New Sewing Area

We visited a co-worker of Jeff’s last weekend. Her children are grown and she shares her home with her mom (everyone calls her “Grammy”) and her brother. They converted the garage into a quilt shop. You should see it! The brother built a huge work and cutting table on wheels with storage cupboards for the center of the room. They have a fireplace to keep warm, chairs for doing hand sewing and two sewing tables with machines set up. They all quilt. They make things for themselves and family members, but most of their efforts go to making quilts for impoverished babies. They all do excellent work; I learned quite alot from perusing their quilt shop and finished quilts.

Here are the kids with Grammy and her son and daughter. Grammy had 14 children; she’s an inspirational woman!

They really inspired me. I realized that there isn’t any reason why I couldn’t appropriate part of our house for a sewing area. I don’t mind setting up and taking down, but I do find it inconvenient at times. Our house is set up a little spartan, so I just knew I could find some room for a work space.

I thought about it all week, kind of below everything else that my mind had to focus on. I was looking forward to having a chance to doing a little rearranging. The kids were gone on Saturday at the leaf-raking, and I knew that was my chance.

I combined the family room and living rooms together. Now that is where our television is and our big couch. The family room became the “work room”. The computer was already in there. I moved the little couch to the corner where the TV used to be, creating a little reading area under the soft light coming in from the windows. I would like to find a nice floor lamp that will shine over the couch, too. (At a later date, I’m sure.) This left a whole wall exposed for my sewing area!

The long table came from outside on the porch. I washed it down. I moved the tall rack from our bedroom where it was storing my sewing notions and supplies. I set it next to the table. I found those curtains at the thrift store last week. They are from Pier 1 and brand new in the package — 2 panels in my favorite shade of green! They are a bit long and only held up by safety pins right now. As soon as I trim them and figure out how to securely hang them from the rack, they’ll be more permanent. But you can see what the purpose is — to keep the area looking clean and uncluttered. The table will be the work space for sewing or even for the kids to do schoolwork when I’m not working on something.

I don’t think I’ll have time today to use my new sewing area, but perhaps tomorrow.