Honeybear Lane

When I was planning my new sewing room I spent rather a lot of time browsing the internet looking for ideas, particularly for storage. I came across a post on Honeybear Lane about how to make a large pegboard for a sewing room, I loved the idea of having everything in its place but easily reachable. The tutorial was great in explaining how to make one.

The one on Honeybear Lane is 6′ x 4′, pretty big. It was also working out pretty expensive here in the UK, none of our general DIY stores seemed to sell pegboard either so postage had to added on. I wanted to use the heavier 6mm board to make sure it was strong enough. I found a company on ebay that sold 4’x4′ sheets, perfect size for my room!

Our local timber merchant sold the moulding for round the edge, it came in 5m lengths, so I persuaded him to quarter it so I could manage it on the bus!

Mitering the corners was much easier once I borrowed my son’s saw as ours was as blunt as anything. I laid the pegboard on the garage floor and glued the moulding on with Gorilla glue, I used various stone flags as weights to try and keep the pressure on. It worked!

Next job was to paint it…luckily I’d saved the huge sheet of corrugated card that the pegboard was delivered in, it was ideal for painting it over as obviously the paint runs straight through the holes! I raised the board on small tins of tuna and gave it one coat of paint. It probably would have been better with a second coat but it had been blocking the dining room table for long enough and I decided that by the time it had everything hung on it, no one would be able to tell the difference! I now have several spotty tins of tuna 🙂

A trip to Ikea provided the hanging rails and enamel pails, these needed attaching before it went on the wall so I spent several days arranging things and seeing how it would work. I bought a mixed batch of pegboard hooks which has worked very well. The cork board (AKA Chocolate Firescreen!) is actually just sat on two hooks, the thread holder is from ebay and that is hung on hooks too. The hook collection included a screwdriver holder, this proved ideal for holding artery forceps (very useful, every home should have several!!)

Longer hooks proved useful for the quilting rulers and my collection of embroidery frames. I wasn’t planning originally to hang up all my haberdashery stuff, but having found I had rather a lot of press-stud cards etc (that’s what happens when you impulse buy for earrings instead of checking stock!) I hung them up and rather liked the effect.

The Ikea basket is handy for little spring top jars I bought at Poundstretcher for 50p each, I’ve got various buttons in them, a bottle of red ones, green ones, cute ones…

Once I was happy with the arrangement I persuaded James (my eldest) to come round and put it up, I found some wood in the shed for battens to hold it just off the wall so I could still put the pegboard hooks in. James is a dab hand at doing that sort of thing, it would have taken me hours!

The finishing touch was some painted wooden letters from the craft section in our local garden centre.

My sewing room is coming together, not quite ready for the grand opening, but I’m winning!