Finally!

Oh my gosh - it happened!  Last night, Brandon and I decided to make me a sewing room.  I am SO super excited!!!

future sewing room!

This space, our "green room" is our entry area, my office (see my desk at left) and the kid's art area.  But, they've really outgrown that short table and I don't see them creating in here very often, ever since we provided them with desks in their own rooms.  Now they are old enough to have all those "dangerous" art supplies in their rooms, using them unsupervised, so this space has been more or less neglected.  The other day Aria started dreaming of making it a "yarn place" filling the shelves with a rainbow of yarns and putting in a comfy chair for knitting  and a fluffy rug....

Cute idea?  Yes.  But, clearly time for mama to stake her claim!

Liam's room

So, first of all I need to clear some things out.  I spent the morning organizing our linen closet and Liam's closet to make room for the easel in his room. I actually love that kind of work!  The result is a huge stack of stuff ready to donate.  Now that I know where to put all that art stuff, it's time to reorganize the green room for me!  I'll need a huge work table, a place to put my scrap drawer system, an ironing station, shelves for my fabric stash, and - best of all a design wall.  Eeeek!

Ok, before I continue yammering on, let's get down to where you come in.  Those of you truly blessed souls who do have a sewing room, what am I forgetting?  Is there anything I haven't mentioned that really gets a lot of use?  Oh, and how do you store your thread?
 
This one from The Creative Homemaker is so practical, since it also holds bobbins.  Or, this converted frame would be a fun way to go.  But my threads are of different sizes in diameter and height, so this could be tricky.  It seems like most thread racks favor those with more uniform thread collections. 

Of course, there's also those simple pine wall-mount spool racks available at most sewing stores. Anyone had experience with those?

My design wall is going to be retractable, rolling up to where it is mounted on the ceiling with weights at the bottom to hold it flat when it's unrolled.  We settled on a retractable design because it'll come down over a large bank of windows that overlooks our back porch (so not the greatest view anyways).  Does a retractable design sound crazy?  Has anyone done or seen something like this.  Tips are most welcome!

As soon as we can make the trip to Ikea in Charlotte, I'll make the move into the green room from our dining room where I currently sew.  Wish we could go tomorrow!  It's so hard to wait when the ideas start pouring in!

Edited to add:   You guys are all so sweet to be excited for me!

Question, why have 2 tables - one for sewing, one for cutting?  I am so used to having one huge 80" long table that I do both at.   Can you tell me the benefits of splitting that up?