Dream Sewing Spaces: Design & Organization for Spaces Large and Small

by Lynette Black, Pati Palmer (Editor)

Ideal for both beginners and advanced sewers, this book includes templates of sewing tables and cabinets, floor plans, and organizing tools.

Genres: Sewing, Nonfiction, Reference, Quilting, Crafts

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Rebecca Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you only buy one book about designing and organizing your sewing workspace, THIS is the one you should get. This is the most thorough, authoratative guide I've come across. The author, who has a background in kitchen and bath design and remodeling AND sews herself (she's even written a book on serging home dec projects) walks you through absolutely everything you need to think about when you plan a new or improved sewing space. There is a handy Inventory of Needs checklist, a form for recording your body measurements for ergonomic planning purposes, and a nice overview of how to do a scale floorplan to work out the most efficient layout for your space. Black explains how to set up efficient U-shape and L-shape work stations to maximize efficiency. She also explains how to do a full lighting plan for the space, covering options for ambient, task, and accent lighting, and explains how wall and surface color choices affect how much light is reflected from surfaces -- and that wall color actually tints the light reflected from the wall, so that you won't be able to view colors with as much accuracy in a room with pistachio green or hot pink walls, for instance. Some of my favorite specific storage ideas were creating 3" deep recessed shelves between drywall studs (on interior walls) for serger thread cones and incorporating pull-out "bread board" style landing areas to the right and left of your sewing station.

This book includes lots and lots of big, full-color photos of very different sewing rooms, and includes a floor plan for each one. In the back of the book, the author even addresses the specific needs of specialty sewers: quilters, professional dressmakers, and drapery workrooms. Whether you're blessed with a large room dedicated to your sewing or trying to make the best use of a corner or closet, this book will help you to use your space wisely and efficiently.

[DragonFrog · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a surprisingly awesome book. It covered many aspects of planning your sewing space, as well as some general organization tips. Lots of great ideas.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is pretty dated, but still has quite a lot of really good ideas.

That's good because it is, in essence, an idea book. There are scads of pictures and layout ideas.

[Sonya Feher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted this book to be fabulous. So many of my organizing clients need help figuring out how to create sewing or craft space and most organizing books devote one small section of a chapter to helping with that. Though Dream Sewing Spaces: Design & Organization for Spaces Large & Small focuses specifically on sewing, I expected the book would provide information that could be used for other craft and creative spaces. To some extent it does. It offers advice about cabinetry and specialized furniture, how much room one might want for primary and secondary sewing centers like planning, pressing, and sewing. One of the drawbacks to this book is the pictures, which are used over and over so rather than illustrating a large variety of spaces and layout possibilities, it provides outdated pictures in color and black and color. There is a sewing space inventory that would be more useful if it included more of the possible items one might have in a sewing space (zippers, snaps, batting, or anything much beyond fabric and scissors). The "Space Layout Possibilities" section offers many options to consider and ways of using rooms or parts of rooms, as did the two pages dedicated to wall systems and dividers. The book tries to cover so much ground, like what types of lighting exist and how they reflect off colors, what colors of paint to use, or types of flooring to consider that it doesn't deal practically with many of the obstacles to organization one deals with in a sewing space--like the many sizes and colors of fabric that need to be stored, or that putting buttons in jars or holders on a magnetic strip could leave you with either many containers or too many things stored in too few containers so you'd have to dig through to get what you need.

[The Itsy Bitsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone looking to make better use of a dedicated sewing or crafting space should definitely read this book. It's full of design ideas, ergonomic pointers, diagrams, and supply recommendations and it covers everything from the "pipe dream ground-up custom design room" to the "functional sewing room in a single closet" and it does both pretty much just as well.
Anyone whose spent more then 10 minutes around me can probably figure out what kind of craft organization nightmare I must have on my hands, and after one reading even I have figured out a really reasonable solution to a huge number of problems I was having in trying to get a handle on my workspace. Not only that but one that shouldn't involve buying thousands of dollars in specialty furniture (or even hundreds).

If that doesn't tell you how good this book is I don't know what does.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

My memory of the most helpful sewing set-up book is a little hazy, but I believe this one was my favorite. Dream sewing spaces says space and cabinets, a sewing table and a nearby iron board and plenty of good lighting to me. I would devote a whole room to it... if I could. But I don't have that luxury, and given the title, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this book was for people like me too. It's on making the most of the space you have, whether it's a corner or an entire room. Well worth reading regardless of the amount of space you have because better organization will give you more time to sew.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a neat book! I have a small room that we're combining into a main floor laundry and craft room. I want to make the most of the space and found some really great ideas in this book that I've not seen anywhere else.
A great tool!

[Mary Good · Rating 3 out of 5]

Has enough good solutions and resources for me to pursue it.