It’s officially time to make the annual pilgrimage. 

Let’s. Go. To. Ikea.

If you are like me, you live just far enough away from Ikea that it’s inconvenient to get to and you need to make the most out of every trip. 

When we made over one of our spare bedrooms into a sewing room, I naturally had to find furniture to fill it. 

Step number 1 was the most important to get right:

The ideal sewing table. 

I can only manage the 3 hour (one way) trip to Ikea once or twice a year, so whatever I chose, had to be right. 

Hours of researching, playing with Ikea planning tools, and mapping things out on my spare bedroom floor later, I settled on a plan. 

Now a year later, I’m still in love with the layout we chose and wouldn’t have done it any differently a second time. 

Today I’m bringing you into my own little sewing room, and giving you all the details on my custom Ikea sewing table, going into all of the factors I considered, and how you how you can make your perfect ikea sewing table too. 

How to make an Ikea sewing table with storage

Materials

Ikea countertop
Alex drawers
Circular Saw
Screw driver 
L-brackets
Linnemon legs (optional)

The Concept

It’s tough to call this an Ikea hack since there is so little altering really going on here, but sometimes the simplest options are the most functional so thats what I went with. 

The concept for this table is so simple it almost feels silly putting it into its own post. 

The Alex drawers serve as the legs of the table, and the counter top lays across the top of the Alex drawers as your working surface. 

Ta Da!

I know super complicated, but it gives you TONS of storage and gives you a much more fancy looking work surface than just the typical linnemon work table that Ikea has. 

Not to mention gives you the ability to customize it to perfectly fit your space corner to corner with no gaps. 

Determine the Shopping List

Since this will be customized to your specific space, you’ll have to figure out exactly what your situation requires in terms of materials from Ikea

In this case, I was going for a single work surface running the full length of the room, with drawers on the ends and in the middle to create two working spaces. One for me to sew at, the other for my husbands desktop computer.

To get started measure out the full length of the wall you want to build the desk into. 

My wall ended up measuring X” so we purchased two X” countertops to span the length of the room. 

We were going for two separate work stations and I was not interested in sharing drawers with the computer station. 

For our project we ultimately settled on the two countertops to span the room, and four sets of Alex drawers to support them underneath each end of the two countertop pieces. 

Measure out your room and determine how much length you’ll need to fit the space and how many drawer sets you’ll need to support the countertop from drooping. 

This will help you determine your official shopping list

Dry fit the countertops

Once you’ve gone to ikea, spent hours ooo’ing and ahh’ing, ate some Swedish meatballs, and made your way home, it’s time to assemble. 

Step number 1 is to assemble the Alex drawers (we’ll level them out later just assemble them for now)

Step number 2 is to cut and dry fit the countertops. 

Since we were going to have to piece together two countertops, we had to be a little mindful about where the seam was going to be between them. 

Technically we could have only cut one of the two countertops leaving one of them full length, however that would have put the seam right in the center of a work stations where you sit under.

Since it would be in the open space there would be no support for the seam, and very quickly, you’d end up with a crash to the floor under the weight of the sewing machine. 

Instead we cut down both lengths of countertop so the seam was (almost) perfectly in the middle and each side of the seam would be supported by a set of Alex drawers.

No seams in the way of projects, and the desk is fully supported so it won’t crash. Win. win. 

Make your cuts for each countertop, and set it on top of the Alex drawers to dry fit in the space. 

Once you are happy with the custom fit of the countertops, you can set the countertops aside and work on leveling out the Alex drawers. 

Final Assembly

Although we were going for a “built-in” look, we weren’t actually securing this desk to the wall. 

Since there would be nothing stopping the Alex drawers from knocking off level as we were dry fitting the countertops, we waited to level them until we were ready to officially assemble everything. 

If you have a newer build house, you may not need to do too much leveling, however in my 50 year old house, there was some serious warping in the hardwood floors. 

Go figure the bedroom shares a wall with the second floor bathroom and we found some evidence of previous bathroom floods from previous owners that did some serious warping to the hardwood floors. 

Once we navigated the drawer leveling, all we had to do was drop the countertops in place and secure them to the Alex drawers with some L-brackets we picked up from Lowes. 

That’s it! Add some super cute chairs and a sewing machine and you’re good to start sewing!

Why I went this route

I don’t know how many hours I played around with the standard table sizes that Ikea offers, no matter what I did, I couldn’t find a combination that looked like it belonged in the room. 

I was limited on space, and the room had to be multi-purpose for my husband as well, so going with a custom option was not only cheaper in the long run (given other Ikea options) but gives you a very elegant looking solution that fits with the room perfectly. 

The elephant in the room of sewing tables: If I went through the effort of custom making my table, why didn’t I cut a hole to drop the sewing machine down to the deck level?

The answer is actually pretty simple. It’s (currently) the only surface I have in the room to do every step of making a quilt. 

From cutting, to sewing, to quilting. I needed the space to be versatile, and having a hole in the table would cause some issues the first time I went to go cut fabric. 

Not to mention it was super useful when I was working from home during COVID and needed a desk other than the dining table…

So I left the table as is, no holes. Maybe some day if I find the perfect cutting table for the room. We’ll see! If I ever decide to go ahead with it, I’ll be sure to update this article with those instructions!

But if you wanted to go ahead and cut a hole in the table to sink the sewing machine, that would be a fantastic addition to this already great solution.

XXXX has a great tutorial for sinking a sewing machine in a table, if you want to go this route, be sure to check it out!

What makes a good sewing table

There are a handful of factors that typically contribute to whether you consider your sewing table “good” or “bad”.

• Overall table top dimensions
• Space around the sewing machine
• Leg room underneath
• Storage
• Versatility
• Ease of sewing machine use

The table top dimensions are likely the most important aspect so we’ll go over that in more detail in a second. Lets talk quickly about the other things on this list though:

Space around the sewing machine

The meat of any project that uses a sewing machine will be to the left of the sewing machine.

If your table has storage on the right hand side pushing your sewing machine so far left on the table that there is no surface to the left of the machine, you may get frustrated with your quilt constantly falling off the table as you quilt.

If you’ve gotten a chance to quilt anything larger than a baby blanket, you’ll know that gravity is the hardest thing to combat when quilting. Never actually quilted your own quilt before? You can learn more about what outside factors like gravity make it harder in our 5 tips for machine quilting at home here! 

Considering these types of outside factors and how your table can help prevent them from affecting your quilting is one of the number one ways to ensure you love your sewing table invest from day one.

Leg Room Underneath

Quilting may look like a sitting down job, but we all know it’s not. 

Sew a seam, go to the ironing board. Go sew a few pieces, trim them up afterward. Up, down, up, down. 

Having extra room around your feet allows you to be able to easily get up and down out of the chair when you need to. 

Your legs aren’t cramped under the desk where you are constantly hitting knees against the sides or storage units of the desk. 

Not to mention fitting a foot pedal under there too. 

The more space you have underneath, the less cramped you will feel. 

Storage

This one pretty much speaks for itself. The easier it is to stay organized and have everything at your finger tips, the more productive and enjoyable the process will be. 

Versatility/Ease of Use

Do you have enough room to have a designated cutting area and a designated sewing area?

The Ferraris of sewing tables typically include a hole in them to drop the sewing machine to the deck height make quilting easier, however this isn’t always the ideal depending on your space.

If your sewing table does double duty as your cutting table like mine does, a big hole in the center would make it a bit harder to use on a regular basis. 

Consider how versatile you want the space to be, a dropped sewing machine is super luxurious, practical, and convenient when using the sewing machine, but if you need the surface for multiple tasks, this may be more of a hinderance than anything else. 

How wide should a sewing table be

In short, as wide and deep as you can manage in your space. 

Sewing machine are made with all of the mechanics on the right hand side of the machine. This means that the entirety of the quilt will live to the left of the machine. 

When Ikea hacking your own sewing table, consider where the weight of your quilt will go when you are physically quilting it. 

The more table you have to the left of your machine, the easier it will be to spread out and quilt your quilt. 

The same goes for the depth, imagine stuffing an entire quilt behind the sewing machine and still having enough room to manipulate it. 

The more depth you have, the easier quilting will be. 

This is of course all based on the space you have available to use as well. 

If you only have a corner of the living room, a large dining table sized sewing table may not be feasible for the space even if the budget was no issue. 

But making your own custom ikea sewing table will allow you to make the most of the space you have available without limiting you to standard size desks and tables – not to mention look beautiful at the same time! 

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