I was going to call it "Where it all Happens" but I’m so bad at actually getting around to things that this seemed more appropriate.

I do eventually get around to making the costumes I plan - otherwise I wouldn't have any to wear to events or to detail on these WebPages, but the Sewing Room sees more last-minute rush-jobs than carefully considered and finely crafted creations. Sad to say, my best work comes from those last-minute costumes too. The ones where I realise that all the plans will have to go out of the window because there's no time left for those fiddley little bits the design calls for, or to do it carefully like that when throwing it through the sewing machine and getting it done like this is far quicker. They always seem to be the ones that turn out best, despite the cut corners and hastily applied bare-minimum of trim that's only there to disguise the visible machine stitching, and last, and get re-worn time and time again, get loaned out to friends and are comfortable to wear for long stretches. Somehow I never get around to unpicking them and re-making them the way the original plans called for. Then, suddenly, they're too old and tatty and worn at the edges to bother doing that with anyway.

Anyhow - regardless of the speed, or lack of it, at which my costumes come together - this page is devoted to the place where it's all supposed to happen.

The pictures only happened because I had a rare tidy-up session (sometimes it gets to the point where even I can't cope with the mess any longer and nothing else gets done until it's all been excavated) and I thought I'd better get pictures of how it's supposed to look, rather than the complete mess it usually is.

This room was specially built. We had been using the spare bedroom (still piled high with boxes of my stuff that hadn't been unpacked since I moved here as there was nowhere for it all to go) as a sewing room, spare bedroom and storage room, clearing the living-room floor every time we needed the space to cut out something big like a cloak or houpellande and it just plain didn't work - so the house had to be extended.

It included this room, a small shower-room and toilet (behind the purple and green doors) and the roof-space above it done out as a storage-room for the boxes of fabrics that make up my and Tom's respective fabric stashes, our medieval tent and other re-enactment camping kit and anything else that needs a home. It cost Tom (whose house it is) a small fortune, but it got us a whole lot of extra space and, theoretically, somewhere that is a dedicated space for us to cut out and sew in as well as storing the costumes you can see on the IKEA units in the pictures.

In practice I make such a mess as I work that I spread to every inch of available space and Tom has to remind me that he's meant to be using the room for his costuming too.

Also, you see there are wooden doors leaning against the wall? The ones with the red coat-lining hanging on them?

Those belong on the box-room Tom uses as a computer-room and study, the toilet in the main house and the kitchen. They've been there since we had them taken away and dip'n'stripped over 18 months ago and have only just been re-hung (It's taken a while to get the pictures developed and sent to Missa for putting up on this WebPage...<g>)... All, that is, except the toilet door, in fact as 2 of the hinge-screws sheared off and the ends refuse to budge from the door frame so I have to get around to chiselling out a new place for the hinges and moving them - meantime there's a length of calico pinned up over the door frame to act as a "temporary" curtain and the door is propped against the wall beside the toilet. I really mean it when I say I'm terrible at getting around to doing things. It doesn't just apply to costuming. Deadlines happen to other people, not to Teddy.

The wall those doors are leaning against in the picture is (again - eventually ) going to be lined in shelving to provide more storage - some of it for my books which haven't yet been retrieved from storage (five years and counting!) in the loft of my flat on the other side of London - and the rest, probably for sewing equipment, fabrics, trims and bits of completed costume.

The other things you can see in the pictures are;

My sewing machine (the one by the floor-to-ceiling stack of boxes).

Said boxes - all empty at the time the photo was taken but now full of fabric and stored neatly away in the roof-space above thanks to Nicole Kipar organising me when she visited to start work on her Queen of Shadows costume

Tom's sewing machine (the one at the other end of the worktop under the window). He does get to use it occasionally... honest!

The IKEA "Ivar" units that hold the costumes, boxes of trims and such, folded pieces of fabric etc. Most of the bright coloured costumes (orange, yellow, green, lilac, turquoise etc) are mine, the others (purple, red, dark-blue, brown, black) are mostly Toms.

The dummy displaying my (still unfinished, naturally) red cotton brocade "Tudor-bethan" doublet and trunk hose is known as "number * because the wooden piece in the neck has a mark on it that looks like an "8". The doublet and trunks, incidentally, were actually made for my by a friend. I commissioned Miki Dennis

to make two doublets and matching trunk-hose for me because I didn't have time to get around to it myself, and I still haven't gotten around to adding the trim or fastenings, the codpieces I intended to make from the offcuts or the accessories to go with the suits… ‘though I have made a hasty pair of sleeves to go with one of them.

The decor, BTW, is my doing too. Tom, bless him, gave me a free-hand in decorating the sewing room since he's not terribly keen on my colour choices and feels they'd be just too much for most of the living-areas of the house. I had the paints mixed specially for me, the blue, red yellow and green are all Lego colours (I took the bricks along to be colour matched), the purple is from a favourite coat and the orange is from my favourite shoes.

So, for those of you who were foolish enough to ask where I do my sewing, this is it. Some of it happens here. The rest happens on trains and the London Underground. I hate hand-sewing, especially if there’s a sewing machine sitting there looking at me, so save it up for times when I can’t get to a machine – my commutes to and from work.