Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 2: Strategize

Show Notes

• 
  Click here to download the Sewing Camp Toolkit. It includes our sewing spaces freebie, exercises to help you upgrade your space, and a preview of our Style Workshop.


• 
  Upgrade Your Sewing Space Part 1: Explore. The first episode of this Space Camp series!


• 
  Tessa Newell painting garden furniture.


• 
  Podcast listeners get half off an unlimited Seamwork membership when you use this link, plus you get to keep that price as long as you’re a member!


• Tell us your idea for the next icebreakers for makers!

Podcast Transcript

Sarai
I'm Sarai.

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio.

Sarai
Welcome back to Seamwork Radio, where we share practical ideas for building a creative process so you can sew with intention and joy.

Welcome back to Seamwork Radio Summer Sewing Camp 2023. So, during the months of June and July, we're going to be embarking on a journey together to refresh our sewing spaces and then our personal style.

In today's episode, we'll be creating a strategy for upgrading our sewing spaces. So, as we mentioned last week, when we pull Seamworkers, one of the biggest obstacles that a lot of you guys face is managing your sewing space. No matter what size space you are in—big, small, in between, whatever—we all have a lot of stuff to manage, and doing that in a way that makes it easy for you to sew is always a big challenge. So that's why we're doing this series for Summer Sewing Camp 2023.

Last week, we worked on examining our spaces so that we can conceptualize our constraints, and this week, work on solidifying a strategy around that. So if you haven't listened to the episode from last week, I highly recommend you do that. That'll give you a great starting point. You don't necessarily need it to listen to today's episode, but it might help you to kind of lay some groundwork.

And in this episode, we're going to work through a series of questions that will help you to define your sewing space strategy. All right? So we're going to dive right into it today. You want to start with some tips, Haley?

Haley
Yeah. I am going to start us off with budget. I know that that's something that some people don't like to talk about. But a lot of us, I know, myself included, are really conscious of it. And I think that when you are doing work on any kind of space and in this case, your sewing space, I think an obstacle for a lot of people is that they don't want to spend a ton of money on it, which I know that that's the case for me.

And I think that always—I use this in my, like, real life and in my sewing life—considering your budget up front is the best way that you can avoid overspending. So get real with yourself. Consider how much you want to spend, and don't let a small number discourage you. There's a lot of things that you can do. You could DIY. You can upcycle some of your existing furniture. You can, of course, furnish from scratch, but that doesn't mean that you have to go spend a ton of money. You can go to the thrift store. You can prowl Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace and get some really great deals, especially if you're not a little afraid of putting in some elbow grease and cleaning things up, sanding them down, giving them a fresh coat of paint.

Sarai
Yeah, there's so much you can do with paint. It's kind of amazing.

Haley
I'm like obsessed with paint in general. I'm like, oh, it's great. That's my solution for everything. This room's boring. Let's paint it.

Sarai
Yeah, definitely. And furniture. I mean, you can take an old cruddy piece of furniture and make it look completely different with a coat of paint on it. It's sort of incredible to me. I recently saw this video. I linked it in my personal newsletter this week. There's this artist. Her name is Tessa Newell, and she is a decorative artist. So she paints hand painted walls and furniture and all kinds of goods. But there's a [video on I think it's the House and Garden YouTube channel]( of her painting an outdoor table set a table with chairs, and she paints the chairs in a gingham pattern. And then she paints the table with these beautiful flowers. And it's so beautiful. And I feel like it's something that almost I mean, you might not have her artistic capabilities, but I feel like it's something that a lot of us could do. And just give it your own personal touch and make things look just completely different from when you got them.

Haley
Totally. If you don't have that exact set of skills, you could also use—I love utilizing cute contact paper or peel and stick wallpaper to create a little bit of color and texture and pattern. You can do that to the inside of worn out bookshelf or inside of drawers just to give them like a little secret surprise.

Sarai
Yeah, I was thinking about doing that with my Koala cabinet, which is sitting in the corner right here. I think it looks fine. It's like this kind of pinkish faux bois look. If you don't know what that is, it's like a fake wood grain look to it and it's fine. But I was thinking, wouldn't it look cute if it was wallpapered? Like you had a print all over it?

Haley
I love that.

Sarai
I don't know how hard it would be because it has a lot of doors and things like that, but I feel like that could be really cute.

Haley
Yeah, I love that.

Sarai
Give it some personality.

Haley
So after you consider budget, the flip side of that is you want to consider how much time you want to spend. Because oftentimes when you have less money to spend, then you may be investing a little bit more time to make that dollar go further. So you're going to want to consider that so that you can strike a balance between those two things.

So of course you want to be realistic. You want to consider how much time do you actually have to spend on this. Maybe you just have a couple of weekends, but kind of setting that constraint up front is going to be really helpful so that you don't get totally in over your head, completely destroy your sewing room. The goal is we want to be able to sew more often. We don't want to have the opposite effect.

Sarai
Yeah, absolutely. I gravitate towards vintage and antique furniture a lot, which is a great way to save money, being secondhand. But then you have to look for it, and that takes time, so you have to balance those two things.

Haley
I'm on the hunt for some antique furniture for my sewing room, and right now, I want something that I can put. I have my printer in there, and I have some equipment, and it's just like a cruddy Ikea thing. I have it on right now, and it's totally functional. But I'm just, like, on the hunt, and I know and I've accepted that that's something that might take me a few years to find just the right piece. I think that's good to be realistic about certain details like that, so you don't end up sacrificing something you really, really want for the sake of just having it done now.

So that kind of leads me into my next thing. Do you want to make what you have work? And that could be for a reason, like I just listed, or it could be that what you have just works. And why would you spend more money and time on it if it does indeed work?

Or do you want to do a total makeover? Again, if this is the case, you definitely will have to consider the balance of budget and time a little bit more deeply.

Sarai
Yeah. When you think about to what degree you have might already work just fine, that gives you, I think, a lot of flexibility in thinking about time versus money. Because if you have stuff that works okay, but it's not ideal, then you can probably afford to wait longer to make it work and not have to spend a lot of money all at once. Whereas if something is just not working at all and is driving you nuts and it's making you not want to sew, then maybe it's a little bit more pressing, and you're going to have to spend that money in order to get it done a little bit faster.

Haley
Yeah. And I think working through the questions that we posed in last week's episode and then some of the ones we're talking about today might feel a little bit redundant. But the goal is to reveal those things, reveal what your big obstacles are in an effort to really make sure that you are spending your precious time on the thing that's going to have the most impact for you.

Sarai
Yeah, absolutely. All right.

Well, we talked about money, and we talked about time. The next thing I want to talk about is tools. So there's a lot of different approaches to tools, I feel like. And so think about which of these sounds the most like you when I list these terms here: minimalist, upgraded, or fully equipped.

So those are kind of three points on a spectrum of an approach to tools. On one end, you have the minimalist who is very careful about how much stuff he or she owns and doesn't want an excess of tools. On the other end of the spectrum, you have somebody who wants to be fully equipped. They want to have all the doodads, all the things, exactly what they need, when they need it, things maybe they use only very occasionally, and they don't mind that, they have the space for it. So depending on your approach to sewing, your level of experience, even your general attitude towards stuff, you're going to fall somewhere on that spectrum. So think about where you personally are on that spectrum.

Haley, I think you have mentioned that you're more of like a minimalist.

Haley
Yeah, I would say that I'm like an upgraded minimalist because I don't like to have a lot of stuff, but I'd like the things to be really great quality. So I do think it's like you mentioned kind of like a spectrum. And considering what you are and where you would like to be, I know that it's really easy, especially if you've been sewing for a long time, to accumulate a lot of stuff. And so perhaps when you really consider it, you want to be more minimalistic. And that means that maybe you can find some homes for some of the stuff that you have that's redundant or that you don't use as often.

Sarai
Yeah, I think for me, I would kind of put myself in the middle, probably. I feel like I don't like to have all the doodads and all the little things, but I do like, for example, to have some nice presser feet that will get the job done that are specifically made for whatever I'm sewing. Those are kind of nice to have. At the same time, it's not like I can't sew without them either. So I think I'm probably somewhere in the middle, which is probably where a lot of people fall.

Haley
Yeah, I think so.

Sarai
It's helpful to know that about yourself, and it'll help you to decide how much you need and also how much storage you need. So that's tools, and if you feel like there's a mismatch between what you have and where your personality lies, it might be helpful to do kind of an audit on your tools. Just take them all out, take a look at them, see if there are things that are missing that you'd like to have. Maybe make a list of those things.

Or on the opposite end, if you just have stuff you never, ever use, maybe it's time to donate it to somebody who will use it, especially if space is at a premium for you. I think that's a good practice.

And now I want to talk about storage. Storage is such a big topic when it comes to our sewing rooms, and I think this is one of the areas that probably a lot of us struggle with the most. And we touched on it in the last episode when we talked about cleanliness, specifically in your sewing room. But this is a big area, so you want to think about what kind of storage works best for you as a place to start.

So there are a lot of different ways you can think about this, a lot of different dimensions. But one way you can think about this is, do you like your stuff to be open and on display, or do you like it to be stored out of sight?

So if you like your stuff to be kind of out where you can see it, then you're going to have a different approach to storage than if you really like everything to be neat and tidy and stored away properly. So that's something to think about. We'll talk about that.

But first I want to also mention this might vary by the type of thing we're talking about. So you might have a different approach for things like fabric or sewing patterns than you do for your tools and your notions, depending on what you like to display or what you want access to, or what inspires you when you come into your sewing space.

For some people, they like to see their fabric out so they can kind of imagine the possibilities and think about how they would use it. And then for other people, they find that to be way too messy and they want to have it all stored out of sight.

Or you might be somewhere in between, which is, I think, where I fall and have some of your fabric out and some of it stored away.

So think about those things open it on display or stored out of sight, and then how each of those dimensions relates to fabric, patterns, and your tools and notions. What about you, Haley? Do you like to have things out or do you like to have things stored away?

Haley
I like to have them, for the most part stored away, except for my tools, which I like to be, like, pretty handy, my machines, because I just will sew more if my machines are out and ready to go and like, whatever project I'm currently working on. Otherwise I kind of like it to be out of the way.

I'm more inspired by just, like, open airy, bright spaces without a lot of distraction. I also kind of consider that when I consider my storage style.

Sarai
Yeah, I think so, too. And one thing that came up for me in thinking about this for myself is, right now, in my current space, I like things to be certain things to be stored away just because my space doubles and triples as both a guest room and an office. And so, for example, my sewing machine is on a drop down table so that I can store it away when I'm not using it. I can pull it up when I am using it, but when I move into the new sewing shed in the backyard, that's a place where I can just shut the door and leave all my sewing stuff behind. So in that case, I would want to have my machines out and accessible at all times so that I can just go in there and sew and not have to set up and tear down quite as much.

That's something you think about too, is maybe in your ideal situation versus your current situation, things are a little bit different. That's something to consider too. And then how realistic is that ideal situation? Is that something you're moving towards, or is that something that ideally, I would like it to be that way, but that's not in the cards right now, so I need it to be this way.

All right, here's some more questions to ask yourself when it comes to storage. Do you have a storage pain point or an area you'd particularly like to focus on? That's a really good question to ask yourself, because that'll help you just kind of focus where you change up your storage first. Oftentimes there's one in particular area that just causes you so much grief, and you might think of it as just like, oh, I have all these storage problems, but it's really just one thing that's bothering you.

And then do you have what you need or do you need to invest in more storage? I think for me, I tend to sometimes, one of my behaviors around this that I think I would like to change is that I tend to get excited about storage and then buy storage things and then I get them and like, oh, this is actually not exactly what I needed. I think that's a good thing to keep in mind. If you do that too, you might need to do a little bit more analysis of what you need before you rush out and get something that you think is going to solve the problem.

Haley
Yeah, something that we're going to be doing in the series that I think is really helpful is that we have you in next week, we’re going to be talking about auditing and you audit everything before you work on storing it, which I think is so helpful because then you're not jumping the gun.

Sarai
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's something that a lot of us have probably done at some point.

Haley
Myself included.

Sarai
Yeah. It's so easy to be tempted by all the cute baskets.

Haley
I know. Go to the Container Store and you’re like, I need everything, all the containers.

Sarai
This is going to solve all the problems in my life. And you get home, you're like, oh, actually, it's just more clutter.

So to wrap up, here's a question to ask yourself to get you started on this. So what we'd like you to do is choose two to three goals for your space reset. So what are the two to three goals that you have that are going to improve your space?

Lst week we looked at the things that you want to keep the things that you want to change within your current sewing space. This week, we're going to choose two to three goals for your space reset. What are your goals for your manipulation of your space, Haley?

Haley
So I have two kind of main goals for my space. I mentioned last week that my closet in my space is really just not functional. I moved about a year ago, and I just brought all of my storage practices into my new space, and I wanted to live with it for a while. And after living with it, I just realized it just does not work.

I really need to redo my closet, which is mostly, I would say, like, 50% fabric. So that is going to be my first goal, revamping my closet and my fabric storage. And my second goal is a little bit more aesthetic. I'm going to paint my room and put some corkboard up. Those are my two goals. And I feel like it tackles two things in my space. I hate the gray color on the wall in there. Bumps me out a little bit. We live in the Pacific Northwest. It's rainy all the time. I don’t want to look at something else that's gray.

So that's just, like, for my own mental health and mood, and I think it'll make me feel happy when I'm in the space. And then the closet is just really practical.

Sarai
Gray is such a common color when you move into a house because people, if they don't paint it white, they paint it gray for some reason, which I think gray can look really nice, but oftentimes it's like, a little bit too dark for our climate.

Haley
Something that's big for me in all design choices is that something feels intentional, and this just feels like the most unintentional shade of gray imaginable. I don't want to talk down on gray because I think it can be a beautiful color, but this is just like the most nothing color that's ever existed.

Sarai
Yeah. All right. Well, my goals, I think for my space, it's hard to whittle it down to just two or three because I'm moving into a totally different room, so I'm kind of redoing the whole thing, and it's serving a lot of different functions. So I'm going to be shooting YouTube videos in there for our YouTube channel because I do a lot of sewing vlogs in my own space. So it needs to look nice for YouTube, and it also needs to function as a podcast space, and it also needs to be a functional sewing space. So there's a lot that's going to be going on in there. And it's small. Well, it's not that small. It's probably the same size as my current space and I'll have a little bit less stuff in it.

So I think my goals for it are: one, to make something that can be shifted around. What I mean by that is I'd like to come up with some clever ways to either have things that are movable or that I can, for example, draw a curtain and have a background for my YouTube videos or something like that. So find ways to make the space multifunctional.

My second goal would be to make sure that I can leave stuff out and still have it be clean. So right now I have to put everything away. I do a lot of setup and tear down in order to sew and it's a real barrier for me. So I would like to have everything set up so that I can just pop in, do some sewing for an hour and feel good about that, but not leave it in total chaos when I leave. So that's my second goal. And I'd say my third goal is to get the lighting right, because it's going to be a little bit darker than my current space and I'm going to be probably doing some sewing at night. So just making sure that the lighting is nice in there, it works for me.

Haley
Those are like three really great goals and they make a really big feeling project feel a lot more manageable.

Sarai
Yeah, definitely. And I like that because I think my tendency with a project like this is to dive into the details first instead of thinking about the big picture first, because it's so fun to look at Pinterest and kind of like the storage thing we're talking about and just think about, oh, I could paint this and I can put this here. And really it helps to kind of start at the top and then maybe make a plan and then maybe make some drawings, some sketches.

And just like you do for any design project, then to think about it from the details up, which is the same thing we teach and Design Your Wardrobe and we talk about when we talk about sewing by design and all of that stuff. It's the way you approach design. So this has been very helpful for me.

Haley
Yay. I'm already excited to see how it comes together.

Well, I'm just going to recap what we talked about today before we sign off. So today's discussion was all about kind of creating this strategy for your space and setting some goals for yourself.

So first we started with two incredibly practical things, which is our budget, how much we want to spend and how much time we want to invest. And kind of looking at those two things side by side to give us some realistic constraints for our project.

And then we dove in to talking a little bit about more nitty gritty stuff. That tends to be really important when you talk about a sewing space, which is tools and your tool style. Are you more of a minimalist? Are you a more fully equipped kind of a person? And where in the spectrum do you fall and how is that going to inform some of your choices as you move forward in this process?

Next, we talked about storage and kind of pondering what kind of storage style you envision for yourself. Do you want things open and on display? Do you want things stored out of sight and then considering those in a couple different facets: Your fabric, your patterns, your tools, your notions? Because you might be one style on one thing and a different style on another. And just kind of considering as well and getting real about what is realistic for you versus what is your idealized version and maybe you'll be able to work out a way to meet in the middle. But I think it's always good to examine the difference between reality and ideals.

Sarai
Yeah.

Haley
And then to kind of wrap everything up, we came up with two to three goals for our space reset because the reality is that we probably don't have time to do it all. So kind of setting two to three goals for yourself is going to set you up for a lot more success and make sure that your project stays more manageable for you in your life.

So make sure that you join us next week because we are going to be auditing all of our sewing space or the aspects that you chose to focus on. So come back to learn about our take and our process for that, which I think is really fun because I'm a nerd and I love organization.

Don't forget to snag all of your free camp goodies by visiting seamwork.com/go/sewingcamp. A lot of the info that we discussed today is included in the Sewing Spaces Guide. Plus we have, in addition to what we talked about today, there's tons of really great tips and ideas, so make sure you go and grab that download so you can get access to that Sewing Spaces Guide.

And Camp is going to be running all of June and July, so make sure that you grab those freebies while you can.

And if you liked this episode, if you like our podcast, be sure to leave us a review. It just really helps other people to find us. It makes us feel really good about ourselves. If you don't have time for a review, you can leave us some stars. You can do that on the podcast listening platform of your choice.

Sarai
All right, that does it for us this week. I'm Sarai.

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio.