With three of our four boys living out of town, we have several unused bedrooms in our house.  Earlier this spring, I decided that these unused rooms could be put to better use.

Until recently, my long arm sewing machine was in the smallest of these bedrooms (11′ x 11″), a tight fit for a 10 foot table.  My domestic sewing machine was in our laundry room.  And,  my craft supplies were in various closets throughout the house.

One of the unused bedrooms is a fairly nice sized room.  At 12′ x 15′, it is almost 50% more space than the small room that I was using.  So, I decided to move my crafts into this larger room.  Sorry boys, but the guest room is now in a bit smaller!

After spending a few months planning out the change, I have recently settled in to my new craft room.  I love my new space, and so does my cat Onyx.

I now have all my crafts (except fused glass) are all in the same room.  This means that I can work on multiple projects at the same time.  I can set my long arm sewing machine to stitch out a computer guided pattern, while cutting a paper craft project on my Cameo cutter and piecing another quilt on my domestic sewing machine.

When moving in to the room, I sorted and organized all of my supplies, and even found some things I forgot that I had. I may not complete more projects, but I will certainly enjoy working in this room, especially with the large corner window.

Some useful features in the room:

1. wall mounted TV with cable and an HDMI connection view on-line programs,
2. a love seat that is also a sleeper sofa (a place for someone to sleep if all of our boys come home at the same time),
3. a side table by the love-seat  to hold my coffee, computer and other items I need handy,
4. noise cancelling headphones (to block out the sound of the sewing machine when I am watching a program on the TV),
5. several thread organizers for the various spools/cones of thread that I use,
6. a large closet for storing a cart with my Cameo cutter, my large format printer and lots of other supplies,
7. storage cubbies underneath my long arm table,
8. two desks, a dresser and shelf unit with even more storage,
9. a mounted drapery rod that is large enough to hang a queen sized quilt for photography, and
10. an attached bathroom.

Since I now had a dedicated craft room, I also wanted to add a design wall.  Originally I thought that I could make something that utilized the quilt hanging rod. After purchasing fabric (Kaufman Framework Flannel Gridwork), I added a lining and rolled it onto the rod.

Unfortunately the flannel kept wanting to unroll and not stay neat and tidy.  To try to solve this problem, I added Roman Shade cords to the back of the flannel.  But, when pulled up, the fabric would also slide together on the rod and again not stay neat and tidy.

So, I ultimately attached the flannel to some wooden boards and made true Roman Shades to use for the design wall.  These boards were  mounted at the edge of the ceiling and drop down when needed.  I could only mount one section on the main wall of the room because I did not want to block the air intake which was located on one end if that same wall.  To give me more design space, I mounted the second section above the closet.

This is not ideal because large projects will be split into two separated spaces when working with the design wall.  However, it does put design space very near my sewing desk.  This will be handy when I am in the middle of a project.  I will just have to get used to having large projects split into two sections.  But, since I really didn’t have a design wall before, this arrangement is certainly better than nothing.