5 Things in My Sewing Room that Just Make Sense (and a DIY Folding Ironing Mat Tutorial!)

Hello there and welcome to my sewing room. This is the place where all of the Pattern Scout sewing magic happens and it is probably my favorite space in our home. So why don't you come on in? I have been sewing off and on for most of my life. I learned how to sew at a very young age and I've gone from sewing in my bedroom to sewing in my living room and my kitchen to eventually having a dedicated room just for my sewing messes. And over time I have discovered a few little tips and tools and tricks for making my sewing practice run a little bit more smoothly in this space. So today I'm going to share five things in my sewing space that just make sense. And if you stick around until the end of the video I'm going to show you how to make one of my favorite things, one of the things I use the most in this sewing room and also possibly one of the things I get asked about the most in the comments on my videos. First up is my cutting table. I love this table and I get so many questions about this table. It is a total Franken-table. How many times can I say table? Table doesn't even sound like a word anymore. I thrifted this a few years ago for maybe 20 or 25 dollars. It's just a standard 3 foot by 5 foot dining table and it was in excellent condition. I just painted the top white and I placed this cutting mat on top. This is just a 3 foot by 5 foot cutting mat that I found at Joann Fabrics. Used a coupon on it. I probably got the that for maybe 30 or 40 dollars and that was the first iteration of this cutting table. Then I swapped out the legs for some taller legs from another table that I already owned to make it a standing height table because I was kind of hunching over a lot when I was cutting. It was not really good for my back so I did decide to raise it up on these taller legs. So I just added a little stretcher board between the two legs on each side. Put some wheels, some casters on the bottom so I can just roll this table off to the side and I have a nice big blank wall back here if you've watched any of my videos you will have seen me modeling my clothes on this wall back here behind the camera. And then I have you know a nice big open area for taking photos and videos of my final garments. So I'm 5 foot 9 and this actually feels like a pretty comfortable height and it is about 39 inches. I think that's a pretty good height. And to further franken this table and make it sort of a smart table, I added a little power strip over here on the front of the table just attached to the side with command strips. And it's got a USB port, a USB-C port, and two outlets so I can plug in my iron here. I can plug in my computer power cord, charge my phone, and it's all right here on the table. I don't have a bunch of cords stretched across the room. And I just wrapped the cord of this little power strip around one of the legs and it plugs into another cord that I have that plugs into the wall. I've just got it hidden with a cord cover here on the floor so it's not a tripping hazard. And I also love having this table in the center of the room. Being able to walk all the way around the table is the best. It makes cutting and tracing and piecing patterns together so much easier. So yeah, this is definitely one of the things in my sewing room that makes the most sense. A standing height table that's in the middle of the room that I can walk around. And I'd also like to add that this room is actually not that big. I mean I think it looks bigger on camera than it actually is. I'm probably not helping doing this little spinning action here. But I actually had some family that came over that had not seen this room but had seen it on my YouTube channel. One of the things they said first when they walked into this room was, wow this room is really small. So it's not a huge room but I am able to put a three foot by five foot table in the center of the room and walk all the way around it. And that has been a game changer for me in this space. So next up is my sewing table. Now this table is a good bit fancier than my cutting table. I did not frankentable this one. This one was actually gifted to me by Flexi Spot for a promo that I did for them. But I want to be clear this this video is not sponsored by Flexi Spot and I do really really love this desk. I've been very very happy with this desk. It's very sturdy. It does not shake when I'm sewing especially when I'm serging. My serger here in front of the camera can shake the table so much. This table withstands all of that. It's very very sturdy and when we were putting it together I had to have my husband's help lifting some of the pieces into place because it's just so heavy duty. But one of the coolest features of this table is that it can be lifted and lowered with the push of a button. Oh no stop. This is especially helpful for getting custom heights for both seated and standing tasks. And on this little keypad here you can program in your favorite heights so that just one push of a button will get you there. And it also has a manual up and down which is really handy. I again am a five foot nine person. I'm a little on the tall side. I'm not like super duper tall but I'm a little bit taller than average. And so being able to program those heights exactly where I want them is really nice. And on this little keypad there's also a little USB port so you can charge your phone if you need to which is pretty cool. So it's a neat table. I also added wheels to this one on the bottom so that I could move it around my sewing room really easily which I think was a great move. So I can just roll it up to my cutting table make it the same height and I've essentially doubled my cutting surface. So I actually did this recently. It worked out beautifully and it was so nice to have this huge surface area for laying out fabric. I cut a dress on the bias and it worked out so nicely. Okay let's put this back down to the seated position. Now when it comes to buying fabric I do try to keep my stash very manageable. So I try to only buy fabric that I have a plan for but that doesn't mean that I don't give in to the occasional impulse purchase. So I have plenty of those as well. But to keep my fabric organized I like to either roll it and stack it like this in the shelf or I like to wrap it around these little cardboard box pieces. So I've just taken old boxes and cut them into little bolts like this and I can just shove them in my shelf and they actually stack too deep in these little cube shelves. This is one of the Ikea shelves. I can't remember the name of it. I'll put it on the screen. But I like this system because it's easy to pull things off the shelf without everything falling apart or things becoming unfolded and it's easy to see everything that I have and it just works out really well. I do try to go ahead and just wash my fabrics as soon as I buy them just to kind of get that stuff out of the way so that it doesn't slow me down when I am ready to start sewing. But for any fabrics that I have that I didn't pre-treat or pre-wash I'll just put them in my closet back here in a little stack. So I kind of keep those separate and then for any of the scraps that are too small to roll or wrap around a bolt here I just have some plastic storage bins in my closet for scraps that I just can't bear to part with and think that I might use for something else later down the road. Number four on the list of things that just make sense in my sewing room is my pegboard. When I did my most recent sewing room organization I really wanted to find a way to reduce the amount of clutter on my cutting table and my sewing table. I used to just keep all of my most used notions in little baskets or drawers next to the sewing table and it just got really cluttered and I would end up throwing things in those baskets and drawers that didn't belong there when I would get lazy about cleaning up. A lot of times I just got in the way. I'd want to spread something out on my table and I'd have to move all of these baskets and everything to another location and I am kind of limited on table surfaces in the sewing room anyway so it just wasn't really working well for the space. So I decided to try out these pegboards. I got these from Ikea but I have actually seen something really similar on Amazon as well for probably about the same price or even cheaper and this works so well in this space. I can see all of my most used supplies and notions and little tools right at eye level. It also kind of forces me to be a little bit more organized. I've kind of tricked myself into being a more organized person because I don't have a place to put things on the tables anymore. I have to put it on the pegboard. Everything has a place on the pegboard which also makes cleaning up just easier because I know exactly where everything goes. So the last thing on my list of five things in my sewing room that just makes sense is this little folding ironing mat. It's just so handy and I love that I can just fold it up and move it out of the way and use my cutting surface when I need my cutting surface and then really quickly when I need to iron something I just bring this over pop it open and it's ready to go. I've received so many questions about this ironing mat wanting to know where I got it and I feel so bad because I really do think it's a brilliant product. It's so simple but I don't have a link to share with people. Hobby Lobby was the only place that I was able to find it when I first got it and then eventually I couldn't even find it on their website and my mom even who considers herself a Google super sleuth, she still also came up empty-handed. We were so stumped by this. I've had people in the comments be like, oh this is it, I found it and they'll send me a link to something that's not it. I know that some of you are probably going to do that on this video but as of the posting of this video I have not been able to find anything like this and it baffles me because it's it just seems like it would be a thing but it's not. What makes this so unique is not only that you can fold it up and put it away but it has a like a sturdy cardboard backing inside and it stays really nice and flat. It also stays cool to the touch on the underside so that I can use it on top of my cutting mat. I don't have to worry about warping the cutting mat which is really great. So this table can end up serving a dual purpose as a cutting mat and a ironing surface and it's also a lot larger than a lot of the like quilting piecing ironing mats that I've seen on the market and because I haven't been able to find one online I decided I'm gonna try to make one and I want to give a big shout out to my Patreon supporters. I did a little poll over on Patreon a few weeks ago for some different ideas I had brewing for videos and the ironing mat won out. It actually kind of surprised me so we're gonna do it today. The people have spoken, let's do it. So my little ironing pad ended up getting a rip in the back. I didn't I didn't do this myself but I did kind of coax it open a little bit more just like you kind of see inside. So if I peer down inside here I can see that there is a layer of like a really thin but dense chipboard like a cardboard and then on top of that is a layer of batting and then on the interior there's a layer of fabric that you iron on. That's the ironing surface. Then behind the chipboard there's a layer of vinyl and that's what makes up the exterior of this ironing pad and then the edges are just finished with some binding. It's also got a velcro strap here that kind of holds it in a closed position. If I look on the interior here I can see that the binding around the edge that kind of holds everything together is actually stitched through that cardboard that's on the inside of this. Now I know that my sewing machine is not going to stitch through cardboard so I'm going to have to kind of think around how to kind of keep that cardboard in place but you know make it where I can actually sew it on my home sewing machine. There is a type of fleece called a polytherm fleece. This is it here. I got this on Amazon and the brand name is Beausole and it basically has kind of a foil backing or I guess facing on one side and then the other side is just the batting and this is something that will help reflect the heat back toward the source and it keeps the underside from getting too hot. So this is what I'll use as my batting layer. And then for the ironing surface I really wanted to replicate that grid pattern that I have on the ironing mat. It's just a one inch grid and I actually do find that really useful when I'm kind of measuring things and sewing things. So I went on Spoonflower and I found this fabric that has a grid pattern. I'll link below the one that I found and this was perfect and I ended up picking it in this blue color. It's just I thought it was just really cute. So I ordered a yard of this in their canvas that they have the cotton canvas and I've gone ahead and washed this just to make it a little bit softer and more pliable and easier to sew with. I also picked up two pieces of art board. So I got these at Michaels and you can find you know larger pieces of art board or mat board or chip board. This is pretty sturdy. I mean it's it would be a little bit more difficult for me to bend this and I think once I have it inside of this ironing pad it actually will work just as well as the one in the original ironing pad. It doesn't list the thickness of this but I mean I would say that it's maybe gosh like a millimeter it's really thin. And then the brand is Canson and it's called illustration comic art board and I bought two pieces and these pieces are 16 by 20. So I got two pieces of 16 by 20. So my plan is to use some of this muslin fabric to basically create like a pillowcase for the chipboard pieces and kind of keep them in place and then you know sew around the edges of that pillowcase to encase it between the interior part with the grid fabric and exterior part which I'm just going to do in this dark hunter green twill that I had in my stash. I think it'll be great for something like this and I think the green looks kind of cute with this dark blue and white. So I think it's a vibe. So I think the first thing that I want to do is create that little pillowcase out of this muslin fabric for these chipboard pieces. To sew the case for these two pieces of chipboard I first just kind of marked some straight lines on my fabric at the corner. So I did one of the short sides and one of the long sides and then I sewed that together. Once I had the two pieces sewn together at those edges I just slipped the chipboard into this little case right up into the corner and then marked where the edge of the chipboard is. I'm trying to really get a nice tight fit on this and now I'm just going to sew along that edge. I'm going to remove the chipboard and sew along that edge and then sew another seam that is a quarter inch away from that one and do the same thing to measure the other side. But I want to do one more thing before I sew them into the case permanently. My original ironing mat has curved edges on the exterior edges so I want to do the same thing to the chipboard. I just want to curve the corners here so I think it'll make it easier to attach the binding once I do the finishing on the ironing pad. Once I got those trimmed I just slipped them back into the case and you can see here how that is going to be curved on the four exterior corners here. And now I just want to stitch this final edge closed and again I'm just going to try to get it as close as I can to that cardboard edge and I think I'm going to use my zipper foot to do this so I can get right up against the edge and get a really nice tight fit on this. Cut! So to construct this pad now that I've got the cardboard layer prepped I also cut some pieces for the exterior. So this is that green twill that I'm going to be using for the back layer. This is going to be the exterior and I want to make sure that I've placed this wrong side up. And then on top of that layer I'll have the cardboard layer. This is the one that I just finished sewing and I've cut these other layers just a little bit larger around the edge than the cardboard layer. And then on top of that I'll have my thermal batting layer with the reflective side facing up because this is going to be the side that we iron on so we want the heat to be reflected back toward the iron basically. Now this batting came with a set of instructions that say that there must be two layers of polytherm fleece and then 100 cotton batting must be sewn in between both layers to secure proper heat reflective. This is some batting that I've used for a upholstery project and I think this is just going to be way too thick. I mean when you see the layers together I think it's just going to be it's going to be too much. When I compared it to my other ironing pad I don't think I want to use this. So instead of batting what I'm going to use instead is two layers of some flannel that I had left over from a jacket project that I made. So this is just a very basic flannel that I picked up at Jo-Ann Fabrics and I've got it layered double here and that's going to go over that reflective batting layer. It feels a little bit more like what my ironing pad feels like. Then on top of that I will have the interior layer of the canvas with the grid. I'll be nice and pressed. I need to sew all of these layers together but take out this cardboard layer because this is going to make it really difficult to sew on the sewing machine. So I'll take that off. I'll put all these layers together in the same order except for the cardboard. So I'll have that exterior layer here. This is the twill on the back that'll be the exterior. I'll have the thermal insulation layer. Then I'll have the two layers of the flannel, the cotton flannel fabric, and then the layer for the interior that's going to be the ironing surface. And I'm actually just going to sew around two edges the same way that I did when I was installing those cardboard pieces into the muslin fabric. Then I can kind of slip all of that cardboard layer in here and measure exactly where I want the next side to be sewn. Then I'll take the cardboard layer out, sew that edge, put the cardboard layer back in, and then sew the final edge. So I really want to get this nice and tight so that this canvas layer is really nice and taut. And yeah, I'm just going to do it in steps like that just to make sure. I think that's just going to make it a little bit easier to sew and I'm not going to have to fuss with the cardboard layer as much at the sewing machine. My last edge that I'm going to sew is going to be one of the shorter edges too. So I'm trying to reduce the amount that I have to sew against that cardboard layer since it is kind of awkward to handle at the sewing machine. Another thing too that I want to make sure that I do is pull. It's just a little bit so that that little quarter inch gap doesn't get bunched up on itself. I just want to make sure that everything's really nice and flat in here. Before I sew up the end, I just want to fold this in half and kind of pull it taut while it's folded and get it nice and tight there. Because when it's unfolded, I really want it to be really taut. So I kind of want to just get as many wrinkles out of there as I can while it's in the folded position. So I kind of mark that with my hand and then unfold it. And I think that's going to work out really good. So it looks like if I sew about halfway through this second row of the grid here, that'll be just about right. So I found that when sewing on this binding, it helps to have the edge of my presser foot on top of the cardboard layer here and let the needle kind of run right here. I was really struggling with this for a minute, but I think that's going to get the job done. And I had to pull my table away from the wall a little bit just so that I could get this thing all the way around the sewing machine without bumping into the wall. And then I also put a box under the mat to kind of lift it up while I sewed just to make it, you know, a little bit more stable while I was sewing. When I sewed on the binding, I just curved it around the corners here, and then I'll just trim off these corners now that I've got it sewn on. But that might be a little easier to install. All right, this thing is complete. And I'm thrilled with how it turned out. It was a little tricky getting around the edges for the binding on the edges. And I think that was mostly just because at first I was a little bit hesitant to really go for it. Now, when I was doing the binding, like finishing doing the top stitching on the binding, I think I did actually puncture the cardboard a few times and my needle did go through. So it's possible that the cardboard would have been sewable without much of an issue. But I really kind of wanted to avoid sewing through it because I knew it would dull my needle and potentially break a needle if I went too fast. So I just took my time, went around the edges. I got it mostly pretty well sewed down. There was a couple of places where it got a little bit kind of boogered up. But yeah, this turned out great. So before I really didn't have a great storage location for this one. This is my old one that has the Velcro closure. And I always found myself wishing that it had handles so that I could actually hang it. So that is why I put handles on this one. And I actually have a way that I plan to store this. I'm going to do that right now. I just have a little hook here. It's just a little screw and hook and screw it in. Hang my little ironing mat there. Totally cool to the touch on the bottom. Total success. All right. I think that is just about it for this video and this tutorial. I love how this turned out. It is going to be such a practical addition to my sewing room. It is another thing that just makes sense in here. If you enjoyed today's video and you would like to see more from me, please be sure to subscribe and hit the little bell icon. That way you'll be notified when I release new videos in the future. I do a lot of sewing content here, mostly sewing content, a few little thrifting and vlog style videos as well. So if that's your thing, stick around a little bit. And I also think I'm going to do a little like Patreon after show over there for this video. So if you're interested in that, be sure to check it out over there. And yeah, I think that's all I have for you today. I will see you in the next video. Bye. So cute. They did say that sewing was a topic area that people seem more interested in, but they said that maybe more specific classes related to sewing. So things for doing specific techniques or things like that. So another idea that I had for a class over there.