A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a new cutting table at Joann. It was a good size, and looked a little sturdier than the other cutting table I had seen there. And CUBBIES!! I snapped a picture and sent it to my husband- because I’ve been wanting a better cutting table and more organized storage in my room, and this would kill 2 birds with 1 stone, for a pretty reasonable price (especially if I used a coupon or my Joann VIP card).
After talking it over, my husband and I agreed on a budget for sewing room furniture upgrade- I figured it would be enough for that table and a new fabric cabinet. Awesome!
Then Brooke, over at Custom Style, showed me a picture of her completely amazing Ikea hacked cutting table, and I abandoned my original plan for something a little more extensive.
I’ve been browsing furniture online for a while. There seems to be an abundance of ugly, expensive, and/or not optimal pieces out there, but since I had to go to Ikea anyway for 12 Lack side tables, I headed to their website and quickly targeted the Micke series of office furniture. I really liked that these pieces are just under 20″ deep to help maximize room space. The tables I had been using as desks were 24″, and I knew I wouldn’t miss those 4″. I also liked the variety of desk widths, so I could mix and match a combination that would best fit my space and they would all coordinate with each other.
I broke out excel, and started playing around with different combinations and layouts of desks that would still allow for walking space around my Lack hack cutting table, which wound wind up measuring around 65″x 43″ in my 10′x 13′ formal dining room turned craft room. I settled on 2 of the desks with integrated storage (yay! cubbies!) along the windowed wall of the room, and in the heat of the moment at IKEA, I decided a drawer unit would fit well on that same wall.
I ordered a new fabric cabinet from somewhere else, but I wish I had considered the Ikea armoires. I figured their armoires were like my old one- with no peg holes to easily add shelving, but that is NOT the case. If I had a do-over for that, I’d get something from there since their stuff seems sturdier and most of it is less expensive than what I ended up with, but the one I got isn’t bad, and is a big improvement on what was there before.
I spent most of the weekend building furniture and organizing. I even re-found some interesting things during my cleanout- maybe it’s time for a blog giveaway?
I really love how it the room turned out. Here are some “before” pics:
My old cutting table was a small Ikea dining table on bed risers, and my assortment of plastic drawers were pretty disorganized.
My sewing table and computer table were 2 plastic folding tables cornered against each other. I really hated the lack of drawers, and the folding mechanism took up too much room to put drawers underneath them.
Fabric cabinet of doom!!! This beast is nearly 45″ wide and 24″ deep, and no shelves, so that was pretty much as organized as it ever got. This thing felt like it took up half the room, so I had to move it out to make room for a larger cutting table.
And the “after” pictures:
The tables were pretty easy to put together, but stacking them securely was a bit tricky. I tried to do 2 dowels per corner, like Brooke did (yes, another link- because I love it so much) for hers, but it. did. not. go. well. I would up just doing 1 dowel, measuring 1″ by 1″ from the outermost corner to the center, and that worked pretty well. I used 5/8″ dowels, which are a bit bigger than the ones that are standard with Ikea furniture.
I decided to put the drawer unit in between the desks. It’s on casters, so I can roll it out to access the back cubbies. YAY! CUBBIES!
The corner where the armoire used to be. Now I have wall space to freely acquire the last 4 months I need to have a complete set of Al Moore’s 1950 calendar girls.
The cubbies make great bookshelves, and accommodated my tallest and widest books without a problem. I hung my thread pegs to the side of the drawers for easy access.
I have a hook on the wall for when my ironing board isn’t in use. A toothbrush holder on the cutting table holds tracing wheel, seam ripper, seam gauge, and chopstick (for point turning), and little plastic baskets for colored pencils and pattern weights.
Just for fun- I keep my super special knick knacks on the window ledges. The Wizard of Oz snow globe was my Mother’s Day present from the kids this year. They are also responsible for the munchkin cards and stickers on the window.
Rarity supervises my sewing desk to make sure I do everything just right along with a solar dancing flower and a cast iron mermaid that turned out too small to be a bookend.
I hope you enjoyed the tour of my sewing space. I am super happy with how it turned out, but please don’t expect to see my room this “put together” in future pictures!
I guess I really have no excuse now to procrastinate working on my muslin for the craftsy fitting course!
I was deeply saddened to learn of the fire earlier this month in 
Lesson 1: Make a plan. Begin with the end in mind.
Once she had an idea for the design, I set her up at the table with her doll, and a piece of tissue paper. I had her draw out the different elements of the outfit to make sure it would fit the doll once it was done. At first, she didn’t draw the borders along the arms and shoulders- just a line for where the sleeve would end and a curve for the neckline. I explained she would be cutting out the tissue paper as a template for cutting the fabric and poster board, and she needed a line on the paper for every line she was going to cut out of fabric. I always think it’s interesting when I give instructions that I think are pretty obvious (“Draw your outfit on the tissue paper”), and later realize I left out pretty critical information (“Include the outlines. The tissue is a template. It isn’t staying on the doll”). But she got it done, and cut out each piece of tissue paper separately, so she’d be ready for
For the nesting dolls and fairy tale fabric, I had her play around with different arrangements of the pattern piece so she could get the elements of the print she wanted on the different pieces. I helped her pin it in place (and by helped, I of course mean I did all the pinning while she watched), and then gave her a lesson in cutting.
Cutting fabric is a little different from cutting for your typical 2nd grade art project. I explained that for an accurate cut, she should keep the fabric and the bottom blade of the shears on the table, and slide along while cutting with the top blade. I also taught her the very important tip of cutting with the tips of the scissors and not sticking them farther into the fabric than you want to cut. She almost learned that one the hard way.
She used her tissue paper pattern pieces to cut pieces out of poster board, glued the fabric to the poster board, and finally glued the outfit to her paper doll. She said her teacher really liked it, and (somewhat abashedly) the other kids “acted like it was special.”
