Sewing Room Revamp - The History

I thought it would be fun to share some history of my sewing room in this house.  

Here I am in 2008, sewing my wedding dress.  I think this is how my sewing room was set up right from when we moved in.

 These two desks followed me from my parents' house.  They fit really well in corners, and I had them like this even in our apartment.  Believe it or not, we were lucky enough to have two extra small rooms, and I got to have a sewing room!

 As you can see, I have had an eternal struggle with extra junk that doesn't have a home.

 I always loved that cubby over the desk.  It was very helpful.  I've since given that desk to my mother in law, and she loves it.  It is a perfect simple sewing desk.

 This poor old brown bookshelf has followed me through a lot of stuff, too, and I am really hoping I can finally get it out of my sewing room!

Sometime in 2008, after my wedding, I invested in an IKEA Expedit shelf and attached desk, and they have served me very well for a long time.

 Look how organized I was!  

As we all know, it's hard to stay that clean.  This is in September 2009, when I left the Bridal House (I worked there for 7 months and learned tons about bridal alterations) and decided to work for my dad 3 days a week and start my own sewing business for the other 2 days.  It's extra messy because I was painting.  ;)

 So, I did a major overhaul of the room, and painted one wall lime green.

 I believe the name of the colour is celery.  I still really really love it.  :)

 Here is the revamp.  I took these pictures in January 2010, months after I rearranged the room.  Who knows why I didn't take them right away?  Oh well.  Isn't it pretty?  I also invested in a Juki industrial sewing machine, and it is my pride and joy.  :)

 I didn't even have that much junk under my table!  Although, I haven't shown you any pictures of my junk closet, which is always a total disaster.  ;)

 I guess I decided that the Expedit desk wasn't big enough for both machines, so I dug out the old little one.  That Expedit desk was really good at holding clutter.

 I think this mirror is the only thing that hasn't moved, and it will continue to live there, simply because it fits perfectly beside the door and won't really fit anywhere else.

 These pictures are hilarious.  According to a photo I took of my clock on the wall (among close-ups of literally everything in my sewing room, plus about a dozen selfies), it was almost 4:00 in the afternoon, and I was majorly procrastinating.

 This is Digit.  She's our first cat.  She had some health problems, so she lives at the farm with Ma & Pa now, and is very healthy.

 She was a fantastic sewing companion.  She loved to hang out with me while I sewed.

 Isn't this the cutest thing you've ever seen?!

 Occasionally, at fittings, I would be lucky enough to have a second person willing to take photos.  A couple of them were very creative.  I absolutely love this shot.

 This is the other creative photographer.  By the way, this dress was one of the hardest things I've ever done.  It was more than 2 sizes too big, and I had to make major alterations, including the straps, the armholes, the side seams, the hem (which I cut from a train to floor-length), and had to re-sew the beading.

 But I powered through, and it turned out to be one of the most beautiful dresses I have ever had the privilege to work on.  She looked like a princess, and the hem was absolutely perfect.  I believe it was for this dress that I installed a heavy duty hook in my ceiling to hang the dress from.

 This is one of my proudest accomplishments.  This is a custom Medieval overdress that I designed and made to go over her existing wedding dress, which I also had to do minor alterations to.  I absolutely love this dress and I still can't believe I designed it!  (By designed, I mean this is a major frankenpattern.  The bodice is made from three different patterns, and the skirt is simply gathered rectangles, with a bit of an angle where they attached to the waistline.)  (you will find the blog posts in June and July 2010)

 This was another labour of love.  I designed and made Lindsey's wedding dress (it is essentially a very complicated frankenpattern including a corset with a strapless bra, crinoline, skirt, lace overlay, and overdress with lace cups and lace cap sleeves.  The overdress is made from three different patterns.  The bodice and sleeves aren't finished in this shot, but this is one of my favourite photos.  I also outfitted her 3 bridesmaids with tops and skirts, and made a couple other minor things.  (you will find the posts in August 2010)

And in case you didn't notice, all these dresses were photographed in my sewing room.  I thought that would add a fun touch to this post.  

So, that is the history of my sewing room from 2008 to about 2010.  Next up, the saga of the big mess, the beginnings of my next big revamp, and what it currently looks like in my sewing room.  :)

Vogue 1247 - Rachel Comey Top

I sewed something!  Yay!  

I've been lurking this Rachel Comey Vogue designer pattern for a while.  I looked it up on Pinterest and found several very nice versions of this top.

 So I decided to try my first one out of quilting cotton.  I know, I know, probably not the best choice, but I'm considering this more like a wearable muslin.  This cotton was in my quilting stash, and I had probably 4 metres of it.  So I still have a fair bit left.  I had to cut it in one layer, as the 45" width isn't wide enough for the kimono sleeves.  It helped me save fabric, but it did take quite a while to cut.

 I added 2" of length to the lengthen/shorten line, and I'm very happy with it.  I noticed that this top is quite short, and I'm 5'10", so I knew I wanted it longer.  

 I also added 1/2" to the neckline, all the way around, as it is quite a large, gaping neckline.  I initially added an inch, but after I got it partially sewn up and tried it on, I determined that 1/2" would be sufficient.  I'm happy with it.

When I first started sewing this top, I wasn't sure quite what to do with myself, because my serger is away for service, and I'm just now realizing that my Babylock Evolve is literally my right hand in my sewing room.  It has been my everything since I bought it in 2001, and it is my only serger.  As for sewing machines, I always have a few spares lying around.  So, I had to decide how to finish my seams.  The instructions have you finish everything in french seams, but I've read a couple of reviews, and french seams make for a very bulky join at the centre front where all the seams meet.  So, I dug out my pinking shears, which I have probably only used once, and pinked all my seams at about 1/4"-3/8" and pressed them open.  I'm very happy with the result.  Look at that join!

 I really liked the designer details in this pattern.  I loved the bias bound neckline.  And it was really easy because they have you bind the whole neckline and then join the centre front seam last, so it's really simple.

 I love all the design details like the cuffs, the bias bound v-neck, the kimono sleeves, the pleats, the centre front darts, the angled seams below the waist, and the shirttail hem.  But in reality, in this quilting cotton there is literally no drape, which I knew this pattern needed, and there's a lot of weird wrinkling and bagging happening all up in the chest area.

 Based on the finished garment measurements, I cut a size 16, which is probably a good two sizes smaller than my measurements suggest.  There are 4" of ease at the hips, which I think is just about perfect, and there's even more at the bust.  

 This top is meant to be ridiculously oversized and sewn in something very light and drapey.  I was considering making this in linen; I have some in coral, and some in white, but I think linen isn't going to be drapey enough.

 If I do make this again, which I'm not entirely sure I will, I will probably make it in a size 18, so that it's even more roomy, and make it in a very, very drapey fabric, like a lightweight rayon.  It would be fascinating to see how big of a difference fabric choice would make in a design like this.  I should do it just for the sake of science.

 I love all the details of this design, but in this application, it didn't quite pan out.

 That being said, my wardrobe has almost no nice clothes, so I will wear this.  But hopefully I will make some more new tops to wear very soon.  I still love the idea of boxy tops, especially kimono sleeves.  I wear unisex t-shirts all the time, so I know I can pull off the rectangle shape.  And bonus! Garments with no fitting are really quick and easy to sew!

This last shot shows off the colours a bit more accurately.  This colour choice is outside my comfort zone.  It's a beautiful print, but it's on a beigey background, and it's not my best colour.  Still, it's not that bad.  The funny thing is, when I tried out the selfie timer option on my camera, it took 10 frames of each photo.  I imagine that's so when you're taking a shot of a big group, you avoid the blinks.  So, when I downloaded the pictures to my computer, I didn't bother keeping all 10 frames of each shot and picking out the best one.  I just picked the first one of each pose and said to heck with it.  Ha ha, now I can see why you should keep the 10 shots and weed out the blinks.  Hee hee.

I'm glad to finally get something sewn, and I'm excited to dig into my stash and whip up some more.  Also, it's encouraging to see that sewing all those church quilts does sharpen my sewing skills.  :)

Random Sewing Updates

This is a random post done on my phone, so these are all new photos. I would love to show you some before and after pics of my sewing room, but since I'm not even halfway done revamping it, I'll save that for the big reveal. In the meantime, here's what I've been up to. 

I'm loving our church quilting bees. I have volunteered to take on more of the workload, so in addition to participating in the quilting bees at church, and taking home some of the quilts to bind the edges, I have offered to sew quilt tops. 

Jane cuts all the squares, and then she gives me a big box and then I make quilt tops out of them. 

I've been having a blast with how many options there are to play with when you have a giant pile of squares. 

This green one is my favourite so far. It looks so cool in real life!  I've been using graph paper to draw out my designs before I start sewing. Then I can simply sew one row at a time according to my drawing. 

And I've been trying to use up the fabrics that have tons of squares. Later on when I have only 2 or 3 of each one, that's when it'll get really creative. 

I love this one, too. I feel like it has a Dutch blue plate kinda vibe. Cute, right?

I wish you could see this one in person. It is so gorgeous!

After I finished enough quilts for this month's bee, I concentrated on diving into my sewing room revamp project. I bought a new shelf and desk at IKEA in January, and it feels great to finally put them to use. 

This is my old desk. I also had a smaller one beside it for my serger. While it looks really cool, it's not very practical. It's too big, just gets covered in clutter, and it's really hard to get at the shelf. So I took it out. 

This is my shelf. It will go on top of the existing shelf and give me way more storage. I will put my sewing books and binders in the top shelf, put do-dads and accessories and stuff in the second shelf, and the remaining 4 shelves will be filled with clear plastic bins. I have 4 full of patterns, and the other 12 contain most of my fabric stash. It's amazing how much fabric you can fit in a 12" box. 

Lucky is chilling out on the cardboard boxes. Lol. 

Today we had our quilting bee. It was fun, as usual. There were only 6 of us, and we still managed to get 8 quilts done!

It was really cool to work on quilts that I had made. 

We put royal blue yarn on this one, to bring out the lonely blue stripes. It looks so cool!  I just love it. 

We used peach yarn on this one. 

I always have so much fun at our quilting bees. It's great to contribute our talents to such a great cause.  These blankets go to Mexico through Canadian Lutheran World Relief. 

Today I built my new sewing desk. So streamlined!  I love it!

When I finish my revamp, this will go right in front of the window. I can't wait!  

I'm excited to keep digging through all my piles of crap and come out the other side with a whole new sewing room. Nothing gets the mojo going like rearranging a room, amirite?!