Clean Sweep After...

And after three days of cleaning and organizing for three days, notice the 5 o'clock on the clock... we finished at 5 on Monday night! As you enter the room now, we tipped the bed up on end, and put the ironing board in front of it. The fan is now on the floor.

This is the north west wall, we moved the counter top to the north wall and left all the small tool drawers where they were. Mom can now look out the north window and see who is coming into the drive way while she is sewing.

This is the west wall. We moved the cutting table over to the west wall in front of the window. The serger thread stayed put on the wall. All the embroidery supplies are now in the drawers under the cutting table. The other drawer set has all sewing related fabrics in it. Mom loves fabrics that related to sewing. Both are on wheels.

We took the two big drawers down from this spot and put 4 skinnier drawers next to each other, which hold the fabric better. They are still by color. the small drawers on top are supplies like elastic, ribbon and other things you need, but don't need out all the time. On top of those are three scrap bins, reds/blues/creams. All seperated and ready to be used.

We moved the wood cabinet over to this side of the room and all her books and patterns are on it. Thanks to Jen for the awesome bin idea! Patterns fit in them so well. We also got a couple cinder blocks and put them under the cabinet so it is up off the floor and more usable. It's full of backing fabrics and Christmas fabrics.

This is as you would go out the door to the south east. The door is where the closet of batting is located.

This is an overview of the room from the door.

This is from the southwest corner. The quilt covering the bed was made by my grandma on my dad's side. The printer/ copier is on the microwave cart. Mom read that you should have a copier in your sewing room for doing paper piecing. It works great and it's linked to the embroidery laptop, so she can print out templates if she needs to.

When we come to visit we just have to take down the ironing board and scoot the bed out and it will go right in the center of the room. Before we had to move the cutting table each time we came. I think this all came together. We folded fabric for an hour and realized it was going to take us a day to actually get the folding done, so that is one thing my mom can do as time permits. We are hoping to have a two day sewing weekend in November on the opening weekend of deer season and make Loralie quilts. We both have a bunch of her fabrics and panels and want to make a quilt. We're hoping we can manage to both be off and get to spend time sewing together.
It was a ton of work getting the room back in shape, but it looks great! Plus I gained about 5 quilts/batting/backing pieced to practice quilting on! Yeah I have something to practice on now!!

Clean Sweep Before...

Three and a half years ago in February my parents moved into the house they live in now. Less than a week into putting stuff away, my mom fell down the stairs and broke her right ankle. So needless to say she was layed up for 6 weeks, but couldn't do much for 12 weeks. This was just after she had breast cancer surgery in July, radiation, and chemo and my grandma passing away, all with in 6 months. My grandpa passed away a year later in Aug. My brother and his wife got married, and then Paul and I got married, so my mom has had a lot of stress in the past 4 years! She never quite got around to getting her sewing room set up so it was useful. I kept saying I would come help her, but it wasn't a 1 or 2 day project, we knew it was going to have to be a full 3 day weekend.
So Friday night I went to my parents with my mom and I took these before pictures...
This is coming into the room, there is about a 3 foot hall way and to my right is the very small closet, behind the door to the room. This picture shoes the full bed on the wall ( the extra bedroom when Paul and I come home) and her Horn cutting table.

Going around the room counter clockwise this is the north wall with lots of organizational places to put thing and the ironing board. (It's a big board Paul and I made out of OSB board and covered with thinsulate and batting and pink ribbon fabric.)

This is the west wall, where there is a eight foot counter top for her machines, serger thread on the left side of the window, and lots of small tool drawers to the right.

This is the south west corner where the TV and thread is and more plastic drawers of embroidery thread.

This is the south wall and it has tons of plastic drawers for fabric. The big drawers are by color. There is a wood cabinet below the drawers, but you can't see it as it was hidden and hard to get to.

This is looking toward the east wall, same as the first one, but from a different angle, the cutting table and microwave cart of embroidery supplies.

These are the before pictures. My mom is only home one or two days a week, so she doesn't have time to clean, when she has to be sewing samples for her classes at the store. We had our own clean sweep and took everything except the furniture out of the room and started moving furniture. We got everything out on Sat. while we were watching my beautiful niece Molly. Mom and I got to babysit all day while her parents went to the city. Check back later for the after!