A moving story

When I was working on my 1940s dresses  I did a lot of the work in the small hours of the morning. This was not so well received because the noise disturbed the other occupants of the house who for some reason like to sleep then. This prompted a decision to move the sewing room post-haste.

We decided to get rid of the table. I think its intended purpose was for cutting out patterns on but its actual use was mostly to have things put on it or under it. It wasn’t a good height for sewing work and I now have a glass table to use for tracing so I mostly use that if I need a table. The sewing room also doubled [tripled] as a dressing room (which meant I couldn’t store things in the built in wardrobe) and an art room. One of the sewing cupboards lived in the spare bedroom which meant a trip down the hallway whenever buttons or zips or patterns were needed. (Most of the patterns made it to the sewing room earlier in the year but not all of them.)

Mum is an experienced house rearranger so she made up a floor plan with movable furniture and we experimented with possible solutions before embarking on the big move.

First, the table went. It had a good life but some of the veneer had snapped recently and its usefulness was limited.

The spare bedroom was a very crowded room. As well as the bed and desk it stored my costumes and a sewing tools cupboard that didn't fit in the sewing room. The new spare bedroom is a larger room which gives guests more space to move. My bonnets and hats are displayed on the shelves and my costumes now have covers to protect them from dust and light.

The sewing room is now ONLY for sewing. THIS IS SO EXCITING. Let’s tour...

My sewing cabinet and dress form.

The stand the dress is hanging from used to support a birdcage but turns out to make an excellent hanging rack for garments in-progress or being steamed.

The ironing stand holds the iron (duh), ironing ham, sleeve roll, pressing cloth, ironing spray and garment steamer. The steamer was a birthday present and I love it. Haven’t ironed a thing since (I have pressed a lot of seams though).

Next are the notions drawers, scrap fabric boxes and mum’s sewing cabinet. We don’t sew at the same time as much as we’d like but I think we have a better chance of both fitting in the same room now. The drawers used to be behind the open door of my sewing cabinet meaning I couldn’t easily access things while I was sewing so I’m very pleased it’s been shifted.

The brown cupboard has more notions and tools. There’s a nook for in-progress projects bags next to the pattern boxes. Having the boxes stacked on top of each other is not as convenient as lining them up on a table but they are small enough to not be too hard to access. Finally, the fabric cupboard. I would like to do some stashbusting over summer (ha ha, ha) so I can fill this cupboard with a stash of useful lengths. I often want to ‘make something now’ but don’t have enough of any particular fabric.

The new room is great. No more worrying about keeping people awake; no more having to share the space for other uses; less sun in the heat of the afternoon. I don't know why we didn't think of this sooner.