Where I sew

Pink Chalk has a beautiful set of photos of people's sewing spaces. They're lovely -- but also almost all are entirely out of my reach. I just measured my space and it's 4.5 square feet.

In our old apartments my sewing machine was set up on some spare table if the apartment was spacious or put away in the closet if not. In this house for years one of the bedrooms was my study and sewing space. But now it's my daughter's room. After the kids arrived for a couple years my sewing machine got pulled out when used. But maybe 3 years ago I realized I wanted to have my sewing in the midst of the household activity and also that I wanted it to be always set up.


So I ended up with this. Actually, I love it. It's in a corner of the dining room, so I just pull a chair over. The tiny table is an old metal typewriter table. It's slightly lower than standard table height, which means that the bed of the sewing machine itself is the right height. I fold out the left leaf when I want more room.

Light isn't ideal here but the clip-on Tolomeo light improves things.

Scissors, etc. go in the shallow drawer on the front. You can't easily see it in the photo, but the whole front of the table is a one-inch deep drawer. More supplies are in the plastic box stored underneath the table. The box is an old one from Martha Stewart's Kmart line and is set up like a tackle box with lots of compartments. The blue basket on the floor was made for me by Jonathan Kline to the exact size to fit under the right leaf when unfolded. The basket holds mending (that is, the stuff that isn't sitting on top of the machine) and other works in progress or queue.

I usually just put my tabletop ironing board on the counter in the kitchen around the corner. I have to get up to iron but I figure that's probably actually good for my body.

One thing I love about this set up is its portability. On nice days when I'm doing a big project, I wheel the table through the living room and out the front door onto the porch. Then my light is fabulous, the heat from the iron is outside and I get to chat with passersby.

Of course, I'd love to have a little more room. . . .

Little girl room

My girl's room is the smallest one in the house (maybe 10' by 9') but also my favorite with beautiful light and nice windows. I like the challenge of making it great for her to play in and good for us all to look at.

When we switched the girl to this room the key purchase was her bed -- a captain's bed with 4 drawers and 2 shelves. All her clothes are in the drawers (with space to spare) and books and toys are on the shelves (just visible at the head of the bed). We were trying to maxmize floor space and it's worked out great.

The girl has a decent closet with a hanging rod for her dresses and shelves above for toys but we still needed visible storage. We revamped the hanging bookcase at the foot of the bed by adding a tackable surface and the pegs. And built a ton of shelves with something like 14 pegs total to hang bags, medals, toys and even a crib for her baby doll (OK, it's a plastic basket I bought at the hardware store -- you can see it hanging above the tent at the foot of her bed -- but it works great).

Speaking of the tent, this is where we get into enhancing play space. The door to the attic is at the foot of the bed so you can't put anything permanent there. I took fabric & 3 tension rods and made the play tent, which just today had 2 kids and 2 adults crammed in there to eat brownies. When we need to get to the attic we can just pull the rods out.

For pretty things, I cross-stitched a monogram on the wool blanket and did chicken-scratch embroidery on the curtains. The chicken scratch took *forever* but it is really pretty. . .