'No Regrets' Sewing Room Door

We recently renovated the sewing room in our makerspace.

YuKonstruct's sewing room doesn't always get the attention it deserves, so we wanted to clearly label the space and make the room look fun and inviting.

Inspired by a photo of The Stitch Lab Studio, YuKonstruct volunteers came up with the idea to put a large seam ripper with the words "no regrets" on the door to entice makers into starting their next sewing project.

YuKonstruct is the first makerspace in Canada's north. Our mission is to provide access to shared space, quality tools, available expertise, and a collaborative environment to help makers build anything!

Step 1: Design

The design for the door was created in CorelDRAW.

We found a great seam ripper icon by Hollie Burgess on the noun project.

In CorelDRAW we laid out the seam ripper (with the addition of a "no regrets" banner) and the words "Sewing Room" on a page the size of the door and then we adjusted the sizes until we were happy with the look.

We left room on the door to post 8.5"x11" notices or schedules in the future, if people want to book the room for workshops or specific projects.

Once we were happy with the file, we transferred it to Make the Cut, the software for our vinyl cutting machine.

Step 2: Painting the Door

There was a lot of debate on what colour the door should be but ultimately the winning selection was a very happy pink.

We removed the door knob and then we painted the door with a few coats of acrylic paint from the hardware store.

Step 3: Cutting the Vinyl Decals

We used YuKonstruct's KNK Zing cutting machine to cut the words and seam ripper image out of donated white adhesive vinyl.

Since we were cutting a long image, we fed a long length of vinyl (with its backing paper) directly into the machine instead of using a cutting mat.

Step 4: Transfering the Decals to the Door

We couldn't find any transfer tape available locally (the Whitehorse Walmart has recently stopped carrying it) but we stumbled upon an even better (and cheaper!) option for transferring vinyl decals.

After weeding out the unwanted white vinyl bits, we applied clear contact paper over the decals. The contact paper let us lift the decals off the backing paper and position them easily on the door.

In addition to being less expensive than transfer tape, contact paper is also available in a wide variety of sizes and we were able to find a large roll which was perfect for this project.