Sewing Space Mini-Redo, Inspired by Eileen

by Kimberlee

Eileen's post  the other day on her amazing craft room re-do got me thinking.  I mean, I sew & craft on the dining room table, which is lovely, but my stuff was basically in baskets, a dresser, a chest and  various drawers all around the living room.  I sort of had the mindset that  since I didn't have a room I could re-do, what's the point?

That's, of course, bull-you-know-what, so I spent this weekend of raging snowstorm outside cleaning up (and in some cases, out) fabric, baubles and whodits and all that.  I started by tackling the awesome IKEA shelf in the dining room area:

Note the impressive collection of Choose Your Own Adventure books, and my much-loved Sally and Alice dolls.

I relocated all of the paperbacks into the closet's top shelf, where unbelievably they are more accessible than before.  The other books got other homes, and I was left with mostly empty shelves.  I gathered all my height-permissive baskets, boxes and other holders, then separated my stuff into categories like trims, buttons, inside construction (zippers, elastic), pieces that could be made into quarters, and what-not.  I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out:

This is the astonishing cat-resistant box, the only thing in THE ENTIRE HOUSE that the cat won't mess with.  If you want to keep anything safe, put it in this tiny box.  So the box stays!

All my bigger swaths of  fabric rolled up and out of the dresser.

The Bad Cats Calendar says, "That's Professor Fluffy Butt to you."  The grass baskets (also IKEA) have spools and needles, and the basket in the forefront (made by my late mother) has trim and notions.

I spent a long time going through all my fabric. For my smaller scraps, I cut them into as large of squares as possible.  The Blue Birdy box used to contain Sampo, now it houses buttons.

And now I use the dresser for patterns and other paper:

I'll have to tell the story of this at some point.

And here's the whole room!

There's my table, machine and current project, my inspirational poster, and IKEA bookshelf workstation.  All it needs is a dress form!

Thanks again, Eileen, for the inspiration!