Sewing Center

My wife purchased a new sewing machine and she'd hardly unpacked it from the box before she mentioned that she'd like a new sewing table into which it could be installed. She wanted a table of good size, with plenty of drawers to hold all of her sewing supplies. We eventually decided upon the project below. The plans and hardware are available from Rockler.

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Sewing Center, Fully opened	Sewing Center, Closed


Sewing Machine, Fully raised	Sewing Machine, Partially raised	Sewing Machine, Fully lowered

The sewing center is constructed of Birch plywood, Cherry, and a little bit of hardboard. The plans called for Cherry plywood, but at more than twice the cost of Birch ply we decided that Birch ply with Cherry stain was good enough for us! I briefly considered making a solid Cherry top instead of ply with cherry banding, but a brief analysis showed that option to be unreasonably expensive. All sides, tops, the door panels, and drawer frames are made from the birch plywood, and all parts of the plywood which show are stained with Behlen's Solar-Lux Cherry. The drawer bottoms are 1/8" hardboard. The banding, drawer faces, door stiles, and all other pieces are solid cherry. The piece was finished with a couple of coats of Behlen's Danish Oil.

I started this project on October 16, 1999 and applied the final coat of Danish Oil on January 19, 2000. My records indicate that I worked on this project a total of 21 different days during that time, and spent a total of 80.5 hours from start to finish.

This page was last updated February 5, 2002