My Stitching Space

Recently, after looking at the general mess my husband and I were respectively keeping our ‘stuff’ in, we decided it was time for a bit of shuffling around of furniture and this ‘stuff’, to not only tidy it all up a bit, but to make sure we are properly using all of our space (meaning books don’t get stored in piles on the floor!).

One of our problems (other than my husband having a book collection that could fill a library), is that one of our ‘rooms’ is little more than a passage way. Why it is there at all we don’t know, it would have made more sense just to have made the living room larger, but we know nothing about weight bearing walls, which we assume is the reason behind it. We tried this room out as my husband’s study, but well, it just wasn’t working.

So at the point of where we both knew something needed to change, out came the desk, filing cabinet, shelves, and yes, piles of books and paper (I think teachers like storing piles of paper like that!). And in went my smaller desk, blanket box, slate frame and stand. At the time, the blanket box was overflowing, so a trip to the hardware store resulted in a wicker basket coming home to store all these kits I have bought but not yet made up!

I quickly realised however, that to make the desk useable, I needed somewhere to ‘put’ things which were being stored on the desk. There are boxes which have little sewing bits and pieces, other boxes with nice writing paper and pens. For a while I have thought about getting a ladder to store things on, but it was never the right place for it to be successful. But I saw this as my chance! As I’m a big advocate for small businesses and hand made items, I looked through Etsy, and found just what I was looking for. It arrived just before we left for Cologne, and last week I worked out how to put it together, and then stored my things away. The bottom shelf has my unmade kits, the next my expanding number of WIP pieces. Then, I have my  pens, pencils and writing paper, followed by stitching bits and bobs, and on the top, little note books where I sketch designs, my journal and some of my lovely hand made Easter cards from my niece and nephews.

So far, this seems to be working! My husband is claiming he’ll sort things out his end this week, we will wait and see on that one (I have my doubts, but don’t tell him I said that!). I can sit and stitch in this room quite comfortably, although when I have the slate frame up, there is no room to move around it, so it’s a good thing there are two doors to this ‘room’. And now I have everything sorted, when I’m working on a smaller project, it seems easier to pick things up and move to a couch and settle in for some comfy stitching, without going backwards and forwards to dig out all things I forgot first time round! That might also be due to the number of scissors I have lying around everywhere of course.

And that’s a little insight into my stitching ‘space’. If only I could fit a really comfy chair in too…..