My Sewing Table

The furnace guys are coming tomorrow to clean our heating ducts.  The construction dust seems to be perpetual and we can’t seem to get the house clean. Friends suggested getting the heating ducts cleaned so we are.

Since I had to pick up my sewing room a bit for the furnace guys to able to access the vents I figured I might as well tell you about my sewing table while the room is not a complete mess.  I get asked fairly frequently what is my sewing table and where did I get it.

After much thought & deliberation about what I wanted in a sewing table, my primary goal was to have something sturdy.  I had been sewing on an old banquet table (and this was the old heavy metal legs kind, not the newer plastic legs kind) I really wanted a table where I could drop my machine into the table and when I wanted to sew at top speed it wouldn’t bounce all over the place.  The banquet table was originally brown and I eventually painted the surface of the table top white.  While it was heavy to lift and haul anywhere it would still bounce a fair amount when I floored the pedal on my machine.

This isn’t the most attractive table but it is by far the most sturdy one I have ever seen!  It is from Sew Perfect Tables.  I did run across Sarah’s blog some time ago where she painted the base a very cool lime green.  I may have to do that one day. But it is very low on my list of things I want to do around the house.

I ordered it off their web site. It’s not as expensive as those cabinets with all the cool little fold up storage tricks.   But it is more expensive and much more sturdy than your standard JoAnn’s or Target or Walmart cabinet.

There are heavy bolts on each side of the drop-down shelf for the sewing machine so that you can customize the height to any machine.  There are also heavy bolts on the legs to adjust the height of the actual table as well.

I also ordered the extension table which attaches to the back of the sewing machine table.  The hinges that connect the extension to the table don’t seem strong enough to handle the weight of the extension. It is heavy!  In retrospect, I wish I would  have done what Sarah did and bought an extra base and attached it to the extension.  I think it would make the extension feel more sturdy. I may do something like that in the future if I ever get to graduate to a bigger sewing room.  My room right now is TINY and I am constantly rearranging and putting the extension up & down.

The one piece of customizing that I did do was to have an insert made at a local store (Tap Plastics) that fits around the sewing machine. The one that can be ordered from Sew Perfect Tables is clear plastic and leaves a very large space to the right of the sewing machine that felt like wasted space as well as a hole where pin cushions, scissors and all sorts of things could fall into.  So I had a custom insert made out of white plastic and positioned it so that the machine is all the way to the right of the dropped shelf and no hole is left for things to fall into.  I don’t have a picture to show you of the insert before. You can see my custom insert above in the first picture.  I like that it is white because the clear seems to give me a terrible glare when I am strip piecing blocks. Plus, I can’t see all the dust that collects underneath the sewing machine!

UPDATE:  I finally found the photo (above) of the original insert that I ordered with the table that shows the big gap between the sewing machine & the table.   I returned this insert since it was not going to work well for me.

Let me know if there are any other questions you have about the table and I’ll edit this post to answer them.

After the furnace guys leaves…  I’m back to the sewing machine to finish a couple of charity quilts.  And a messy room again!

 

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.