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Come behind the scenes at A Bouquet of Buttons and tour Lieke's sewing room in Antwerp, Belgium.
What I love the most is that I don't have to more around all my sewing stuff anymore. Most things have their proper space by now, so bye-bye trying to fit in all my sewing stuff into the clothing cupboard. And I'd also like to add something that I don't like. We live in a narrow but high house. So the sewing studio and out living room are on a different floor. And I must admit that I feel lonely inthere from time to time. It's also a big tradition from a small apartment (30 square meters) where there was no privacy unless you would spend your evening on the toilet, to being on a different floor.
Tell us about your space
My studio is 10 square meters, which is pretty big since the only purpose of the room is sewing and crafting in general. Most of the time I'm alone in the room, but sometimes my partner and I work on a project together and then he'll join me. 10 square meters is pretty big, but if you're working on 2 big projects on the same time it can still feel a bit cramped. That's one of the reasons why most of the storage is against the walls. The walls are more then 3 meters so I wanted to use that space instead of filing the floor. Which I had before we changed it into what it is now. Before it felt a bit claustrophobic, I felt trapped in between al those closets, and now it feel so much bigger! If you want to see how it looked like before the transformation, you can find that out here:http://bouquetofbuttons.be/en/blog/2014/03/26/sewing-room-make-tour/ or here http://bouquetofbuttons.be/en/blog/2013/05/03/sewing-studio-update-organise-it-spring-clean/
The room is mostly used for sewing, but from time to time I like to make some juwelry, so that also happens in there. I don't have space for a computer in there on purpose. I would love to buy a radio that I can use while sewing, now I use my ipad for music, but that isn't the best option since I get distracted very easily. We have a (very cool) book rack with integrated desk for the both of us in our living room.
What have you done to make your space cosy, beautiful or inspiring?
One thing I wanted form the beginning was to have my fabrics on display. That way I'll alway see them and can find inspiration in them. I spended an entire day in the room to determine where the rack should go in order to prevent direct sunlight from hitting my fabric. It was a very boring day but so worth it.
Other then having my fabric on display I wanted that the room would breath calm. By using a lot of while an pastel tones it wasn't that hard to achieve. The storage under my sewing/cutting area is black, but we had those, so I was't going to buy others. Upcycle for the win! Maybe I'll paint them someday. But for now I love how it looks now.
In the room I incorporated some things that I had for such a long time like the Lumière cup. I just like stumbling upon lovely memories. The one that still need to find a proper place is my grandmothers sewing machine. But firstly it is up for some seriously renovation.
How do you keep organized?
I have to be honest here, I'm a disaster when it comes to keeping my stuff organised. I try to clean up and put everything in it's proper place after every project. But when there is time pressure I tend to skip that bit. Other then that I try to put away things that I don't need for the rest of the project right away.
Any tips & tricks for organising supplies?
Give everything a proper place and put it back right away. Also if you buy new stuff. Try and give it a spot immediately. Otherwise it will be dancing around the room for eternity. Hmmmm I'm starting to sound like my mom :-)
Which are your favourite possessions and are there any of your own creations on display?
I have an antique sewing machine from my grandmother. I need some renovation but afterwards it will get a very nice place in my studio.
And I want to keep the place as clean as possible, so no bells and whistles -although I really enjoy those in general- but they just prevent me from concentrating. I'm one of those people who are like, oh I see something glittering, let's investigate. And then half the day is gone. So some self knowledge is in order when planning for a sewing room.
I am playing with the idea of buying a gazillion of little frames and frame a piece of every fabric that I used. I think that it would be very pretty, or maybe extremely ugly. The on thing I'm sure of is that there is no way in between.
How do you organise your inspiration and ideas?
I keep most of my ideas on pinterest. I have a sewing inspiration and a style board. That is helps me out a lot. Next to that I try to plan my sewing using the sewing planner (naaiplannenplanner in Dutch) from the Flamish blogger 'Verbeelding' (= imagination) link:http://verbeelding.org/2014/08/06/de-naaiplannenplanner/
Where do you look for inspiration?
In many places, in the fabric itself, on sewing blogs, style blogs. I google patterns to find out how others made it. I love to spend way too much time on sites like Burdastyle and Kollabora to find out what others made, and now I've added cut out and keep to that list. And last but not least, pinterests. I have an inspiration board there, and I follow a lot of people their inspiration boards. That's a great way to keep up.
If you had three wishes, what would you do to make it the dream space?
Whoo 3, that a lot since I already own this very pretty space. But I'll do my best.
1 - I'd love to have out living room and the sewing studio on the same floor, ideally it would be a room net to the living room with a double door, so that I can shut it when I'm done and I can just leave the project in the state it's in without cleaning up.
2- Maybe a bit bigger, I know I'm asking for much, but I really enjoy sewing together with others, and then it would be much easier to do random sewing/crafty evenings.
3 - I'm really sorry but I can't think of a third one. I'm really-really lucky to have a proper sewing studio.
3 -
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