Crafty Dopers, tell me about your space

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by a digresson in this thread.

I do all kinds of crafts, a few of them professionally. Because I am also an incurable collector of craft supplies, it was necessary to buy a house that had storage and work space available for all that stuff. So currently…

I have a spare bedroom claimed as my studio space. It’s about 10X12, and has a closet with sliding doors. It also has two loverly windows, one that looks over the patio and pool, and one that looks over the creek and woods that run behind our house.

I have one entire wall of the studio set up for storage: three of those little cardboard “dresser” type storage boxes with drawers - they are full of ribbon, feathers, and gift-wrapping stuff. Above that are wall mounted shelves which house cute little tins, boxes and jars full of supplies, as well as two hardware-sorting cabinets (the kind with the gazillion little drawers) full of jewelry findings and wire, and a couple dozen of those fishing tackle/embroidery floss boxes full of beads. Next to that set-up is a plant stand with three shelves - my clay processor is kept there, as well as boxes and tins full of paintable wooden thingies, and the top shelf has jars and cups with pastels, markers, paintbrushes, crochet hooks, colored pencils and chalks. There’s a stack of plastic drawers next to that, with shallow drawers that have my scrapbooking papers sorted by color family. Next to THAT is an endtable that has storage underneath - old magazines go in it, and my convection oven (for polymer clay) is on top of it. Finally, there is a wicker and metal thingie with three deep drawers full of clay (oh, and my acrylic paints are in metal file boxes on top of that.)

There are shadowboxes mounted on the walls here and there, and they contain rubber stamps, embossing powders, little jars full of buttons or brads or eyelets and other small stuff. My papercutter, several rulers and yardsticks, and my light table are hanging off nails in the wall (along with my tambourine. Don’t ask.)

The closet contains a bunch of underbed storage boxes full of fabric, my sewing machine and a small shelving unit that holds my soapmaking supplies and some other miscellany like spray paint cans, fiberfill, fabric paints and glass paints.

In the middle of the room is my worktable and four chairs, which is my old kitchen set reclaimed - it’s a 1940’s chrome and formica set. My pasta machine is anchored to one corner of that, and there are tins full of small supplies on one end (scissors, drawing pencils, a tape measure, etc.) And under the table is an old suitcase that is full of embroidery hoops, cross stitch books and evenweave cloth.

It is a REALLY crowded room.

The GOOD NEWS is, this is now officially my temporary studio! My brother is framing out a 14X17 room in our basment for me, and it will have a sink in it! AND I’ll be able to bring in my bigger tools - bench grinder, drill press, bandsaw, and eventually a small kiln. There is no natural light in the basement, so he has designed a wall that contains light panels - they’ll be framed out just like windows, but have frosted glass panels with lights behind them. Plus he is putting in loads of electrical outlets and task lighting in the ceiling.

So…do you carve out a little niche at the kitchen table, share space in a family room, have a shed out back, craft in the basement, have a workshop in the garage, rent space somewhere else…? And how do you store all your crafting goodies? If you could build your own perfect studio, what would it be like?

2

GAH! I meant to post this in IMHO.

3

We have a 3-bedroom house, and two children. The girls share a bedroom (the shady on on the north side; good in summer), and the other bedroom on the south side is the combination school and sewing room. It is pretty stuffed, but mostly organized.

My sewing machine lives in a small Koala cabinet along one wall, with a small craft drawer thingy (bobbins, notions, lace, ribbon etc. inside and patterns I most want to make on top) and an ironing board on the right-hand side and a bunch of fabric storage on the left, which consists of 4 under-bed plastic boxes and some piles on top. There are 6’ tall bookshelves at each end of the wall, and the one next to the ironing board has all my quilting and embroidery books, some odds and ends, and a shelf of fairy tales. (The other one is all children’s lit.) The wall above the cabinet is totally unused except for the ‘inspirational’ patterns and photos I’ve put up on there. I really oughta do something about that.

The small closet in the room is also partially used for sewing stuff; there is a 6-drawer plastic chest stuffed with fabric and patterns (one each for: patterns, large cuts of fabric, flannel only, scraps, yarn ‘n’ stuff, fabric-other-than-cotton) and a few large items like a light box, large pieces of batting, pattern ‘paper’ and so on.

Otherwise, the room is filled with a worktable, a desk, and a heck of a lot of school supplies and books, since we homeschool. I had this vague idea that I could sit and sew while the kids worked, but the noise usually bothers my 6yo, who likes to have quiet in order to concentrate.

4

Done.

5

I too have a bedroom claimed as my “work” room. Work rather than crafts because my computer is in here, too, and I work from home. It’s a bedroom, 11x13, with a closet that has extra storage above. The extra storage above is full of Christmas decorations and my yarn stash. The closet itself isn’t very full… an old set of dishes, my luggage, some photo albums. I’m not hard core enough to have it full of stuff yet :slight_smile:

In the room, I have one unit of William-Sonoma’s “Swedish shelving” that is piled full of my fabric and paper, a work table that holds my sewing machine and the pieces of whatever quilt I’m working on, the computer desk, a green loveseat that is always piled high with pieces of whatever quilt I’m working on, and two chests of drawers, one full of office stuff and the other full of yarn and fabric. Oh, and my ironing board, eternally set up in front of the closet doors.

Decoration is pretty minimal, because the house is a rental and I don’t want to do stuff to the walls. I have a set of prints of the “Six Senses” unicorn tapestries hung up, and a Turkish carpet on the floor. The dresser tops are full of teacups and other little pieces of china I like, as well as two big fishbowl glass jars, one full of emery strawberries and one full of tomato pincushions that I’ve made from fabric scraps.

6

We have a 3 bedroom house for one married couple. So we each get a room to play in. Mine has bookshelves and cabinets and my desk and a day-bed in it, and the craft stuff is stored in the closet.

7

I’d love to have a dedicated workspace…

As it is, there’s not enough room for me to have one area dedicated to my crafts. Instead I have clear bins in my closet, one for sewing patterns and material, one for yarn and needles, a small one for sewing notions, and a medium one for cross-stitch (which is also in another sewing basket and one project in a shoebox). Knitting is also scattered around in various bags. Small projects in totebags to shove in a bag when I have to go wait in line somewhere and a larger project in a bigger tote bag with everything I need in there.

Mostly I just knit now, easier to save from little hands and less likely he’ll hurt himself on it.

What I want?

Basically I want a room that I can dedicate to my stuff. A place that can be my library/craft room and can store all my craft things, leave out my sewing machine and maybe have a comfy chair. I’ll need bookshelves too, to put out my collection again as well as store the overflow of books that I can’t all keep in my bedroom.

When I think of a craft room, I remember a friend of the family and the room she has set up (much like my ‘dream’ room) with a table and a large closet to store her stuff in bins, a few shelves for her dolls and a rack for her paints (she does tole painting, the rack was inspired by a spice rack and built specifically for her paints…)

8

I’ve got two rooms upstairs that I could technically claim as mine, but we just don’t go up there. I have one of those hideously steep stairways, the lighting is bad, and it’s either cold or hot up there, so we just use it for storage. For some reason, I don’t like being separated from the rest of the activities in the house. I know that’s goofy. I guess I’m just a “single story” girl at heart.

9

I don’t think it is goofy. It took me a long time to actually work IN my studio; I’d normally set up at the kitchen table, which would invariably result in my making many back and forth trips down the hall to get stuff I needed.

I don’t like to be pestered while I am working, but I do like to feel like I’m not disconnected from everything else going on in the house.