Me + My Craftroom

This title is a bit misleading as I currently don’t really have a sewing room or craft room. And when I had a room dedicated to crafts, I did not call it ‘my craft room’ either. So there is a lot of wishful thinking behind the whole blog I guess. 🙂

At that time I had a sewing room

Beginning of 2015 however, I decided that my newly purchased sewing machine needed her own dedicated room. When one of my flatmates was moving out, it was time to change this. I converted one of the rooms into what I used to call my “Sewing Room”.

When I first told my closest friends at the time about my plan, they were bewildered by the fact that I wanted to have a dedicated room for “sewage”. Damn German accent! 🙂 Thus the sewing room was quickly coined as Maya’s Sewage Room. It became the favorite hangout place for me, my closest friends as well as my other flatmate’s cats.

There was definitely nothing special about the design or style of this room. I had put together all the spare furniture from the other rooms of the apartment into some wild combination of IKEA tables and shelves. The walls were colorful, but so were the walls of the rest of the apartment.

Why I enjoyed having a dedicated space for sewing

I think what made the difference though, was that it was a space that was meant to be used for creative things and for enjoying time. Different from the desk in my bedroom that I used for work. Or the table in the living room which we also used for having dinner together.

Having this extra space gave me so much more freedom with my creative side projects. Much more than I had ever imagined. I could get up only 30 minutes earlier and sew a few seams or draw a few lines before going to work. After work, I could just pick up from where I left off without having to find the motivation to actually unpack all my tools and supplies.

I officially started building my fabric stash at this time. Everything was nicely arranged on a shelf with glass doors. So I could always see and admire my fabrics. 😉

Around the same time, the idea for this blog began to form. I put it off for years and only focused on creating things. But I brainstormed about the name of my blog. As I had started Islamic geometry as well I did not want to limit myself to sewing and patchwork only. So something related to ‘sewing room’ was out of the question as a name for the blog. Thus the idea of ‘my craft room’ was formed.

Being creative without a dedicated space

When I moved to Qatar in 2016 giving up my craft room was one of the most difficult things. Thankfully I was too busy with work to miss it in the beginning. But I became aware quite quickly that I lacked the relaxation that this room had provided me with.

It took me a while to develop a routine to be creatively productive without having a dedicated space. At the moment it is the same desk where I work, study, sew, draw, paint, design… and where I write this blog post, too!

There are a few rules, however, that I set for myself to make it work. 

And there is a very positive aspect of not having a craft room at the moment as well: Analyzing what annoys me helps me to find out exactly what I need in my creative space. I keep googling from time to time for ‘craft room ideas’ and also started a little board on my Pinterest to collect my ideas and inspirations. So I secretly plan my future craft room and keep arranging all my tools and supplies in my mind.

And you, do you have your own space dedicated to your creative side of life? What do you call this room or space? And if you want to know more about how sewing became my life-saving hobby, check out my blog post on when patchwork saved my life.