My organized sewing workspace

OK, let’s face it, you all know I’m a bit messy, but when it comes to my sewing room and supplies, there is method to my madness.

Space is at a premium in our home just like at yours perhaps. Our place is small by American suburb standards, but huge by European or city-living standards. It’s a lot of room for fabric, thread, yarn, craft books, and notions to be strewn about, but I don’t want to make my husband look at my work-in-progress ALL the time (just most of the time), so I recently undertook a serious organization project.

The Plan

1. Gather up and take a look-see.
   I gathered up all my sewing stuff into one place so that I could take inventory. I pulled out fabric hidden in the back of drawers, patterns shoved in the bookshelf, thread hanging out in my travel bag, and pin cushions from all sorts of places. Once I had everything in the same place, I had a better idea of what I would be dealing with. I had a bit a fabric, a stack of sewing magazines, several dozen pattern envelopes, and lots of little bitty notions. The most striking discovery was my penchant for clearance/sale zippers. I love invisible zippers!
2. Sort and filter.
   I never realized how many packs of hooks and eyes I had until they’d all been gathered up. I decided not to filter any of them out of my notions collection, but instead I sorted them into little, glass spice jars so that I could keep them organized by size and still identifiable in their spice jars.
   I had lots of fabric scraps and interfacing scraps that weren’t really big enough to be useful to me and weren’t important enough to take up more space, so I filtered them out of my sewing assemblage and into the rubbish bin.
3. Decide on a sewing space.
   Initially I had been sewing at the kitchen table, but I had trouble clearing off the table in time for supper each day. I can’t stand having a kitchen table full of clutter when it’s time to eat, so I needed a different solution. My husband’s very flexible about dealing with the aftermath of my hobbies and crafts, so he didn’t mind if I took a corner of the dining room to set up a permanent sewing nook. This nook isn’t big, so I can’t have lots of storage furniture; I knew I would need to use wall-space to organize and store my tools.
4. Find the best use of the space.
   I have my grandmother’s sewing cabinet. It’s one of those little tables that has a folding top, so it takes up very little floor space. I pushed it to the sewing corner and then placed my machine. On the wall behind the machine I left the chalkboard that was already there so that I could use it for my notes and I could hang my sewing instructions on it.

   I wouldn’t have enough room in this corner for my ironing board, fabrics, and patterns, so I put these aside to find another home for them.

   Next I needed a place for my most common notions. I wanted shelves that weren’t deep, but could hold lots of little items, would provide easy access to my notions, and wouldn’t be too hard to install. I decided to go to a local thrift shop to look for shelving. After a cruise around the shop, I spotted a wooden, knick-knack display shelf. It was quite heavy, probably made of pine, but it was a good size. Actually, I found two of these shelves, but another lady grabbed the second one from me! I only had room for one shelf anyway, lady! After I brought it home, my husband helped me hang it on the wall in my little atelier.
   
   I placed common notions on the shelf. For things like buttons I put them into glass jars for easy storage. For machine needles I hot-glued magnets to the backs of needle cases and then stuck all these needle cases to tea tins. The tins hold measuring tapes and markers. I didn’t have enough room for all my thread, so I left most of them in another room on my thread rack, the one my dad made for my mom about 20 years ago.

5. Lighting.

With a coupon from a national craft chain-store, I purchased a task light to place above my machine.

Outside my atelier, or “sweat shop” as my husband lovingly calls it, I’ve placed my fabric stash inside the living room ottoman. The fabric is mostly organized by type: linen, knits, wools, and cottons. For my pattern envelope collection, I’ve placed them in two drawers in the guest room, but created my pattern database here on my blog so that I can easily search through them. I’ve hung the ironing board on the back of the guest room door, but one day I hope to get one of those wall mounted, fold-away ironing boards. Ah, I can dream…