It was difficult for me to figure out what I wanted to title this post. Yes, I’m rearranging furniture that has been 3D printed, but only because I want to rearrange that actual furniture in my house. Is that clear as mud?

Let’s start out in my sewing room:

(WOW. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it THAT clean! lol)

Currently my sewing room is located on the second floor of my house. From this picture you can tell that I have sloped ceilings (which is a literal pain when I’m cutting fabric and lean over a little too far to double check a measurement). What you can’t tell is that the temperature is not regulated in a decent manner. No matter what the furnace or AC is doing, it is always sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter. It’s a little easier to keep warm in the winter, but in the summer when it’s humid outside and stuffy upstairs the only thing I can do is turn on a fan to blow the stuffy hot air around. I refuse to buy a window AC unit because we have central air so I shouldn’t NEED a window unit (I’m very stubborn about certain illogical things). So when I want/need to sew in the summer I have to wear a sweatband on my head and very little else. Luckily my neighbors don’t use their upstairs and keep their blinds closed so I don’t have to worry about anybody actually seeing what I’m not wearing.

We have a room on our first floor that is basically used as a catch-all:

Jay and I refer to this as ‘the pink room’ for obvious reasons.

“Sweetie, we really need to get the Warthog off of the spare bed in the pink room.” (This sentence has been uttered multiple times in the last six months).

To give full credit where it’s due, Jay has mentioned a few times that I should move my sewing room into the pink room, and my mom has also made this same suggestion. I keep poo-pooing it because I keep my sweaters, tank tops, and long sleeved tops in the dressers in this room. If we moved the dressers upstairs then I would either have to plan ahead and bring the clothes down that I need, or go upstairs to find the top that I’m looking for. I could go through and weed out some of my clothes, but who are we kidding??

In the last few months I’ve actually started to seriously consider moving the rooms around. Not only because of the temperature concerns, but also because I’ve been using king-sized sheets to make receiving blankets and it’s very difficult to maneuver them onto my current cutting table setup. When I mentioned to Jay that I would like to switch the rooms, but I wasn’t sure if all of my sewing furniture would fit correctly he had the perfect solution.

A scale model of the pink room in miniature.

You can see the two doorways (one’s a closet), the window and the register (which can’t be blocked). We measured the walls and locations of the window, register and doors then Jay drew it up on SketchUp, did whatever he had to do to scale it down, and cut it out. To make it true-to-life you can see that he even painted the walls pink.

Isn’t that cute?

Here’s a comparison to kind of give you an idea of how close it is to scale:

Now do you know how the title of this post fits in?

3D printed sewing room furniture! I measured everything that I would want in the sewing room and gave Jay the dimensions. I obviously didn’t need them in the exact shapes, I just wanted their footprint for arranging purposes.

Jay even labeled all of them so that I would know which piece is which.

Shoe = Shoe Shelf (the shoe rack my dad built for my sister, but she no longer has room for it so I have it and will use it for my fabric)

Cutting = Cutting table

Pillow = the bookcase that currently holds a bunch of pillowcases

Lace = The shelf where my fabric is currently stored and also where the lace resides

Sewing = My main sewing machine and table (Singer Merritt)

Jay = Super-hunky man that I’m married to (sorry, that was a reflex) This is the table that Jay made me for my birthday a few years ago. It sits next to my sewing machine table and also is where I use my serger.

(blank) = My Singer 301A machine. Somehow this got missed in the first printing of furniture so I had to have Jay print it afterwards.

Here’s a look at that furniture in real life one more time:

From left to right.. Lace shelf, Sewing Machine table, Jay’s table, 301A Machine and Cutting table.

Now comes the fun part… arranging the furniture!

Automatically I started by lining up the furniture on the walls. As I’m arranging the pieces I have a few things that I’m keeping in mind:

1) When I’m sewing I use the Jay table to hold my thread, pins, scissors and anything else that I need handy while at the machine. So, no matter where things go in the room I will need the Jay table to be on my right.

2) I can’t cover up the register on the wall. That will be the source of my cool air in the summer and hot air in the winter.

3) The closet in this room is Jay’s and so he must be able to access it without tripping over anything and he has to be able to open the door all the way.

4) I am not very graceful, so I’m trying not to put anything too close to the doorway into the room because if I kick anything more than once I’m going to get irritated.

The above layout will not work. Putting the 301A between the two doors will just be inviting both of us to kick it or run into the cabinet. Also, I’m not sure that I would want my sewing machine table to butt up against the wall. All of my extra fabric wouldn’t be able to hang over the edge. It would become something else for me to try to deal with, and more than likely, curse at.

Let’s try another arrangement:

This arrangement would be nice because my sewing machine would have the natural light from the window. The shelves are easily accessible. Nothing is blocking the closet door (the very left doorway). There would be ample room for my fabric to hang off of my sewing table. I do have two concerns about this layout: 1) Is there enough room around the cutting table so that I won’t be running into it when I walk into the room (it appears to jut halfway into the doorway area) and 2) I forgot to mention that I will still be keeping my treadmill in this room. It sort of folds up (not a really great profile), but it’s got to go somewhere. Since it’s mobile I didn’t have Jay print a piece for it. I would LOVE to put it upstairs, but I don’t really have the ceiling clearance to use it. As it is, I often hit my head on the ceiling fan in the office.

This is where all of the bedroom furniture will go after I move the office furniture out to the sewing room, and the sewing room furniture downstairs. Do you understand why I want to know where everything will go before we begin to move anything?

Here’s another arrangement:

The treadmill can actually sit in front of the register (that’s where it currently sits) since it doesn’t really block anything except the middle of the room where it’s sticking out. The other thing I forgot to mention is that I’m going to have Jay build a base for my cutting table. I want it raised so that I don’t have as far to lean over (I’m 5’10” so I do a lot of leaning over these surfaces), and also I want wheels on it so that if I want to move it out into the room I can.

Again, it would be so much easier if I wasn’t worrying about the treadmill, too. And yes, I do use it in the winter so I would like to keep it.

As you can see, I’m spending a lot of time playing with my furniture pieces. I realize that I will still be able to move things around once I get the room loaded, but I’m a Type A personality so I will feel better if I have a solid plan going in.

Thanks for hanging out with me while I played with my plastic furniture. If you have any suggestions I would love to hear them!