improvising

Not sure if this qualifies, but it was serendipitous. The huge mousepad my son asked for one holiday turned up among the things he left when he went to Europe last year

- in the "take anything you want" pile. It turned out to be absolutely perfect for my Featherweight to sit upon. It dampens the vibrations, and keeps the little machine from scooting around the tabletop.

Another thing I adapted/adopted was a tabouret (sp?) I came across in a thrift store. It was orange plastic and pretty cheap! I am using it with a knitting machine to hold all of the attachments and gizmos, but it certainly would work for sewing paraphernalia just as well. It has bins and drawers on all four sides and the top, and sturdy casters to roll around and spin. I love everything about it except that ghastly orange color.

My light box is a second-hand toy one, cost me a dollar, I think, and aside from the batteries wearing out fast, it works well for me.

Penny S wrote: > I just made myself a great temporary light table out of 2' x4' sheet of > glass, a desk, and a ironing board set to the same height as the desk. It's > the prefect height for working at in my task chair too. >

Someone on my pattern drafting software list uses her sliding glass patio door for a light table.

Melinda, who would love to figure out how to use a 2 x 4 ft table for a cutting table with something that would compact down and take up very little space -- a door would be obvious, but there's no room for one around this shoebo^C^C^C^C^C^C house

ack.. can you imagine having to pull the door in and out of the tracks all the time to use it like that? I keep my glass peice around for hot cutting nylon; it slides away when it's not in use.

Penny S

>

I've been using my sliding glass door for light table for years. It's really handy when you need to assemble all those sheets printed out for patterns, tape them up, hang the sheet of tracing paper over it and trace all in one fell swoop. If I want to work on it at night I just put my floor lamp out on the deck and have plenty of light to see what's going on.

I have a glass topped coffee table I use for smaller projects, I just sit my little table lamp or a flashlight under it. I have a regular tracing dealy I bought at Micheal's with one of their 50% off coupons years ago but I seldom use it except when I drag out my seldom used stamping stuff for a little project. I like the bigger areas of my glass door and coffee table.

I always thought that a cutting table with a cutout and a piece of plexi-glass dropped in would be a handy thing to have. You could just tuck a lamp or whatever under it when wanting to use a tracing table.

I also found a great way to keep all my threads organized and dust free. I got one of those rolling carts with five drawers, three small on top and two deeper ones on bottom. I got a piece of that board, the stuff with the little rows of holes, and cut it so it would fit the bottoms of the drawers. Then I bought doweling that fit into the holes and cut it about 1/2 inch shorter than the drawer is deep, dabbed the end of the cut dowel with a little wood glue and put rows of them into the peg board, a spool of thread and matching filled bobbin fit each length of dowel in the small drawers perfectly. The deeper drawers I use for my serger threads. These drawers are clear palstic so you can see right in and know what each drawer holds. Keeps thread out of direct light and dust free. I keep my embroider threads in the top two drawers and regular sewing thread in the third.

Val

Penny S wrote: >>

She doesn't take it off the tracks; she uses it as it is -- puts stuff up with masking tape or something like that, I believe, and carefully removes the masking tape when she is done.

Val you are an 'angel'. Thread storage has been my biggest problem but now thanks to you it has been solved.

I also love the sliding door/ glass coffee table 'light box' solution.

Do you have a solution for enlarging my sewing room (which otherwise needs elastic walls)? ;o)

Cheers

Hey! I do that!!! Of course, it only works here in the spring/summer and early fall. But, it *does* work great!

How about my sewing table....we can't afford a custom job, or one the the ones that you can buy from JOAnns or elsewhere. What DH did was take a luan door and 2 spindles that are normally used for stair railings. The table is supposed to be able to fold down against the wall, but now that one end has a computer on it and the other end has my sewing machine, it doesn't get closed very often.

Larisa

Mel> Someone on my pattern drafting software list uses her sliding glass

I don't have a place to put a full-scale door that's not hung and being used, or else I would have already done it.

I squeeze myself, three of my four children, my work-at-home stuff, their home school stuff, 2 dogs, 2 cats, 2 parakeets, and four guinea pigs into a 1000 sq foot house. I suppose I could get rid of the piano and put a table there, but if I did, I would never be able to replace it and now that I'm down to teaching two levels of school, I can finally get back to it, so now is *not* the right time to get rid of it.

When my cabinets get hung I will be able to use my dinner table again, but it *would* be nice to figure out something that would unfold onto my

2 x 4 ft table and make a 4 x 6 foot cutting surface. And when the guinea pigs are using up so much space I will have that available, too (but they are SOOOO sweet I am not looking to get rid of them, either)

We have butcher-block TV trays we use the sewing machines on when the dinner table and my 4-ft-of-formica-over-double-drawer-filing-cabinets "desk" is too crowded to use.

I'll try to get a picture of that thread storage thing I did up on my album page so you can see what I've done, some times visuals are more helpful than words.

I had to go from a from a 20ft X 30ft room to 10ft X 11ft. I've had to figure out a way to fit in three machines, a work table, my sewing cabinet/table, ironing board, Ironrite mangle, fly tying stuff, sculpting stuff, painting stuff, basketry stuff and some other artsy crafty type things I'm not going to admit to. I have floor to ceiling shelves on every wall except where the window and doors are. I have one small path to my chair that I can sit on and twirl around and touch practically anything in the room. On some days I look at what surrounds me and, living in earthquake country, think that it will take a large rescue crew with heavy equipment and two dogs to locate and dig me out of the rubble. LOL I had to down size from a dining room table with 3 leaves to a little round table that seats four almost comfortably. I take my fabric to either the library, and use their table in the community meeting room to cut things out or, if I can fit into their schedule, the lab room at the community college. I don't have enough clear floor space to lay down more than about 1 1/2 yards and because of my disabilities crawling around on a floor is pretty difficult, and painful. This is not conducive to being hit with the sewing bug at 2am. If you figure out how to do elastic walls let me know!!

Val

Would you share the 'album' addy please

I have the 'luxury' of a 9ft X 9ft 6" room after DD got hitched. Until then I was one of the 'gypsy' sewists, setting up wherever there was a spare space. However, The Room seems to have shrunk in a short space of time due probably to the inclusion of built in shelves as per your room, also 3 machines, ironing board, collapsible cutting table and tailor's dummy (all essentials of course). We had our first earthquake in December '89 (5.5 on the r/scale) but somehow The Room looked tidier then than at any time since. I have given it a critical observation and come to the conclusion that when I am finished all the 'projects in progress' it will look much tidier [BG]. When that time comes I must look out my halo and give it a good polish :o). Until then I will just have to troll the NG looking for wonderful improvisations such as elastic walls.

Cireen,

If you want, I can email you some of the space saving ideas that I am going to put into use (when I actually have a room, and not just "space" for sewing. Some of the ideas are already in use in the laundry room (where I store my fabric and other projects (cross-stitch and latch hook, and soap making supplies, and......lol).

Larisa

nystitcher at yahoo dot com

Isee wrote:

improvising snipped-for-privacy@cetinvalid.com (Penny=A0S)

What great improvisations have you come up with?

Cireen, why don't you describe the room, and maybe we can give you tips on finding previously overlooked storage areas?

For instance, I've found that the room behind doors is perfect for lots of storage opportunities. And overhead storage often suits a room; just add shelves above the windows (unless they're ten feet high, of course). Karen Maslowski in Cincinnati

The laundry!!! Now there is a room I have not utilised and now I look at it, it has LOTS of space that I could store 'some' more 'essentials' (cross stitch, punch needle embroidery, crotchet, knitting, glass/fabric/poster paints n such). Thanks Larisa. I would appreciate your ideas to make the most of my spaces.

Back in Tiffany's day, that's all a "light table" was - a sheet of glass, to which you affixed your pattern, and later, your cut glass pieces, pre-assembly, with bits of tacky stuff. They employed boys to run around the studio throughout the day and adjust mirrors to reflect sunlight into the work areas.

Kathleen

For years I tried to figure a way to use the ceiling for storage. It seemed such a waste to have that whole ceiling just up there empty when I had a room full of walls and the floor almost totally full. I recently visited a furrier and was allowed to go into the mending and storage room. I happened to look up and there above me was a ceiling totally covered with hangers which had various and sundry fur garments on them. I have not figured out yet how to incorporate this in my sewing room (I only have 8 foot ceilings). I am working on a few ideas. Why should the walls and floors have all the glory??

The only improvisation I have come up with is my hand made cutting table. I am tall and cutting on the bed or dining table was just #$%^&* on my back. After a knee injury several years ago my orthopedic gave strict orders "NO kneeling" for anypurpose so the floor was not an option. Now that my table is just above waist height I no longer have back aches.

Sun

10 feet high would be perfect! I can climb ladders! I only have 7'2" upstairs, so over door storage isn't always practical. On the other hand, I DO have a hanging rail on the sewing room door for customer garments. Of course, elastic walls would be MUCH better - I could get more on the bookshelves that already cover them! ;) You've seen the pix of my sewing room/library/spare bedroom? At present James is sleeping in there while we do up his room, so there's extra stuff in there too!

I kept some of the cupboards and bits of work top from the old kitchen for using in the 'conservatory' (all it conserves is the washing machine and the freezer!) when we re-fitted, and I'd already inherited a few from someone elses re-fit. I have all the art stuff (including glass painting stuff, reams of paper, 12 drawing boards... ) out there, along with the laundry stuff, the cat food and James's garden toys, all 6 of Alan's tool boxes and the small step ladder. We are also trying to get configured for Alan to do the airbrushing of models out there, but at the moment it's in dire need of a sort out (again!!).