Organizing the Sewing Space
Quilting can be daunting enough without figuring out how to organize everything, regardless of the sewing space you have, so I wanted to share my tips, and pics, of how I organized things to keep it looking pretty and ready to sew.
But lately, as I (Amanda) focused on building our Shopify site and inventory and email accounts (gotta love Gmail – you can just keep creating email accounts until you find the right one!) and Mom and I worked on organizing the boutique, I hadn’t sewn anything since March. March!
My craft area had become, well, a disaster. In addition to quilting, I curate sets of crystals. So I had not only fabric and notions odds and ends cluttering my table, but crystals of all sorts, notes pages, bobbins, scraps, card stock and a couple games from the girls taking over the area since I hadn’t been down there (basement) in so long.
Well, I took it back this past weekend. I found a couple tall bookcases for a crazy price of $35 each at Target, gathered some Ziploc containers, found my acid-free magazine boards and dumped my fabric out to re-organize everything from mini-bolts of yardage to finally cutting my scraps into usable strips.
I’m going to include links to everything that I can to help guide you to what you may want to use or purchase in your own space, to keep you moving forward on your quilting path.
Bookcases: $35 from Target – we have cement walls so I couldn’t do the wall-anchoring routine; instead, I used felt pads to lean them towards the back ever-so-slightly and put my heaviest items on the bottom to anchor them. If you have small children, you definitely want to anchor them to the walls.
Ziploc containers for smaller scraps or collections. I have some matching charms and jelly rolls/strips that I wanted to keep together, as well as very little of some colors, so it seemed wasteful to devote a large storage container to them.
I like the larger deeper containers best but for small amounts, definitely go for the “sandwich” size to maximize space.
Coral your bobbins in a jar and keep them from untangling with these bobbin clamps. I ordered more last night – total game changer!
I often prefer to use clips over pins, and these come in their own cute tin so I can put them anywhere – automatic organizing for the win!
My sewing machine sits on this table - while it shakes a bit, it's perfect for my space and gave me more room when quilting so the fabric has somewhere to go besides over the edge!
I put my lesser-used rulers on a top shelf of one of the bookcases, and keep my commonly used rulers on my main crafting table. Using these ruler-holders from Omni not only help keep the space look nice, but I love that they aren’t another plastic gadget. I also set it on top of a monitor shelf I had on hand, so I can slide a three-part bamboo tray I’ve had that holds pins and notions for easy access while I’m at my machine.
I snagged this Titan magnetic tray to throw my pins as I’m sewing, to keep them from falling to the floor and pricking little toes after-the-fact.
For fabrics where I have more variety in the color tone, containers with locking lids such as these are ideal. I used my label maker to clearly mark all containers. This is a pack of 10 but really, can you have too many containers?
For charm packs, you can’t beat these containers from Sterilite. They are a bit pricey though, so I only bought what I needed.
Most importantly, I had a lot of yardage that was buried in some containers, drawers, boxes, anywhere I could put it. But that meant I didn’t really know what I had. Magazine boards and dress shirt clips to the rescue! I created mini bolts of fabric that now look nice and show me exactly what I have!
So in the end, repurposing some of what I had and investing less than $100 into some additional items, I was able to take back my area and get ready to sew! I’d love to hear about your organizing tips!
Happy Organizing!
