Exploring my beach inspired sewing studio and home office makeover in this blog post. I’ll share before pics, after pics and the messy space between. For the home office makeover from a business perspective, see my blog post at Marketing Acuity, my web design & marketing tech training business here.
When I set out to redo our playroom which became a schoolroom during the pandemic, I’d spent a full 18 months working from my laundry room (!) My husband moved his office home, took over my upstairs shared office and I moved my stuff downstairs, shuttling between working at my sewing table to supervise the kids and my laundry room turned office.
I really needed my own space. I’ve not had my own home office and studio for a decade – having had shared space with others during that time. This makeover is (almost) all for me.
My sewing cabinet, built by my husband, is a gorgeous thing. He built it in a 12 x 12 outdoor unheated shed (he insulated it and had a space heater, but still…) at our old house. I’ve had it in our playroom since we moved here, and it’s worked well. In it’s new space, it sits, closed, as a credenza under our TV in my new home office. When I want to sew, I just rotate it into the corner, unfold the leaves and get to creating!
In this blog post, I share how it transforms from home office to creative sewing studio, how I take photos on my dress form and utilize the space for creativity. Between work and creative (with breaks for, you know, regular life activities) I spend 6-12 hours a day in here. I’m so glad I carved out a beautiful space to work in for me.
Sewing studio makeover process
Moved OUT:
A queen sized futon – now resides in my hubby’s upstairs home office (better for guests as a guest room)
A child desk – my son got his desk back after six months!
Moved IN:
- A 3-drawer cabinet and printer for our printer / order processing workstation
- My solid white oak live edge desk (mounted on pin legs)
- More plants!
- More beachy decor
Kept:
- Sewing cabinet
- Bookcase cabinet (with wood cube storage, still filled with legos and toys!)
- Rug
- Yoga mat
- Wicker baskets for WIP and mending projects
- Dress form
- Paint (Sherwin Williams) – we had it professionally painted 3 years ago
Beach décor added to the sewing studio
A wood organizer from elsewhere in the house got mounted on the wall to organize mailing supplies for our Boat Registration Stickers and Michigan MC Numbers websites. The kids do most of this, and they can reach the items (with a stepstool if needed, a small wood stool is on the floor next to the cabinet.)
Wood shelves – solid oak, live edge, with hammered steel-look brackets (painted metal brackets)
Lots of beach/ocean inspired décor courtesy of my designer Stephanie Murray from Stephanie Murray Makeovers. Much of the décor is from around my house!
Here’s what was used from my house:
Wicker baskets for projects and mending, plant holders, wood bowls for my sewing rocks that I use as pattern weights, pottery marking pencil holder (I NEVER keep sewing scissors in here after sewing, the family would use them for things like paper if I did; those are hidden away and “too much work” for a casual grab!)
Stephanie placed photos I already had (some from my basement even!) around the room, grouping them by color, to create individual sections of the room. She used my own collection of shells with newly acquired glass vessels to display them.
Because this is a sewing space as well as my business space, I wanted to have ways to keep WIP and mending projects without them appearing messy – Stephanie repurposed two blanket baskets into WIP / mending baskets. These are enough to hold several projects and all the mending my family can give me. I talk often about how I use mending as a gateway to sewing larger projects and they don’t stay here long. Longer term, I have several WIPs waiting to be queued.
I do not keep fabric or patterns up here – the room is very sunny and would damage fabric, but I do have a large cube bookcase in my basement with fabric organized by color (NOT by type), rolled on cube shelves. Patterns are in a large bookcase, in large D ring binders in plastic sleeves. I do keep my stash of larger HotPatterns in a lateral file cabinet. I’ve shared that organization in other posts here and here.
I feel so serene in this space! It’s gorgeous, and works so well for me.
Making the home office a sewing studio in 3 minutes:
When I want to sew, I rotate the cabinet credenza in the corner, and open both leaves. One opens along the window, the other along the wall. I can move my office chair here to sew, my dress form is at the ready, and I have a small pressing mat for the leaf. I have a larger ironing board in the front call closet adjacent to my sewing studio/home office.
Because these spaces work so well, I can leave the sewing workstation open for a few days at a time, to catch up on projects between meetings or at lunch.
Plant life: I love plants and like a lot of people (haha!); I added more during the pandemic through plant trade groups online. I have an arrowhead plant, two golden pothos (propagated one to another) a small yucca (I have two more much larger ones elsewhere, and a few smaller ones around the house, all cuttings off one another.) I also have a variegated curly spider plant on my shelves and solid spider plants on the floor by the dress form. I sewed a linen plant pot cover for one of the golden pothos for my bookshelf. My designer, knowing I had a lot of random plastic pots, came armed with rope and a hot glue gun, but I beat her to it with the linen cover.
She even cut up another scrap of linen to use as a runner along the top of the bookcase with the shells! A great way to use up scraps of fabric. The linen is heavy, from these Hot Patterns Palazzo pants that I made 6 years ago. I have since replaced the darker brown cotton-lycra waistband with one from cream 4-way Ponte stretch fabric.
This beach inspired home office sewing studio is so ME – beachy, serene and inspiring. Summer beach, winter beach, southern beach, northern beach – I don’t care, I just love the beach.