Sewing Space Revamp

What do you do when you're facing a bunch of deadlines and feeling overwhelmed by the demands of work and family? Do you remodel your sewing room with a simple complicated woodworking project? Me too! (OMG, we are so much alike).

OK, so "sewing room" may be a bit of a misnomer in my case. My sewing room is more like a "sewing area," which also happens to be a foyer/busy thoroughfare in my one-bedroom apartment that I share with two other people (one of whom NEVER cleans up after herself). In clear view from almost every corner of our apartment, it sucks when it's in disarray, which it has been lately because I have so much on the go. You can see how it needed some work ("Before" photos are legally required to be shot with a flash, so they look extra ugly):

Blargh!

That's an eyesore, right? No wonder Burdastyle.com didn't feature any photos of my sewing space in their Q&A with me. 

Since I switch back and forth between sewing and patternmaking, I need to have lots of different tools close at hand. A proper pegboard seemed to be the best solution. And anyway, how hard could it be? I picked up a pre-cut piece at a hardware store nearby, plus a couple four-foot-long pieces of 2-inch by 1-inch pieces of wood. Plus screws. And drywall anchors. Then more screws. Of course all of these items required separate trips to the hardware store, because I am an idiot. Then I put my staff to work painting the pegboard a nice retro Pepto Bismol pink:

 Then I measured and marked holes on the wall above my drafting table, and then drilled and hammered in eight drywall anchors because this apartment does not seem to have studs. (There must be five layers of drywall atop each other, and if someone were to remove them all, we would get another 50 square feet out of this place. Fucking New York apartments.) Then I screwed the pieces of wood frame in place, like so:

Then, finally, I screwed the pink pegboard to the frame, et voila!! (OK, so a bit more was done before the "et voila" stage, but you don't need to hear about the hours spent tossing and organizing notions and tools.)

 I'm still waiting for my pegboard hooks to arrive (I ordered them via Amazon because it's hard to find them at our tiny hardware stores in Upper Manhattan), but you get the idea. All those tools, curves and rulers you can see on my drafting table will soon be displayed on high within easy reach. Here's another view:

Beautiful!

 I even managed to re-use three dowels I had on hand from the tents I made for my kid's camping themed birthday party. Check out my handy bias tape & trimming holder I made by putting a screw in each end of the dowel and hanging it on hooks off my pegboard (I wound the bias tape, elastic and trimmings on cut sections of toilet paper tubes):


Then I had a major brainwave, and used another two dowels to create a big spool for my pattern paper. It's so far hanging off the bottom of the pegboard in a makeshift kind of way, but at least it gets the paper up off the dusty floor, and makes it super easy to access:
 

It's a little Macgyvered in places, but I'm still super proud of it. I didn't spend much money ($7 on the pegboard, $5 on the hooks, $5 on the wood, and a few bucks on screws), but improved my sewing space dramatically. Hopefully it will streamline things for me, and help me sew and draft more efficiently.