The Virtual Sewing Room

Consider yourself fortunate if you have an entire room you can dedicate to sewing. My dream room would include a specialized sewing table, heavy-duty machine, a corkboarded wall to pin ideas and photos, a filing box for patterns, a specially-designed box for thread and bobbins, several bins for fabric and leftovers, a long foldable table to cut patterns, and a tall mirror.

I've got the heavy-duty machine. The rest is not feasible in a two-bedroom apartment where I've already donated the spare room to my tech toys -- especially the corkboard wall. I had one as a child, but as an adult, they've gone the way of dark wood-paneled interiors.

My virtual sewing room consists of the dining room table, with fabric laid out on the living room carpet for some tracing jobs if I can't fit the entire pattern piece and the fabric onto the table. Some projects required a ridiculous amount of fabric, ridiculous only because said fabric hadn't been pleated or wrapped around my body yet, where the sheer yardage made sense. I use a rotary cutter on fabrics with a mat underneath. My heavy-duty Singer sits on the edge of the table, ready for action.

I don't have a dedicated sewing machine table. I tried using a TV tray, hoping it would be sturdy enough. One test with the Singer produced way too much wobble. I also tried my Table-Mate -- yes, the same one you've seen on TV. It also failed the stress test. I thought about buying another small folding table, but then we get into storage issues. That table needs to fold up neatly into my storage closet, which is already cramped for space.

One day, I will find a better solution. For now, I have this, and I don't care about the layout of the room as long as the layout of the project turns out the way I want.