My Sewing Room... the good, the bad and the ugly!

We just started a new topic over on my YaHoo group 

 Simply Charming Scrap Quilts 

(check it out if you haven't already!  Come join us - we are in for some fun!).  I challenged everyone to show pictures of their sewing rooms - clean, not clean etc.  So, I took photos of my office, sewing room and various storage areas that I "claim" as my space in our basement.  The following are the photos - some with descriptions and some not - because they speak for themselves.

This is how I left my sewing room yesterday after I turned off the lights for the day.  So you get to see my reality.  I don't always clean up to perfection at the end of each work day.  Most of the time I leave it as is so  tomorrow I can pick up where I left off!  Make sense?  Kind of like my home.  Our home is just that a home - not a show place - a nice comforting space that we live in - it's not for show and kept cleaned and sparkling to perfection.  Our home is comfy and clean and live able and sometimes messy yes - but we love it!

I love looking at beautiful sewing spaces and envy many for theirs.  But this is my reality as we do not have a super huge home - it's not tiny but it's big enough to fit the four of us quite comfortably.  Toss in a home based business that has been growing for over 12 years now and I claim the basement off limits for anything but business - and of course that corner where the washer and dryer are!  LOL  We thought about building onto our current home to include an upstairs first floor work area for me and enlarge the second floor rooms but we really do not want to live here forever and we did not want to increase our mortgage or borrow any money.  We'd rather save our money for now and buy another home in the future that suits us and is in an area that we want to be in - not a city and not in Illinois.  We hope to move to Kentucky, West Virginia and maybe even Tennessee in the future after the kids graduate high school.

I try hard each day to keep "work" in the work area in the basement and when I turn that light off for the day - work is done.  It's hard to do, but I try.  During Market times when the frenzy of getting ready to do that big show hits - I'm spread out all over the house and garage like a crazy person trying to get ready.  I'll have to take pictures of that and document that someday also!

During normal times like now, work stays in the basement. Then upstairs in the living room on the first floor, sitting at the kitchen table looking outside into our backyard or sitting on the deck out in the backyard enjoying my flowers and pets I try to keep for peaceful "me" time.

Here ya go:

Entry into my sewing room

This is the pile of scraps I'm cutting next for my Great Aunt! I cut scraps up for her every morning and will continue to do so until I get through the large tub of fabrics that I've been buying for her.  I buy scrap bags at some of the quilt shows just for her and my other Aunt.  My rule here is I cannot move these pieces just to get them out of the way  - I have to cut them up and put them in their respective boxes waiting to be shipped out.  That way I have to cut these before I use my ironing board!  I trick myself into cutting this fabric up everyday!  Nice huh???

See the pile on the floor?  Usually I toss all those tiny bits into a large ziploc bag and save them to make dog beds - I made one this weekend and left the bag somewhere else in the house and was to lazy to go looking for it, so the pile on the floor started. Tisk, Tisk....

Love my huge cutting table, it takes up a ton of space, put I love it! It's one of those tables that is electronic and at the push of a button I can raise the table height or lower it.  If I want to I can tilt that table also.  Love this thing to pieces - but it's a monster to move!  LOL

See my monkey hanging from the ceiling - that was an anniversary gift from dear hubby years ago!  Awwww.....

Looking straight into my room from the doorway.  See under my sewing table - that is more strips already cut into 2 1/2" and 1 1/2" strips just waiting to be sewn up!

Quilts folded up waiting for binding in the bottom left corner.  Through the doorway on the right you see my "wall of little quilts" in the small hallway that separates my office, sewing room and the "scary" storage space and the washer and dryer.

Lots of stuffed animals on my shelves courtesy of my kids!  They love buying cute little stuffed things for me!

See the mess I left on my sewing table?  I'm only human!  Quilt draped on the chair that needs binding sewn on, boxes on the table with squares cut up for my Great Aunt to sew and yet more boxes on the floor with other shapes for her also! Oh and there is the backing for the quilt on my design wall that is waiting to be finished!

This is the view of my office from the doorway.

Where I park myself to work on the computer.

Books, magazines, files etc... all boring stuff! (kidding)

Entryway of office!

One wall of quilts and pictures.  The stairs leading to our home is on the right.  It's a nice view from upstairs looking down here with all those pretties hanging up on the wall!

Ignore the unfinished wall - this is part of the "ugly".  This wall has been unfinished for years and it doesn't look like a "certain someone" will be finishing it anytime soon. So, I'm just going to work on covering all that ugliness up!  LOL  You see the doorway to my sewing room on the left side of the photo.

Wall of small quilts.  Love looking at this wall.  To the right you see a curtain.  I put that there so I didn't have to see so much of the "ugly" area of the basement that is not finished and is a hodge podge of storage behind that curtain.

Storage under the stairs.  This space drives me crazy, but I have to deal with it.  Way in the back behind that roll of batting I store all my homespun fabrics in bins.  The shelving unit stores my collection of 80s and 90s calicoes that I love. I did move 2 of my moveable design walls out of the way so you could at least see a little bit of the "dungeon" under the stairs!

This storage area has all my "works in progress" and a few of the bins hold specialty threads, stock of rotary blades and cutters, quilting supplies etc.  See that stack of fabric on the right - that is what I need to hit and start cutting up for scrap quilts for Christmas, weddings and birthday gifts. 

 

Further along here is my bolt storage, books and more magazines!

There is another area I forgot to take a picture of that houses more folded fabric to the left - that area holds all my pinks, purples, yellows, oranges and toiles or large print background fabrics.

The woolie area.

Wall 'o creams, whites and tans.  Storage containers on the floor that hold all my pastel fabrics separated by color and also bins of old reproduction fabric that I collect.

The brown wall - and just to the right you start to see my wall of purples, pinks, oranges, yellows and bigger bolder type background fabrics and toiles.

Again the brown wall and more storage for old repro fabrics in the bins on the floor.

This is my ugliest eyesore and I cannot believe I'm sharing this mess.  Here are almost all my solid fabrics divided by colors into their respective bins.  Then we have bins of strips already cut, bins of scraps, vintage feedsacks, a bin of 30's reproduction fabric and on the top are quilts that need repaired, need quilted etc.  On the very bottom shelf that you cannot see is some of my canned foods that I processed and preserved last year. I have one other small shelving unit that sits between my washer and dryer - just to the left in this picture and it holds even more solid fabrics in bins and 2 shelves of the kids memorabilia from over the years and a shelf that holds laundry detergents etc.  Boring stuff I figured you didn't want to see.

So now you see my life.  I'm cramped in my space, but I truly to love it and it's mine.  I work in this area and have just about everything I need right here at the touch of my fingers.  It might not all be pretty, but it's mine - all mine - bought and paid for! 

Hubby told me when we move - hopefully in a few years - that I better hire movers and 2 or 3 semis because he is not carrying all this up the stairs!  LOL - no problem dear hubby!