Friday, December 13, 2013

Storage methods and binding the musical quilt

The REAL Studio Tour

So today's tour is all about storage. I don't have anything revolutionary in the area of storage, but I almost have enough. I have a four bedroom house by myself so all that closet space is great for storing quilts and supplies.
About a year ago I did some cleaning up in the sewing studio and bought some items to make it easier to find stuff when I looking for it. Here is the top of my bookshelf where I used bread pans to keep various items - pencils, pens, tape, and all sorts of little things. Kind of a mess.

Now the mess is all wrangled in this drawer system I bought for $6.88 and the pans will go back to baking bread.

I also took these old storage drawers and this sewing box, sorted the contents, put like thing together, put the small stuff like beads into the drawer system on the bookcase ...

and put the contents into these snap containers I bought at JoAnn's for half price plus and extra 10% off when I was visiting my friend, Peg, over New Years 2012. Now all the zippers are together, the laces and ribbons are together, etc. when they were in multiple containers. Again, it will make it easier to find what I am look for and I also pitched some useless stuff. The old storage drawers will be going out to the garage for storing nails and screws and not to the trash.

My regular readers will remember I fixed up my fabric storage room - yes, I have a room! - about 2 years ago. In that room I have shelves lining the walls for my fabric which I organize by color. I keep my batiks separate from my printed fabric. I have a table in the center of the room which is handy for auditioning fabrics although right now it is piled with scraps, UFO's, books, and orphan blocks. I totally forgot to take a pictures last night so this is an old one from when I was putting the room back together. Believe me these shelves are full now. I have another shelf in the room for UFO's and where I have gathered fabric for future project. There is another shelf for my hand dyed fabrics and thread. The closet in this room is full of finished quilts, large yardage hung on hangers, and storage boxes with flannel, specialty fabrics, and scraps. It is a luxury having an entire extra bedroom for just storing fabric and I love it. When I go in there it is like having my own quilt shop to go shopping in whenever I want to! I will post more pictures next week when we show our real studios.


I got the binding on the musical quilt last evening. I still need to do the hand sewing. I did my typical sewn mitered corners. I did post a tutorial on how I make these sewn mitered corner on June 20, 2012 if you want to see how it is done. The first time I did this it took me an hour and a half to get all four corners done. Now I can sew the corners in just a few minutes. Of course, it took a few times to figure out a system so once I did that I got much quicker.

I got this lovely gift basket yesterday at work. It had coffee, tea, hot chocolate, some sweets, a stone coaster, mug, and some Cracker Jack in it. I donated the coffee to the guys at work since I don't drink coffee. The basket is nice and sturdy with handles and it will find a second use in the sewing room as a scrap basket. It is not too big, but big enough. Right now I don't have a scrap basket by my machine and the scraps that are still usable end up in piles everywhere.

6 comments:

Beth said...

Lucky you to have all that storage for fabric! I have PLENTY of room, but its not all in the same place! I was thinking of moving to a different room, but my sewing room gets all the air conditioning noise. It does not bother me, but it would bother a guest! Guess I just need to..aHEM, ORGANIZE what I have! lol I use those applique pins for my binding too...

Vicki W said...

You have as much sewing space as I have. Isn't it wonderful!

elle said...

I have thought about those drawer systems but I wonder if the drawers might be too small. I asked my hubby about those huge mechanic things on wheels. Whoa those are pricey! ;)

Magpie's Mumblings said...

I like that little drawer system. It's similar to something I have but it looks like yours would hole more than mine.

Mary said...

Not only do you have great space, you have great organization. Thanks for sharing.

Sharon - IN said...

That is grand that you have so much room! Lucky you!