my taste well. But I may not bother for this house, since we’re hoping to move to something a little bigger before any kids come along, and use that fabric to make ironing accessories instead!

The opposite side of the room. That little table is for scrapbooking and the occasional jewelry-making. I’ve already done more stuff with the scrapbooking than I’ve done in a long time on it–it’s great to be able to leave supplies out!  Again, IKEA table, but this was constructed from things in the as-is section and was therefore very cheap. The shelves above have mostly paper on the lower shelf, and the boxes on the upper shelf are where my patterns live. The bookcase has all of my craft books and magazines, including my Burdas and KnitScenes. Donna hangs out here, too, though she hasn’t seen much use since I got into this room yet. I still need to get this area a little cleaned up and organized, but it’s shaping up nicely.

Here’s a better view of the fabric storage! I’m proud to say that this idea was actually mine–just a cube shelf from Target (because it was way cheaper and a better size cube than the IKEA ones.) The fabrics are folded around comic book boards and held with binder clips, with pieces of unwanted scrapbook cardstock between the clips and fabrics to help protect the latter. The blue boxes hold some of my yarn collection. (The basket in front is mostly flute music, and will not stay there, once I get the rest of that and a filing cabinet moved down here from my parents’ house.) I have threads sitting on there too, though I need to work a bit on my serger threads, because the boxes I bought on sale specifically for that purpose at Joann’s don’t quite fit the cones. Grr. Anyway, these shelves are pretty jam-packed, so stashbusting is definitely in order!

I have real sewing furniture! Which was kindly gifted by my mom along with my trusty old Bernina, since this table specifically fits that machine. I’ve since added a mug that randomly cracked to hold my small, commonly used tools like my thread snips and seam ripper. The white board is magnetic (IKEA again) and I’m using it to hold pattern instructions. My serger sits on the smaller table. It also needs a better cover at some point. (My mom made the colorful one on my sewing machine.)

My colorful closet! The original plan was to put that little scrapbook table in here, and use it as a scrapbooking nook of sorts, which is why I wanted it painted nicely. That ended up not being the best use of the space, so it’s basically a storage closet instead. The rest of my yarn is in one of those bags, the bins hold things like fabric scraps that are too big to throw out/clothes to fix or refashion/musliny things, and then some lesser-used craft supplies are in here too. I also need to do some scrapbusting–I’d really love to reduce the number of bins in here!

These two are a pretty common fixture in here, too, whenever I’m in here. The lighter one in particular likes to sit basically on top of my feet. So if I ever come back here to talk about a needle going through my finger, you know why…

As for things like the ironing board, that lives in the small linen closet across the hall when it’s not in use, so it doesn’t take up space or block everything in my closet.

So there you have it! I’m excited to see what comes out of this space!