In the past months, I have put a lot of efforts in making my sewing/laundry room more functional. I had shared my sewing room before. Since then, I tried different layouts and a lot of thinking went on optimizing my small space (13′ x 7′). I thought I would share it with you again. It might give you some ideas for you own sewing space.

The initial plan was to have some custom wall cabinets on the two longer walls of the room to have storage space that wouldn’t take floor space. But considering the money involved in making custom cabinets and the already long list of projects for our home, I decided to go for a cheaper and faster solution. I chose the Algot storage system from Ikea. With the help of my husband, we removed everything from the room, repainted all the walls and installed some shelves. Here is a view from both sides of the room.

On the smaller walls, I have a window on one side and a design wall on the other. I really appreciate the natural lighting coming through the window next to my sewing table (though it was a bit hard to take a good picture facing the window). And I love being able to stand at a distance from my design wall. For the one curious of what I currently have on my design wall, these are two quilt tops waiting to be quilted. The one on the left was made with friends from the Montreal and Ottawa MQG during an improv round robin. The workshop was lead by Cinzia which wrote a great post about it. The one on the right is a quilt top I designed and made for a modern quilt showcase that the Montreal MQG is organizing.

Back to my sewing space, I’ve put some shelves where is my sewing table. I used narrower shelves for the ones closer to the desk to avoid blocking the light and obstructing my working space. In the picture, you can also see my drying racks, which are in between my sewing table and washing machine. They do take some space in my room, but I couldn’t live without them. They are usually full of clothes or fabrics after pre-washing them, and sometimes WIP projects.

On the other long wall, I used a mixed of shelves and wire baskets installed high enough to still be able to stand beneath them. I use the baskets to store batting, polyester fill, interfacing, etc. On this wall, I also have a pegboard and a second design wall closer to my sewing machine which is useful when working on quilt blocks.

I have an ironing board and a kitchen island underneath this row of shelves. I bought the kitchen island at Target just before they closed down here in Canada. It’s great because it’s on wheel and it adds storage space. But, the main feature I was looking for was a cart with a drop-leaf table to extend my work surface when needed. This one was perfect. When it’s closed, I can use my small cutting mat (18″ x 24″) on it. And when opened, I can use my larger cutting mat (24″ x 36″), which makes it great to cut larger pieces of fabric.

I also bough a small used computer desk on wheel that fits under my large table. I can pull it out to extend my quilting surface or to setup my second sewing machine (or serger).

Or I can use it, to have a small ironing surface just next to my sewing machine.

My large sewing table where I can drop in my sewing machine to have it’s bed at the same height as the table is still the tool I appreciate the most in my sewing room. You can read more about it here. But, my favorite and latest addition is definitely my peg board. It’s great to have sewing tools close to me, but out of the way on my work table. I was waiting for my husband to make this for me to share my updated sewing space with you. He just spray painted a piece of peg board bought at Home Depot and added a small frame behind to create a gap between the wall and the pegboard and make it easy to install hangers on it.

I hope this will give you ideas for your own space. I also made changes to my virtual space. I moved my blog from Blogger to WordPress lately. This is actually the first post I write using WordPress. The migration went quite smoothly for me. I hope you didn’t notice much on your side and I hope and I didn’t loose any followers (particularly on Bloglovin) in the move! Just let me know if you see something is wrong. Thanks!