Ok firstly, I am very aware that the last few posts have not included much actual sewing. It makes me sad, 
but I have been doing alot of buying and alot of learning. None of these things result in pictures of pretty projects that I can share but hopefully they increase the chances of more projects in the future, and successful ones at that! 
I have spent this morning cleaning and arranging my new sewing area (yay!) and preparing the slow cooker. Me and boyfriend are taking an icecream break soon (brave, as it is freezing here at the moment: beautiful Aussie sunshine, ice wind), after that I am tackling a pile of mending and then I’m spending some time with my overlocker. I have used it a few times since I bought it off my friend but now need to give it the maintenance and attention it deserves. I have never played with an overlocker’s settings before but found two great articles, one on giving it a clean and one on discovering the right settings and learning to use them. Fun! It probably also needs a service but maybe I will just do it and my sewing machine at the same time in a couple of months. The overlocker does not get used much yet and I have car expenses.
Anyways, after the mending pile and the overlocker today THEN I might get some cute things made tomorrow…yay!
In the meantime, what I can share is the sewing space improvement. I haven’t been able to upgrade the actual location and so am still holed up in the dining room, however there has been a vast improvement!
This is how things were looking:
Messy! Actually it was even more cluttered with dressform and other add-ons.
And here it is now!
All tucked away
Out and ready to go!
Yay! Doesn’t it all look so much better! And I have at least a foot back in my dining room
The white cupboard is still the pantry and boyfriend has big plans to clean out the kitchen so that the food in the cupboard can live in there (where it belongs…a pantry in the dining room is so annoying). When that happens I am hoping to replace the white cuboard with something lower to store my fabrics in. At the moment the main fabric stash is in the canvas box lurking in the corner of the first pic and the excess is in the built in robe in our study.
I am so happy with the improved space. Boyfriend is very much a minimalist so given how annoyed I was with the previous set up it must have been driving him insane. We hope to move to a bigger home in about a year and we aim to have a study each (or in my case ‘study/sewing room’). Until then this set up is perfect for us
What makes this even better is that my new sewing cabinet was only $70! Big thanks to a lovely stranger on Gumtree who insisted on delivering it even though it would have fitted in my hatch just fine. These babies are usually $250 second hand and $500-600 new so I was very excited. It works great, just squeals alot when using the air lift to raise the machine. I called Horn (the manufacturer) to ask if they new how to oil it, but on describing the type of lifter they discovered its over 25 years old! It’s in such good condition I was very surprised. Anyways, they couldn’t tell me how to oil it because their expert on the old models has retired, but that’s ok. It works so I just have to warn boyfriend to block his ears when I go to lift or lower…it’s very ‘nails on a blackboard’. I was not paying $150 to repair my bargain, when I can just buy a new one if it stops working. But if anyone out there knows how to oil the older model Horn sewing cabinets (lifter mechanism attached at the back, as opposed to the sides like the new ones) I would LOVE to hear from you Noise aside, I’d love my new toy to last as long as possible.
My new black drawers were also deliciously cheap at $35 from Officeworks. They are perfect for my tools and notions. Hoorah!
Happy sewing and thrifting!
