My New and Improved Sewing Closet

Time to bring this one home. This was one of the things on my to do list this summer.

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Hi there GYCT readers! Sally here from Daisy Chain Creations, where I blog about my crafting endeavors.  I'm here today to share with you how I organized my sewing closet. 

In my dreams, I would have this amazing craft/sewing room (I could post pictures of the ones that make me sigh, but I won't). One where I could leave my sewing machine out, my projects on the cutting table, with a comfortable chair and a lovely painted room.  Since that is not coming true anytime soon (I'm talking when the 2 oldest are off to collage...which actually is closer than I'd like), I've decided to show you my closet "make over" and share a few tips on how I make a "portable" sewing room work.

Here's the before pictures of my closet, which I'll admit is probably at it's worst since we moved into the house 2 years ago.  With the end of school and summer travel, I just kind of piled in things.  The closet also doubles as the vacuum storage and work out equipment storage.  This is just our closet by the side door to our house.  The shelves were there when we bought the house.

Here's the nice spacious closet empty. It really is a nice sized closet...a lot better than the 3 drawer dresser I had when we lived in a 2 bedroom apartment...so I shouldn't complain.

Here is all of the stuff that was in the closet.  When it came to organizing, I tried to put all the like things together as I took them out.

I also made a note of what didn't work about how I had arranged things before.  Here's the short list:

-I was buying doubles and sometimes triples of thread colors because I couldn't easily see what I had.

-I couldn't see or get to my fabric easily.

-I had things I hardly used on the shelves at eye level.

-My little drawers were just full of stuff and not well organized.

-I needed a place to keep my ongoing projects where I could see them and keep them in mind...so I would finish them:)  Projects were currently stuffed into a basket.

And here is the after.

I put all of my fabric where I could easily see it and organized it by colors and or types of fabric.  The basket up in the left corner has all of the 'specialty' type fabrics that don't fold and stack easily.  In the top right corner is stuffed the bags of batting.  The little containers have been sorted and labeled.  I also organized and labeled the little drawers.  The bags on the bottom left are just those reusable shopping bags. One has my scraps that I'm cutting into squares for my quilting mother, another has the things that needed to be mended and another has the scraps that my kids can use for projects and fun.  I wanted to make them easy to grab and pull out, without making a mess or having to rummage.  If I'm watching a movie I can now just pull out the bag of mending or cut some squares.

This is probably the biggest change.  I wanted to use the door space some how, but couldn't nail or screw anything into it...so nothing too heavy, everything is hung up with the command strips.  Here's what I added: the thread holder for my most used threads, a magnetic board to keep track of my "commitments" and a cork board that will now hold reminders of what I need for upcoming projects...hopefully this means less trips to places like JoAnn's and Hobby Lobby.

 And one final look...it no longer doubles as the work out equipment storage, but I do have to fit the vacuum in here because there is no other place to put it.

 Like I said, I kind of look at my sewing room as portable. I sew in what would be the dining room of our house, but for us is the music room.  That little folding table is where I put my sewing machine when I set up shop.  I just like to be able to take it down when we have company coming.  Because sometimes this is a quick set up/take down time I have some things to help in the process. 

The biggest help is this basket.  As I grab my machine and table, this is right there ready to go as well.

I keep in here the things I need at my fingertips when sewing.  I also use it to keep the current project in the works contained if I have to take down shop.  Then when I set up again, it's all right there.

This is just what I consider my essentials.

 This is the other thing that I added that will hopefully help me be a little more focused and keep things from getting piled up in the closet.  You see a lot of the piles were actually projects that I had in the works...sometimes I like to multitask and work on a couple of things at a time.  It keeps things interesting.  

The original idea came from here.  This idea caught me eye because I was trying to think of a way to utilize the hanging space of the closet.  I just got some pants hangers, gallon zip lock bags and came up with this little print out that helps me to know what I have going on with each project. Each bag contains one project. As I gather the things for that project they go into the bag and then when I want to work on it, I can just grab it.

 Here's the print out.  I added what I did, because I sometimes need to know why I'm making something...sometimes it's not for me or it's at the request of someone else. Sometimes I have a timeline/deadline, so I included that as well. For the supplies, I divided it up so that I could take an inventory of what I already had and then needed.  Then I added the bottom a 'Things to buy' section that I cut off and pin to my board.  The 'Ended up Using' box and the comments box are more for blogging purposes.  It's nice to know what fabric I used and so on, so now I just jot it down. As for the comments, since I grab the bag and take it to my sewing machine, I can write things down as I go that I want to remember to write about in the blog post.

 

So there you have it.  Hope this helps you get your sewing space a little more organized!