Does anyone else use their dining room as their sewing room? I’ve heard it’s a pretty common setup; personally, we don’t use our dining room as much as we could for its original purpose. I have a couple of rooms upstairs that I could turn into a full-time sewing room but this suits me better in terms of activity in the house.
That works out well as long as I don’t need a dining room, right? Every so often though, we have plans for a larger crowd for dinner, and Sunday evening was one of those times. It didn’t take long to move the table back and take out the sewing machine. The upside of this arrangement is I know the room is going to get a complete cleaning every so often!
This keeps me really organized, so for now I’ll occasionally use my sewing room as the dining room. The family calls it the sewing room instead of the dining room, so that works for me too.
As a result of getting ready for dinner, I did not get started on my Splendid Sampler block yesterday (and it looks like a really fun one, including crochet!). Sometimes I also get an early start on the Bloom sew-along but I didn’t get to that either. So much for being ahead last week on my quilt projects!
I clicked on this post to try to get a view of your machine – I just made my first large quilt on my regular machine & I spent WAY too much time wrestling fabric. Any suggestions as to a good machine?
I have a mid-arm made by Handi Quilter and it’s called a Sweet Sixteen. I think it’s fantastic! I’m currently quilting a king sized quilt – 121×121″ – with no problem at all. A friend of mine has the same machine but made by Viking/Pfaff and likes it also. A couple of things I have in place to make it easier are first of all, I have it in a corner, so the fabric can’t fall on the ground to the left, right, or back – that’s a big part of the success. Also, if you put Teflon down (a friend of mine just bought Teflon baking sheets!) that smoothness really makes a big difference in helping the quilt glide.
Oh, wow. Thank you so much for the info and the amazing tips. That corner idea is a bit of brilliance.
Once the “boys” became men, their bedroom, on the 2nd floor of our 100+ yr old MN farm home, became the perfect stitching spot. Most days are pretty quiet so I have hours of uninterrupted quilting moments.
LOVE your “oasis”!!!!! So cozy…………..
Thank you! I have told our oldest child I’m taking over the bedroom after college graduation too.
Yay!!!! We need our ‘space’ just like they do!!!!! Hehehehe…………………
What a cool blog!
Thank you!
I have the same type of setup! I don’t mind it, because I can be near everyone while I am working instead of hidden away on another floor of the house, totally isolated. The only downside for me–apart from the one you dealt with above!–is that our wood stove is in that room, and it gets too hot to work in there when we’re using it! It turns my dining room into quite a Sweatshop, with heavy emphasis on “sweat,” haha! 🙂
You spelled it out exactly what I was thinking; I would be isolated from the family if I moved my sewing room upstairs. A wood burning stove sounds really nice, although I can imagine how hot that must get.
I have an upstairs sewing room but I have discovered that my kitchen island is the best place to cut fabric. It’s the right height and width and it allows me to listen to the TV while I’m working. It also requires that I keep my kitchen clean — bonus! PS Love your wooden shutters!
That’s a great idea! I didn’t ever think of that, but I have plenty of room – and great lighting – on my kitchen island too. I may give that a try!