My New Sewing Studio

We moved into our big beautiful house 2 years ago next week, and I have struggled with it almost the entire time. When we first saw the house, we were in the middle of planning a new build and battling rising costs and council regulations. We saw her online, with her large, light filled living rooms, north-facing windows, enough rooms for the kids to each have their own, and most importantly for me, a huge second living area for Tim and I to work in. We could get this, we thought, and skip all the work and chaos and time of building a house.

Since moving in, we've kind of been met with one hard surprise after another - interest rates going up and eating our reserves, expensive things breaking or not working as they should. I've spent a lot of feeling stressed and disappointed, and something like betrayed by the idea we all believe that the big, beautiful house will make us happy. 

But the hardest thing for me has been our workroom. I shared the space with Tim, who works remotely as a software engineer, and who's in unscheduled video calls regularly through the day. I've spent most of the time assuming I'm being silly or precious or overreacting, but I could not get any work done in this room! I would do the bare minimum on my computer and then take my sewing to the living room, where slowly it took over the dining room and couch. 

Finally, a few months ago, Tim suggested pulling apart half of our long laundry and moving his office up there. I really appreciated the sentiment but I fought the idea. I didn't want to do any demolishing that we couldn't make look nice, and we didn't have the money to make anything look nice. I'd built up so much resentment for this house, I wanted the freedom to be able to pull the pin and sell if things didn't improve. But slowly, in wrestling through various solutions, I realised that I could probably calm some of that resentment if I set things up in a way that suited me, rather than just keeping it nice for the next person. We spent a weekend early this month pulling out half the laundry and moving Tim's desk up there. It's such an odd arrangement, it doesn't make any sense on paper, and it makes doing the laundry a little more tricky, and removing cupboards left bare plasterboard that I don't know when we'll get around to painting, but it gave me my own sewing room. 

My sewing room is a long, large rectangle with windows at one end and a large opening at the other instead of a wall and door, that faces the open plan living area. Even with Tim in here with me, it's always been plenty of space for my needs, but navigating light and noise issues made it terrible for working. Now I've set up the room so that the things that don't need light - computer work and quilt storage - are at the opening to the room, and my sewing, cutting, fabric storage are near the window.  

I bought this desk above several months ago from Ikea, with the idea that I could separate my sewing and computer work, rather than having them both share a desk. But now the room is big enough for me to keep my old sewing desk for sewing and leave the other half of this one empty. I wondered after rearranging if I would split the desk and give half to one of the kids, but I'm finding that I really love having horizontal space for temporary dumping! My horizontal spaces fill up with mess quickly, but I've found it easier to keep the useful ones clear - my cutting bench, my sewing desk, my computer desk, if I have this one little space to put stuff on instead. It's like a more gentle solution to just deciding to try and be tidier. And it feels like such a luxury!

My quilt display cabinet (also from Ikea) has been living in my living room, but I brought it back down here. It's the first thing you see when you walk through my front door, and I like that it's easier to keep tidy and looking welcoming compared to my cutting bench which was here before.

I got this quilt ladder from Kmart years ago and it holds my quilt tops and projects that are almost quilt tops. I love having them out where they can remind me that I need to baste them! If I had them folded up and packed behind closed doors, I'm sure I would never think of them or finish them!

My absolute favourite thing about the space is getting my design wall back. I made it after we first moved in from large felt pin boards from Bunnings (Aussie hardware store) and covered them in wadding. Using pin boards works great for me, rather than just taping wadding to the wall, because I usually still have papers in my EPP blocks, and pin them up rather than stick them to the batting. 

Tim and I have rearranged the space a few times since then, trying to find the right layout to suit us both, and in the last layout before this one, his desk was where the steel cabinet is, and the steel cabinet stuck out from the wall midway through the design wall, to create a little cubicle for him (first photo, above). I've really missed it, and loved putting blocks up somewhere I can keep them, rather than just on the floor. 

My cutting bench is a Tornviken kitchen island from Ikea that has shelves on one side and room for stools on the other. In my previous arrangement, I had the bench up against the wall (first photo above), but I much prefer to have it in the middle of the room. From this side, I can look at my design wall, and from the other, I can look out the window. It's amazing how much difference it makes to me not being so close to a wall. I really love to look out, to have the feeling of space.

In the shelves I keep my baskets (bought from Mustard Made) of scraps. Keeping scraps under my cutting bench is one of my favourite ergonomic designs! I easily sort scraps into the right basket as I cut, rather than building up piles that I need to sort later. 

All of these changes don't change our financial situation, or my feeling of being weighed down by the burden of this house, and maybe they even increase my feeling of being trapped a little more! But they make me feel like I now have somewhere I can hide away and get lost in my sewing, rather than constantly working around interruptions or obstacles. They make me feel like I could make this place a home, develop a relationship with it that suits me, rather than keep one foot out the door. They make me grateful for the courage to do something for us, that makes every day better, rather than keeping our options open. They gave me my very own sewing room!