New sewing room
My new sewing room is almost complete. Although I was sad that my son moved out, I was excited that I would finally have a sewing room with a window. In case you missed a previous post or are a new visitor, I live in an earth home. My sewing room was under grade in the back corner of the house. Lighting was a struggle, I did the best I could to recreate the look of natural light with various types of lighting. The closest I was able to come was with LED shop lights.
The first thing to go in my new room was carpet. Having ceramic tile in my old sewing room was nice but not exactly ideal. If I dropped a pin it was hard to find and that was the biggest downfall for me. Not to mention if you drop something glass. Laminate flooring made the most sense.
There is still some organizing and straightening to do along with hanging my shop lights. I’ve not decided if I am going to hang a curtain. Enzo will enjoy his new resting spot under the window.
Cutting table
This is my cutting table. The top is an interior door supported by my mil’s old sewing cabinet and plastic bins with drawers. Atop the table is drywall cut to fit and covered with cotton batting and a heavy cotton fabric. I can iron a quilt or fabric up to 80″. Mostly a large cutting mat sits on top as well as fabric for my current project. Below the sewing cabinet is the lightbox my dh made me many years ago. A tv stand my son left behind now supports my wid
e format printer.
Again, I still have some organizing to do.
Work station
My work tables. The brown cabinet has a drop leaf that I've not decided if I'll keep it up or lower it. I really think it will come in handy for laying my blocks as they are assembled. Again, I still have some organizing to do. These photos were taken almost immediately after unpacking.
The other table is one a friend gave to me. He cut a piece of plywood 36″ x 60″ and place fold out legs under. There is another piece of plywood covered with cotton batting and heavy cotton fabric. On top of this is where I do all my piecing, paper piecing and ironing as I go. It will never be this neat again.
When I find a couple treadle sewing machines the fold up legs will be replaced with the iron.
Sewing table
Aaah, my new favorite seat in the house. My Juki sitting inside the sewing table my dh made. The table sits back in a notch on the fold out table and forms an L shape. It makes for quick work if you have a swivel chair which is essential when paper piecing.
Enzo’s new resting spot is to the left of the sewing table. I hope to get another bench to sit his cushion on like the one he sits on in my office. He will then be able to lay on the bench and look out the window while I sew.
It’s not all pretty and definitely not fancy but every piece in my sewing room has a story and/or history.
And now you can see why I don’t have a fabric stash, there really isn’t room.
Hopefully by the end of the week my painting around the house will be complete and I will be able to spend some time in here. This weekend we have laid the laminate floor in my sewing room, painted the sewing room, painted both bathrooms and the hallway. 3 more rooms to go before I can pack my brushes and rollers away for a much much later day, in the future.
Once the painting is done I have 5 baby quilts to make for an old friend. Can you imagine having 5 grandbabies due all around the same time?
Craftsy dirty business
Due to Craftsy closing my store along with many others, you may encounter broken links directing you to my patterns on Craftsy. Please accept my apologies and I am working as quickly as I can to delete these links.
In case you are just hearing of Craftsy deleting stores, on Dec 19th at 11pm I received an email stating my store would be closed on Dec 28th. No explanation given and only 9 days to do something different. With the holidays, prepping and moving my sewing room and other things around the house my plate was full.
Please know I am shopping around for another forum to sell my patterns and in the next couple of weeks I should have a decision made on what platform I am going with.
Many designers who’s stores remain open had patterns deleted with no rhyme or reason why some were left and others removed. I cannot say at this time if my patterns will ever return to Craftsy. It has left a sour taste mostly because such a short window was given and during the holidays when we all have so much going on and little time for anything else. Craftsy’s business was built by designers and crafters alike. Most designers have blogs and it was through a blog that I discovered Craftsy to begin with, long before I started my blog. Over the years I have purchased patterns, fabric and notions through them. Now I am not saying because of this they should have left my store alone, not at all. That was just a way to explain how we all built their business for them.
They received free advertisement over the years through bloggers. It was through bloggers that many discovered Craftsy. I just feel it was really a crappy way for a company to do business and leave so many questioning and out in the cold. Below is a chat I initiated with Craftsy and left the conversation knowing little more than I did to begin with. If there had been a complaint or a problem with one of my patterns i would clearly understand this. But to remove 90% of the stores on their site with 9 days notice, wow!
Until then, here is the chat I had with Craftsy. I’d love to hear your opinions regarding this news. If you purchase or sell patterns other than through Etsy and Payhip your suggestions would be much appreciated.
Chat started: 2018-12-20 07:14 PM UTC
(07:14:24 PM) Denise: Could you tell me why my page will be closed?
(07:14:25 PM) Craftsy: Thanks for chatting in! A member of our support team will be happy to help shortly!
(07:15:43 PM) *** Joe joined the chat ***
(07:15:44 PM) Joe: Hello
(07:15:48 PM) Joe: My name is Joe and I’m here to help
(07:15:55 PM) Denise: Hi Joe
(07:16:56 PM) Joe: We opened the marketplace over 7 years ago as a completely open forum for designers from around the world. Over the years, it’s grown massively and we have not been able to monitor the submissions for things like quality and trademark/copyright compliance. We know we can do better for our mutual customers and for all of you, the designers!
(07:17:39 PM) Joe: We are just revamping everything and reassessing all of the patterns. We had to reduce the size significantly, but we are very much looking forward to opening this back up later in 2019
(07:19:12 PM) Denise: So there was a problem with one of my patterns?
(07:22:01 PM) Joe: No, not a problem at all. To get this done we decided to start fresh in 2019 and removed over 90% of all of the patterns and when we reopen the marketplace in 2019 we will have a process to bring your patterns back
(07:22:30 PM) Denise: ok thank you
(07:22:47 PM) Joe: Of course, please let me know if you have any other questions about this and I will be here to help
Congratulations! You’ll just love your new sewing room once it’s set up. I use SquareSpace to blog and my shop is included in the price. Thanks for linking to Wednesday Wait Loss.
I do love it. Sewing in front the window is the best! I ended up at Etsy.
Great sewing space – looks like you are all set to whip them out in no time!
2 butterfly quilts on the frame now. I’m loving the space I have now.
Congratulations on your new sewing space – it is certainly nice to have a window to sew by! I’m sure Enzo will adjust and perhaps you will be making changes for a bit to come. When I finally had a sewing room, it took me about 9 months to find my groove. Now, I still tweak it, but nothing like that first year. Congratulations!
It’s pretty much set up the same as my other room. With the addition of the tv stand for my printer and I now have room to lift the drop table on the cabinet. I’m really loving the space.
I love the space you are creating there for you and Enzo. It’s a very workable place, and work is what you plan, so it’s perfect. I’m sorry Craftsy closed your shop. The whole mess was poorly done and leaves a bad impression of the company. When I heard about it, I thought over whether I wanted my dollars to support a company which would treat people that way. If this had been a brick and mortar store, a landlord could not have behaved in such a fashion.
After a couple of days, I decided I did NOT want my money to grow such a company, and I had my user account locked. It is impossible for us to to delete our own accounts, and they would not delete it, but insofar as I can go, it is closed, and it will stay that way until they decide to delete it.
Have you thought about Shopify or eCrater? I’ve heard mostly good things about each of them, but they aren’t free. Someone mentioned WordPress has a business set up, too.
I actually decided on Etsy and created a store yesterday and will see how it goes. Ecrater is a new one for me so I will have to add it to my list to check out. I’m not real techy and when i checked into setting up a wordpress store I was more than i wanted to take on right now. Eventually I will though, that was the plan when I created my wordpress site.
Enzo is still a little confused. Last night I told him lets go sew and he just stopped and looked up at me. Previously he would have ran into the sewing room and plopped down on his cushion. Or, stood by my chair wanting up there with me. He knows we sew after dinner and many nights he would be sitting outside the sewing room door waiting for me. Now he just stands at the beginning of the hallway and waits.
Thank you, I love my new space. Its not just the window either but that is huge improvement. My previous space felt so cluttered at 10′ x 10′ and one wall I couldn’t use at all because of the closet and entry doors. Which is pretty much the same in my new room except it’s 10.5′ x 12.5′ I can also place my sewing machine facing the window. In the old room it was either facing the wall (which I wouldn’t do) or placed out in the room. It was like a maze and barely any room to spread a quilt on the floor for viewing.
I am so angry with the way Craftsy treated designers with the short notice right at holiday time and with their treatment of people like me…just a customer, no notice at all!! Thankfully blogs that I follow did bring it up so I was able to download the patterns I had in my account. I wish I could do the same with the classes I bought, but they will be the only reason I will go back to Craftsy…just to watch what I paid for before it disappears without notice too. I will not buy anything else from Craftsy. I don’t support businesses with no morals or ethics.
From what I understand you will still have access to your purchases. Which is good. However, wouldn’t it have been just as easy to keep the stores with sold patterns? Anything that didn’t sell delete. I’m not ok with them storing my patterns and having. O control over over them. Get rid of me and keep my patterns? Which is what they did.
Your sewing room looks great! Craftsy certainly didn’t think things through, removing 90%! of their content. There were so many better ways to handle quality and copyright issues. I don’t have any patterns on there, although I had thought about it, but if I did, I definitely would not go back if they removed my content even if they invited me back. It is a trust issue.
Right. My post sounded really bitter, which I am not. It’s more of an inconvenience and shock the way it happen. Thank you for stopping by.
if you will be using a swivel chair with wheels, you might want to get a vinyl chair mat at an office supply store. I also put a laminate flooring ( a cheap one) in my sewing room and the wheels kind of tore up the surface. Oh well, live and learn.
Some expensive swivel chairs come with replaceable casters – a hard plastic one for use on low pile office carpet, and and slightly softer rubbery one to use on hard surfaces. Hope you can learn from my error!
Yes I have one but thank you. If I hadn’t thought of it I might be in trouble in a few months.
Your new sewing space will be wonderful when you tweak it to be perfect for the way you work!!
It already is perfect. I’m no longer cramped/