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Saturday 4 August 2012

Sewing room remodel

Lots of time spent on this, plus two attempts to put the railing for the shelves up.  They fell down the first time - yes, just after I had put everything on them.  Great.  We are now very familiar with the special rawlplugs which are designed to be used with plasterboard and cavity walls - and they work really well.
My sewing room is really small, and I have far too much stuff in it!  Having said that, the new floor to ceiling shelves are making a massive difference.  I didn't take any before photos, out of shame, so here are the after ones.

These photos show the back wall with the new shelving.  Four shelves, and I have tried to use them with some idea of organisation.
On the top shelf I have boxes of fabric.  These hold smaller random pieces.  At one point they were organised by colour, and one day they will be again!  Fat quarters and other pieces of fabric are kept in some of the drawer units which are on the right hand wall of the room:


These are organised by colour.  The left hand stack holds squares of denim in the sizes I use most frequently - 3", 4", 6" and 8".
Back to the shelves.  The second shelf from the top is my project shelf. It looks a bit scary all in one place!

The plastic boxes each hold one project - usually 5 sets of a bag, but one box holds phone case pieces in three sizes, a second holds the pieces for about 50 pencil cases, and another holds the pieces to make pocket purses.
On the right, the blue box holds lots of different, smaller projects, each one in its own zipped wallet.  The baskets hold smaller projects still - square purses, flower pieces, straps, strips for flower bags and so on.
The next shelf down holds all my "notions".
I have made use of the plastic boxes holding washing liquid pouches to organise cord, ribbon, elastic, velcro and lace into their own containers.  This will make life a lot simpler!
 The big blue crate is half full of zips.  These still need further organisation - I have plans to group them according to size.  However, even this is an improvement on the bags they were previously stored in!

Here you see my threads.  I would really like to get a wall mounted spool rack - I'm intending to start hunting for one large enough for all my threads.  Beyond the threads, the small boxes hold my button collection - now sorted by colour!
The bottom shelf holds books - bag making, quilting, knitting and cross stitch.  It also has a scary looking bag full of pattern pieces which I now have no excuse not to organise!  Tomorrow in town I need to get plastic wallets, folder dividers and a folder so I can make a start.
Under this shelf are more boxes.

Three hold scraps of denim which I am using to make crazy patchwork. I just can't bear to throw them away!  I also have two large boxes of card making equipment which I now have plans to take along to Legends Youth group at some point.

Under the window is my sewing area:

I have my sewing machine in the centre, my embroidery machine to the side and a cutting area to the left.

The sides of the cabinet hold the supplies I use most often.  Behind the right hand side is a space where I am storing my small sewing machine (which I use for sewing days) and the case for my large Bernina.
Behind the left hand side is my glory hole...




Hmmmm.... I do know what is there, honestly!  Under the cabinet are my stores of wadding and interfacing.  In front are my scraps of fabric.  I did clear a lot of this while watching the gymnastics yesterday - I cut out lots of owl wings for phone cases and purses, and lots of flower pieces.  There is a lot left still!
On the floor at the other end of the shelves, hidden from the door by the stacking units of drawers, are two more crates:
The bottom box has the pieces for the bags I am making for the Casuarina House children.  The top one is full of part-made bags, from the time when when I made one bag at a time.  I really must complete them!
There you go.  Oh, and I know the floor looks disgusting.  Believe it or not it was hoovered yesterday. Making bags from denim is a really mucky business at times.
What I haven't shown you are the boxes of fabric in the hall and the stocks in the garage.  My intention is to make those disappear by cutting them up into more projects.  I'll let you know how that goes!
I'm sharing this project at these link parties:

Serenity youPhotobucket
Photobucket
Serenity SaturdayPolkadot prettiesSaturday Sew and Tell 
Wildflowers and Whimsy

Sew Crafty Saturday
Strut your stuff Saturday
Once upon a weekend

3 comments:

  1. Wow - I just found your blog via the Six Sisters linkup. What a wonderful cause and a wonderful idea. Also - you have a lot of materials. How do you keep up with that?!

    Sarah
    http://acatlikecuriosity.blogspot.co.uk

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  2. Really fantastic! Love all of your sewing stuff! Thank you for sharing. Visiting from Six Sisters'. Would love it if you would share this at my Make it Pretty Monday party at The Dedicated House. http://thededicatedhouse.blogspot.com/2012/07/make-it-pretty-monday-week-8.html Hope to see you at the bash! Toodles, Kathryn @TheDedicatedHouse

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  3. My sewing room is all over one end of the basement - my boxes and containers are on 2 bookshelves, in and on various cabinets, in a dresser and file cabinet in another room, in Rubbermaid containers in another room --- it's organized but all over the place! I think we both just have too much stuff to ever contain it all - as we're using up things, new stuff is coming in to replace it! I like it that way, LOL!

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