#Sewing room layout ideas how to#

Others keep their fabrics in boxes or bins.

Some drape their yards of fabric on hangers and put them in the closet. Keeping your stash manageable is quite a task. My sewing room was getting rather crowded, so I finally packed up all the fabric I didn’t want to use this year and put it into storage. Before I reorganized my sewing room, I had three tall dressers filled with fabric, along with a couple of small plastic dressers, and three large storage bins. It’s hard to resist something beautiful, especially if you think you might use it someday. If you’re able to only buy the fabric you need for your current project, consider yourself lucky! Most of us have large stashes of fabric, lace, ribbon, trims, buttons, and other notions that we’ve purchased over the years.

#Sewing room layout ideas how to#

Once you have your basic pieces of furniture in place, you’ll need to consider how to store all of your fabric, notions, and supplies. Do you need more lamps near your workstation than by your ironing board? If so, plan for it. If you frequently move between two areas, such as from the sewing machine to the ironing board, make your life easier by keeping them close together, without any obstacles in the way.Efficient variations include L-shaped and U-shaped layouts. Experiment with different configurations for your work space.You don’t want your sewing area too crowded. Make sure you leave enough floor space, so you have room to walk around the larger pieces of furniture.A rectangle representing the object’s footprint is good enough. But it isn’t necessary to draw your furniture with such detail. An ironing board, for example, is usually tapered, so it’s narrower at one end. Flatten the layers, if necessary.ĭon’t worry about getting the shapes exactly the same. Fill in the background with whatever color best represents that piece of furniture, then use the text tool to label the image. Use either the line tool or the custom shapes tool to draw a black rectangle around the edges of the image. In other words, if your cutting table is 3′ x 5′, make the file 3″ x 5″. If you’re using a graphics program, open a new file that’s proportional to the piece of furniture you want to draw. You can place these cutouts onto the drawing of your room and move them around until you find a configuration you like. When you’re done, label each piece and cut them out. Don’t forget about your chair! If you’re using paper, draw these on a separate piece, making sure you use the same scale as the room’s drawing. This includes your sewing table, cutting table, and ironing board, along with any bookcases, dressers, cabinets, and floor lamps you want to use. Next, measure the width and length of each of your main pieces of furniture. This will be a big help as you move your furniture around. (In Photoshop Elements, this can be found under View > Grid.) The grid divides the image into ¼” squares, with thicker lines showing 1″ squares. The carpet in my sewing room is off-white, so I filled my background with ivory. Use the paint bucket tool to fill in the background with a light, neutral color, such as white or beige. For example, if your room is 12′ x 12′, make the file 12″ x 12″. If you’re using a graphics program, open a new file and scale it proportionally to the size of your room. If you’re using graph paper, designate a certain number of squares per foot and use a ruler to draw an outline of your room.

You’ll either need graph paper (or regular paper, although it’s more difficult), or a graphics program, such as Photoshop Elements.įirst, measure your sewing area and write down the numbers. There are kits that can help you with this, or you can do it on your own. Or what if you decide you’d rather have your cutting table under the window, instead of beside the door? Save yourself a headache and plan things out first.Īn easy way to do this is to draw a floor plan. You don’t want to start moving furniture around and then discover, too late, that your sewing table won’t fit in the corner you’ve designated for its use. Now, let’s look at how to arrange the furniture in your sewing room, as well as storage and organization.īefore you set up your sewing space, it’s a good idea to sit down and figure out your plan of attack. In the first half of this article, we looked at the three basic pieces of furniture that you need for your sewing room: a cutting table, a sewing table, and a pressing station. Note: There is an updated, more concise version of this article: 5 Rules for Organizing Your Sewing Room. (This article was first published at Your Wardrobe Unlock’d.)