My sewing room has been a creative challenge for most of the year. I keep thinking that the perfect arrangement will help me get organized and inspired. I am a little worried that all of this focus on furniture and storage and paint chips is just an excuse not to create….

Anyway, my latest distraction is the search for, and the renovation of, a cutting table. In a previous home, I had to set up my machine and get out all of my supplies, sew for an hour or two, and then put everything away because I had to make dinner on my dining/sewing table.  When we moved into the house across the street, I was so excited to have a room to myself just for sewing. I quickly set up a white plastic fold-up table in front of a window with a great view and wonderful sunshine, installed my sewing machine, slapped down a cutting board and off I went. Soon I became frustrated with my sewing skills because my strip pieces looked terrible and many times I simply couldn’t force quilt blocks together because they just didn’t match up. Plus, after cutting out a big quilt I looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I struggled with trying to sew many a curvy strip piece until Cindy let me in on the secret of plastic –duh — it bends. “And the white table is ergonomically incorrect,” she said.  Big sisters tend to be smarter, don’t they?

After that little tutorial, I started using the island in my kitchen (custom made, delivered and installed by Cindy’s DH) to cut my pieces.

During a garage saling trip this summer, other sister Sue helped me find a sewing table so I could lose the big white fold-up all together. It was a boring pre-fab furniture “oak”, so mom stepped in and painted it a bright yellow for me. It looks brigght and cheerful in the pale blue former baby boy room. I love this smart yellow sewing table for my machine, but there is not enough room on it for a cutting board — and it’s the wrong height (thanks for the reminder, Cindy). I started using the kitchen island for cutting, but this requires frequent trips up and down the stairs because my sewing room is on the 2nd floor and the kitchen is on the first.