I just realized I’ve been in my house for 4 years now, and I never shared my studio space!
A little background before we dive in: I own my house, and it was built in 1958. It is considered a 3 bedroom, but the rooms are very small. My studio is about 10’x11′, so every square inch definitely counts. It’s not the smallest room I’ve worked in, but it is certainly a top 3 contender! Eventually, I plan on building out and moving my studio outside of the main house (whether I build an entirely separate/detached structure in the backyard, or simply add on to the existing house – I haven’t decided yet!), so this is technically “temporary.”
I’m not going to go into full detail about all the various pieces of furniture and storage in this room – I’ve talked about it extensively over the years on this blog, and you can find all that info in my last studio tour post. That post includes links to all my past studio tour posts, and a huge section of links that discusses all my furniture (including the cutting table). Short answer: Almost everything is from IKEA, and if it isn’t from IKEA, it’s likely from the Nashville Flea Market. Any questions you have about anything in this room that are not answered in this post, are answered in that post I linked so please check it out!
Anyway, I recently rearranged the room a little so I took some photos and I’m going to share them with y’all today!
This is the view when you first walk into the doorway. Like I said, it is small! You can see almost the entire space from this viewpoint. To the left (the wall behind the shelf), there is a closet that is directly in front of the door when you walk in.
Here is the closet. You can see the entrance to the left (black door) and now the room is behind me. I’ll be honest – having a closet directly in front of the door is nice in terms of leaving lots of good available wall space in the main part of the room, but that closet shape sucks!! It runs super deep, and is hard to get to anything stored in the back. I can’t even imagine what it’s like when there are clothes hanging in it. I had a free standing shelf in here, but it was too hard to get to the back and that space ended up wasted. So earlier this month, I installed shelves in the deep part. I just used plywood and 2x4s from the hardware store, nothing fancy! The clothes rod is still up, so I can hang clothes in the empty side (useful for holding client’s pieces waiting to be altered or picked up). I also installed several hooks in the wall, to hang bags, etc. The top shelf holds sewing machine cases, my on-set tailor kit (basically a second set of sewing supplies so I don’t have to repack whenever I’m called on set), and my jeans samples. The empty space between the entrance and the closet has tension rods, and I use simple curtain hooks with a clip to hang the PDF patterns that I’m currently using. Eventually, I would like to move the closet entirely (knocking down some walls and adding to the laundry room – which is next to the back closet wall, etc) but this works for now!
Here is the wall next to the entrance! Here I have my desk + computer (I finally upgraded to a desktop and WOW WOW WOW don’t think I can ever go back to a tiny laptop screen lol), and a small drawer unit that holds various office, art, and tech supplies.
The corkboard to the left of the desk holds swatches of all the fabrics on my shelves, I swap these out based on what I plan on sewing for the current or upcoming season. And the dress form lives next to my desk now because there is literally nowhere else for her to go! I just roll her out of the way as needed. FYI that pink desk chair is from Wayfair.
Next to my desk is my newest sewing machine (and the reason I had to rearrange this room)- a Consew chainstitch machine! This is new – I purchased it in January, and I’m deep in the throes of learning how to use it. The table is 48” long, so it took some creative maneuvering to figure out how it would fit in this space. Eventually I’ll hang spools of thread in that empty white wall behind it (or move that corkboard and put the spools there), but I gotta order them first 😇
Next to the chainstitch is my ironing station. I use a kitchen cart, padded at the top to make an ironing board. The drawers hold interfacing and pressing tools, and the shelves hold baskets with cut projects. With a small space, it’s importantly to utilize what you can so I prefer this over a traditional ironing board, since it has shelves and drawers. My scissors and pressing supplies are hung from tension rods on the side of the shelf.
Next to the ironing station is a shelf, with all my sewing books and a drawer unit that holds trims and elastics. I also keep my thread here on racks. And one of those white boxes holds my entire yarn stash (yes, the entire thing! I don’t stash a lot of yarn!).
Then we have the main sewing table, which is about 5’ long. It’s the Husky Workbench from Home Depot; I swapped this out from my old tabletop (from IKEA). It is much sturdier (absolutely no bounce), the height can be raised or lowered, and the entire thing is on castors so it can be rolled around. If I need more cutting space, I can remove the machines, raise the height, and roll it next to my cutting table for a double space. I added the small drawer on the left (underside) – that’s from Amazon. The drawer unit next to the table holds all my sewing supplies – machine supplies, notions, specialty threads, snaps, buttons, etc. And the male dress form on top is actually a shop mannequin, I grabbed it when the shop I work at was changing their floor mannequins. It’s not a true dress form for fitting, but is useful for taking photos, measurements, or designing. I do a lot of sewing for male clients and this works way better than my lady form!
BTW you may have noticed my lack of chairs – I didn’t take any out of the room for these photos, I really just have one small stool! I realized I didn’t like having chairs with backs – I never sit back and use the back support, instead, it gets in the way when I’m doing a lot of moving around. I had this little folding stool that works great. I need to buy more, but I haven’t gotten around to it. I don’t even miss having wheels – they always got thread rolled up in them.
The wall next to the sewing table is just a long line of shelves! My fabric occupies a couple shelves (I keep the rest stored in my attic – check out this instagram post for the full run down), and the boxes hold specialty fabrics (lingerie, lining, scraps, etc) and notions (mainly bra making supplies). More info on that storage system can be found on this instagram post. Finally, I keep extra sewing machines on a couple of the shelves. I have a lot now and they don’t all fit on the table! I keep the plugs at the table (I installed cup hooks along the wall below the big window so they have somewhere to hang when they aren’t being used) and I store the pedals/knee lifts/and freearm tables in one of my white drawer units. This way, it’s really easy to swap the machines out. I will acknowledge that my cord system behind the table is GNARLY looking – and unfortunately, there isn’t a good way to hide them while also having regular access to them (I take my machines on set pretty frequently, so I need to be able to access the cords and hiding them would make that 10x harder!).
Speaking of machines – because I know someone will ask! – I have a Janome HD9 straight stitch, a Pfaff 7570, a Bernina 350PE, a Bernina 930 Record, a Janome coverpro 2000cpx cover stitch, a Babylock Imagine serger, a Babylock Evolve serger/cover stitch combo, plus my Singer Featherweight (on a wall shelf on the opposite wall) and the aforementioned chainstitch. It’s a lot! I don’t have a favorite – I love them all!
The last big piece in this room is my cutting table. I won’t go into detail about how I built it – it’s all IKEA pieces and again, I wrote about it extensively in the previously linked blog posts. But I recently filled in the empty center with more shelves (built with sanded plywood, and attached with metal brackets to the undersides), and I lifted the tabletop using wood blocks (2x4s that I cut and then glued 2 together to make a block, then attached to the top of the unit with metal brackets and some shims as needed). The narrow space is big enough to slide my cutting mats and rulers out of the way when I’m not using them, and just tall enough to hold the bowl of sewing tools I usually keep on top of the table. I wanted to be able to quickly move things out of the way when I need a big flat surface for cutting, without just moving them to another table area (where inevitably it’s still in the way!). I am REALLY happy with this edit! That short little shelf space is SO useful!
Here’s a close up of the block lifts. It took me a long time to figure out how to do this – I didn’t want to glue them to the table, because then they’d be permanent. So I used brackets to screw the blocks to the table and the tabletop. It is sturdy and – very important – can be taken down if I need to disassemble the table (it actually can’t leave the room without being disassembled, due to the angle at the entrance and the width of the hallway outside the door). It’s not very pretty, but I don’t care. I’m a seamstress, not a carpenter!
I don’t have a good photo of what I store under the table, but it’s basically everything I used to keep in the closet. Small boxes with craft and art supplies, sewing pattern storage supplies, boxes that hold big patterns (Vogue, Papercut) and binders to hold PDF patterns. I keep my other sewing patterns in boxes inside the closet, along with my printer. There’s more info in my pattern storage in a previous blog post, or check out this Instagram post.
Here are some more photos of things in the room, just because!
Fun fact – I won that big trophy in “beautiful baby” contest in 1985 LOL
Another fun fact – that framed photo is me at 14 and it’s just as hilarious up close as it is from far away. I have on fuzzy purple zebra pants and mismatched socks! Hoorary for the late 90s!
Anyway, that’s my studio tour! Like I said, it’s a small room – but I feel like I made a pretty good use to the space! Since the cutting table, sewing table, and chainstitch are all on castors, it’s also a little modular – I can roll things around as I need them (and also just *barely* fit a queen sized air mattress in the room for when I have guests over!). I really love this room – it gets beautiful light and honestly it just feels good in here. I’m excited for my future studios, but perfectly happy to sew in this one, too 🙂
I’ll leave y’all with one last photo – my mom’s boyfriend made this for me for Christmas last year. He was inspired by the letters hanging above my sewing machines 🙂
that I use to tape PDF patterns, as well as some cardstock pattern pieces (like shirt pockets) and extra bags.
and these 
, both from Amazon. As with the printed patterns, I organized them according to what made sense to me, and labeled the outside of the binders. Since my plastic sleeves are not resealable, I just paper clip them closed. Haven’t had a disaster yet (fingers crossed, tho).
LLADYBIRD 