Peaceful coexistence?

This weekend, I made a muslin that I'm really pleased with. But I also made a mess. A big one.


We live in a small-ish apartment, and my "sewing room" serves double-duty as our living room. My sewing machine folds away into a table, and so lives permanently in one corner of the room. When I'm going to be doing a lot of drafting, I set up this folding table on the other side of the room. Then I proceed to cover every flat surface, including the couch, with paper, fabric, lucite quilting rulers, pens, pencils, scissors, wads of snipped threads, and of course, pins that nestle themselves into the berber carpet and wait for someone innocent and unsuspecting to walk by with bare feet.

What about you? How do you manage your mess? Is it possible for sewing to coexist peacefully with other living-related activities in your living room?

a week of sewing

This week I'm on vacation, and despite fighting a cold, I've made good on my plans to spend most of the week sewing. Much of my time so far has been spend on Christmas gifts, including a fleece jacket for my mother based on Jalie 2679. But I've also finished the green dress (stay posted for pictures soon!) and sewed a failed pair of yoga pants. Right now, I'm working on this dress from the June 2009 Burda WOF

Because I've been doing so much sewing this week, we've also made some improvements to my set-up. My "sewing room," aka our living room, has no overhead lighting, so here's the task lighting that the Mr. rigged up for me:


These lights are ultimately destined for our kitchen counters, but for now, they've been mounted in a piece of cardboard and tacked to the top of the window-frame. The rig only temporary, and it isn't pretty, but the extra light has been a big help, especially with all the dark-colored fabrics I've been sewing.