How I Set Up My Ideal Sewing Space! (New Studio Tour)

Hello. Welcome to the Travelers Academy for retroactive dimensional interpatial exploration. Come in, join us. Welcome to the new studio. This is the brand new newest fourth studio that we've had. We've had a lot of studios over the years and over the years I have learned quite a lot about how to set up my space in a way that is most conducive to the way that I work as well as the crafts that I'm working in. So, I thought it would be great today to share with you some of the logic and thought processes that I go through when I'm setting up a new space and how I set up my workspaces as I've developed my systems over the years. So that if you are looking to set up your own crafting space or workspace, home office, home, whatever it is, perhaps there are some tips, tricks, strategies in here that might benefit you as well. As is about to become a theme in this endeavor, everything's a work in progress. I am not about buying things just to buy things. My main goal when decorating a space is to have it functional, to have items that I really, really love, that are useful, are good quality, and if that means having to wait a little bit of extra time in order to find the perfect thing, that's what we're going to do. This like whole room is an endeavor that has been in process for about 8 years. So, one thing that should definitely be abundantly clear throughout this video is that the setup of your workroom is something that takes time. Because not only do you have to figure out how you work best and how therefore things should be best set up in order to fit your own personal needs, but it also just takes time to accumulate things. When you're first starting out as a costume maker, of course, you don't have the money. budget to go out and buy all the things that you need and set up your workspace. That's perfectly normal. That's natural. I think part of the evolution of a workroom is the stages of discovering what you need and building that workroom over time. So, another one of the themes of the way that I set up a workroom is my love of stations. I'll go through and I'll break down how I have worked out these stations and where I've put them. I have definitely made do in all sorts of different spaces and making the concessions to adapt to the space that I have. The first space I was working in wasn't a studio at all. It was my apartment. Right from the start, I was going with this idea of these zones and these stations. Of course, they were a lot more compressed. So, I had a desk where I would do my admin and I would do editing and I would answer emails. And then the rest of the floor was kind of used just as the cutting table space. But the core philosophy of having the delineated zones to try and keep my head in as clear of a state as possible when I'm in different stages of my craft has been essential from day one. Case in point, this is the sewing machine station. This is actually a bit of a luxury. This is not something that I was able to have in any of my past studio spaces just because, you know, I didn't have the space. This space that we've moved into, it's probably about twice the size of any space that we've had in the past. And as a result of that, instead of having all of my glorious antique machines tucked away under tables or in corners, I now have the ability to have them out and about in their full glory. So, um, I found this beautiful table set on eBay with these gorgeous gothic chairs that I just fell in love with. Um, you know, it's one of those situations where, okay, some people doom scroll through social media. I doom scroll through eBay and I like sort them by cheapest or ending soonest. And you can sometimes find the most extraordinary, gorgeous pieces of antique furniture, at least here in England where there is a profusion of antiques and people who don't want them. And so sometimes you can find incredible auctions ending in a day for a pound and then you say, "Yeah, I'm gonna bid a pound for that. " And then you win. This chest actually just holds packaging material, old broken down cardboard boxes and bubble wrap. Because you know, we're humans. We just like have to hoard that stuff. Why not put it in a 17th century chest that you accidentally win on eBay? eBay, Facebook Marketplace, thrift shops. you just got to keep an eye out our um product placement here for tote bags. If you haven't seen, we made some tote bags. Not only are these like my favorite tote bags in the world, to me, they just make excellent decor. Like, who doesn't want to be a menace to polite society? I do. Anyway, we ended up having this additional table. At this point, I have multiple employees, so I did have to take into account how many people would be in the room and where each of those people would need to work. This is a great central table. It's a great like lunch break table, but it's also a really fantastic secondary workspace, which is something that I found that I really love having now cuz often times we have other people doing projects in this room. We're in the midst of framing our um first hand and

lock kit here. We're actually planning on doing a whole wall of our hand and lock kits because at this point we have three hand and lock kits which are just so beautiful. Like they need to be put on the wall, but I don't have the frame yet. So, I mean, we've also made them into items, but like I also want to make kits to have in like a pride of place because I don't know, we're just proud of them. Speaking of fantastic eBay finds, this is not built into the wall. This is again something we just like came across on eBay. I think Marley found it on eBay. And um it's just a fireplace that somebody has ripped out of the wall of like an old house. Don't look behind it cuz it's not quite done. But, you know, everything's a work in progress. So, this will get a big slate mantel piece. But before we can put the heavy slate on top, we have to build some walls for this. Anyway, it's amazing what you can find on eBay. Sometimes people are just trying to get rid of their old salvaged fireplaces. And it's stunning. Look at it. It's like n I think it's 19th century. But yeah, definitely makes the room look a lot cozier, homelier. Again, everyone works differently, but personally, the way I love to work is I like to make sure that my workspace feels like a home. I want it to feel like I can walk in, take my shoes off, and just feel like I'm in a very safe and relaxed space and somewhere where, you know, we can just sort of hang out. It's not stressful. It's not fluorescently lit. I will not ever turn on the fluorescent lights in a room. It's just all going to be lamp lit. It's going to have nice carpets. comfy chairs. And it's just going to feel like someone's living room. It's vitally important to take into account your own unique demands. So, if you need a high energy environment with lots of light, if you have any disabilities and you need to make sure that you've got enough seating or padded flooring, I'm going to come over this way. Now, this is where we have uh a secondary Well, I mean, we have piggies cuz obviously we got pigs, we got loaves, we got bread on deck, we got loaves on the floor. The piggies come in to work with me just because I like having them here. They don't come every day, but you know, they come when I can foresee in their faces in the morning that they will not loathe me if I try and pick them up and put them in their carrier to take them to work. But yeah, they're they've made a mess, but that's neither here nor there. — That's pigs. This is the desk setup. when I have to do admin tasks, you know, things where it's just sitting at a computer, script writing, you know, it's nice to have like a good place to do that that's not, oh, I'm going to get distracted by this needle and thread in this project here. This is just work, computer work, writing, research. Okay, Marley's going to make me introduce the Glog. — I am. I am actually. — This is Gerard, our emo Guggle Jug. — He's beautiful. — That was it. That was what I wanted. Thank you. — Yeah. Okay. In previous studios, I have done a lot of filming at the desk space. So, we really wanted to make sure that this corner was really well set up. Hence, we've got our pig gallery wall. This is probably my prized possession. It is a longunning joke between my brother and I. He began with the Monaiza of doing these historical portraits of my guinea pigs and then it turned into a thing like an annual thing. I can't explain why. I don't think he can explain why either. But now every year there is a new historical pig that shows up in the post. And so we have I think seven years of historical pigs going on so far. Oh. Oh yeah. The most recent pig is Marie Pig Twinette here. I love her. Of course, she has a giant ship in her hair because I think Danny might have spent more time on the ship than on the clothes. Danny loves a ship. We got Bonnie Pig, Charlie, Lady Piglock, Mary Piggins, this is Lord Cesario. Of course, many of you will remember the precious Lord Cesario. And then, of course, we've got Lyra and Manurva who are hanging out down there. By the way, if it feels like everything in this room is hung slightly too low, that is actually intentional. I mean, you can still roast this in the comments if you want, but like go for it. But it is intentional. And that is because when the camera is set up at eye level or, you know, seated down eye level, you tend not to see what's going on in the top half of the room. And we do want our beautiful tapestries and our beautiful thread wall and the pig portraits. You know, we do want our things to be seen. We got room for the spinning wheel in here. — Oh, fudge. Sorry. I knocked into something that came and attacked me. Hey, that came out of nowhere. — Yeah, it's my body double. There's room for the spinning wheel in here. Uh, which is really great because our last studio space didn't quite have enough room. So, now I'm looking forward to getting back to some spinning, improving my flax spinning. I think Marley wants to do wool. So, we'll see who does what with what. This blue tapestry we

actually got on like the French equivalent of eBay, which means that it was pickup only in Paris. Marley just so happened to be going to Paris that weekend. So, we managed to rudimentary French ourselves into communication with this fabulous woman and uh somehow managed to arrange a pickup for this tapestry. It was great and also cheaper than the tapestry rod. — And then of course we have the creation space. It's where the cutting happens. It's where the patterning happens. It's where a lot of the sewing happens. So I have not actually laid out this room in order of the process of sewing. It's laid out according to the unique demands of what I do. I mean this whole video is framed through the lens of costume and garment making which by nature is an extremely physically space intensive craft. That may or may not be applicable to a less space intensive craft. But those of us of course who live in cities will know that space is a premium and you can't always just have all the space that you would like. So some of these phases are combined into two. So the most space intensive aspect of the room was going to be the cutting table. Not only is it the biggest piece of furniture, it also requires the most light because it is where I do the most of my really closeup, really detail oriented filming. And I need to make sure that I have lots of natural light. Not just so that when I'm sitting there doing the sewing, I can see, but also so that when the camera is over what I'm doing, the camera also has great lighting to feed off of. The cutting table is I mean it's three pieces. It's something that I just finagled myself. It's an IKEA countertop sitting on two chests of drawers. Um which these are actually not antique. I bought them many years ago, but just because I needed something that matched in height and style to be the legs of this. One thing I really love to do is to make all of my surfaces resting on things with drawers so that I maximize my storage potential. So I've got drawers for bon. There's drawers for sewing tools. There's a drawer for all my sort of hardware, belt buckles, buttons, zippers, and then we've got padding, Taylor's canvas, structuring materials, just like categorizing things into categories and then putting finding a drawer to put them in. But we've got leather working, scraps of things that aren't fabric. You know, you just never know when you need a scrap of something. I do love to have the ability to walk around my cutting table and just be able to access a piece of fabric from all angles that is not something that I had previously done, but is definitely something that I have since discovered. Yeah, this is actually a really useful thing to have. The fabric cupboard also is a really big piece of furniture. Was going to be very tricky to fit into the room and it works really nicely behind the cutting table. I really love having the materials right next to where I will need to pull them out and potentially use them. If I need a piece of trim, I can just reach back and look in. We've got tapes and cords and functional trims. We've got ribbons and decorative things and laces and, you know, all the decorative bits that you might need in here. Cyber mannequin. That was part of a Doctor Who video. It was a prop. And then like what are you supposed to do with a Cyberman head if not put it in a cabinet specifically to freak people out. So then I've also got fabric here which I uh sort by fiber type just so that when I know I need a wool, I need a silk, I need whatever it is, I know exactly where to look. I also have very limited storage space. So that is very much a limit to my purchasing abilities. But I still try to do so with my consumer conscious attitudes of okay, is it a material that I know I will use that is really beautiful and inspiring that you know makes me want to make something. It's not just something that I know is going to sit in a stash or that I'm buying simply to buy. Fabrics are ordered by fiber type because that's how I personally like to work. I tend to end up working natural fiber almost always. Uh, but there are wools, which of course needed two shelves because I have a lot of wools. And then there's linens. Oh, there's two silks. These are more like decorative fancy chiffani tulle. And if I do have a polyester, it will probably end up here. Other silks, taffidas, oranzas, more silk. And then cotton, which are kind of bursting. Down here is where we hide away all of the tech stuff. camera bits and bobs and pieces and green screens and microphones and audio and video and lenses and you know we got batteries for all sorts of cameras in here. Microphone batteries, SD cards. Once again, a very beautiful housing component for something that is very modern and that's something that I do try and do is to hide the inacronisms as much as I can. I mean obviously the anacronisms are a necessary I wouldn't even say an evil. They're a necessary um symbiotic component to what we do here because the irony is that although we are producing content about history

we very much do rely on the technology and the internet. — Do you want to talk about the books at all? — Oh yeah, the books. Oh my god, the books. Um and my sins. — Yeah, we needed a bookshelf and one of the suggested options was this one and I said, "Ooh, pretty. " And I bought it. It was cheap, too. I don't remember how much it was. Um, and it turns out it's not a bookcase. It's like a curio case. So, it's not quite deep enough for books. — So, Marley ended up doing some true wizardry here with very artfully arranging the books. And she probably now silently curses every time I have to take one out. Anyway, so not the ideal book situation, but we do have books and we have a place for them to live and it's very nice looking. So, another station that I find is important to have is enough space to exist. You know, this dress form just kind of floats around. — Oh, fudge. That came out of nowhere. — When I have to do draping projects, it's good to have an amount of space to, you know, take a step back and have a look and see if things are actually even. You can actually fake this by if you have a full- length mirror, which you probably should. When you effectively double the length. So, you know, if you need to look at something from a distance, put it in front of a mirror and hopefully get a longer look at something. Draping and fitting space kind of doubles with the wardrobe. We've got this lovely antique wardrobe. This was like £40 on eBay. Again, I love a good eBay find. It's also storing a bunch of old projects that need to be um patterned because we are working on a large endeavor to try and pattern some of the past projects so that you can have patterns. Uh so that's hopefully something that will be coming soon. And then we have our ironing station over here which if you also sew things you will know is very important. Having an ironing table that is wide enough for garment pieces, for ironing fabric is kind of essential in sewing. And it's not something that can very easily be bought in a shop. And if you can, it's usually quite expensive because they're meant for like industrial garment factories or production companies. However, they are really, really easy to make. This is just a sheet of plywood that has been wrapped in one layer of cotton batting and then wrapped over that with a layer of just muslin and then just stapled down underneath. And this I've set on top of a chest of drawers. Admittedly, right now it is a little bit out of commission because we have a little cocoon situation on the bottom of the iron and I don't have the heart to roast it to death. Uh, we have a small caterpillar farm. I'm just realizing like what a rabbit hole I'm now digging myself into. Okay, long story short, we're growing some dyes on our window sill, which actually I passed right by. We can Do you want to see the garden? — Do you want to talk about the caterpillars first? Okay, apparently caterpillars really love WO, which is a blue dye. We've been pulling the caterpillars off the woods so our wads don't get eaten and giving them their own little habitat. And they're actually thriving. They sit there and they eat a bunch of leaves for a while and then they cocoon and then they turn into these yellow butterflies and then they fly out the window. It's been such a delight. Some of them have got a bit creative. So, for example, now our iron is out of commission because one of them has made a cocoon on the iron. Some of them are a bit more sane, like this guy here who is making a cocoon on a stem. Some of the guys prefer the jars or the sides of the things. Or you could be like this guy who's made a cocoon on the inside of the fridge. I don't know how you got down there, my guy. So, um, that has been a whole side quest of an adventure. This space also comes with a really lovely kitchenette. The plan is eventually to get some baskets for all of our snacks so that it just looks a bit nicer and a bit neater. But we've got our tea in our little apothecary drawers. Am I going to hashtag affiliate? Yeah, we're big kits and co tea drinkers. This is um John and Hank Green's good. So like 100% of the profits are donated to charity. Oh, this is specifically the one that's helping to treat tuberculosis in Sierra Leone, I think. So, not only is it a great cause, but they're also the best teas, like unironically. So, they asked us to be an affiliate for them a year ago, and we were like, "Yeah. " And they sent us a bunch of samples, and we were like, So, we're signing up for the subscription and getting three new TE's every month, right? We played ourselves, really. Um, we have a W ball drying. Marley's perfect wood ball. — I'm incredible. What can I say? — We're slowly um making a bunch of W balls because these we have a bunch of them down here. Um so our W balls are living in there until we're ready to take them out and die with them. Here's

our little garden up here featuring peanuts. We have so much wildlife here. By so much, I mean manage your expectations because this is still a city. But we've got caterpillars. There was a fox in our window yesterday. He's like naps down in the courtyard downstairs. There's also some magpies that live outside. Oh, and the crows sometimes come. No, they've gone away right now, but I like to feed them some peanuts. Anyway, here's our wad. And then we've also got some matter, which just got a new pot today. Historical dyes. Let's go. One day when I have a garden, like if I ever live on land, I'm going to grow flax. You know, you bet some flax. And then I have to spin that flax, which I can do kind of. And then I have to learn how to weave the flax into linen. Okay, I don't have time to think about that right now. Welcome to the new workspace. I hope this gave you some tips on how to hopefully set up a space of your own. You know, we all do have to start somewhere. Whether you have like investment funding, you're setting up a business and you've got like that seed money, or you're just coming off of a hobby and you've got your domestic iron and a floor. I am looking forward to getting a lot of great work done in this new space for as long as we have it cuz you know London rent like that. Anyway, we got some big projects coming up now in the future. So, subscribe if you would like to see what we get up to around here and share any tips on uh your own workroom decoration and organization if you want to give some tips to other people who might be setting up their first, second, third, 10th workroom. Anyway, uh bye. Wait, no, wait. You buy. This is my workroom. — Bye. Sounds good. Oh, Manurva, you are just a toupe. Do French piggies go weak? Baby — We weak. — Oh my god. Baby girl greedy. Oh. Oh my god, your mouth is all green, baby girl. Yeah, that's a guilty piggy if I ever saw one.