July Program: Fabric Folding & Storage Solutions

Hello everyone, and welcome to what I like to call being a fly on the wall.

I’d like to thank Nancy, Cindy, Gina and Candy for allowing us a peek inside their sewing rooms and for sharing with all of us the solutions they have found for that pesky problem ... storage.

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First up is Nancy, whose room is so bright and cheery.

Her hubby rigged up an ironing board surface along the wall on the right.

They added some wire drawers underneath so as to not lose any precious space.

That sewing machine extension table is to die for and look…more table space, a whole 6 feet of it.

What you may or may not have noticed is the way in which Nancy organizes her thread, on the wall and out of her way.  The same is done with her scissors.  One Christmas her husband received a magnetic strip for the wall that is usually for screwdrivers; but Nancy now uses it for her scissors.

Did you see the batting? I didn’t either right away; but it’s in the last photo up top in that clear tub. She has a wire shelving system spanning the perimeter of the room and keeps stuff she doesn’t use on a regular basis up and out of the way.

It looks great Nancy, Thanks for sharing!!

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Cindy is up next. She has a large ironing station too, are you seeing a trend here?

This is definitely something that you can make yourself if that standard ironing board you are using isn’t enough space. Cindy says that she just bought a regular wire shelving unit, then purchased a 20x60 piece of MDF board and covered it in batting and fabric. The shelving unit not only supports the MDF board (which isn’t attached by the way); but also offers a lot of storage, and as you can see she even uses S-Hooks for hanging other ironing necessities. Now let’s all look closely at Cindy’s fabric…see how it’s folded, you might have remembered her demonstrating this during the meeting today.  The process was learned from Jeni's blog: In Color Order.  She has some great videos on how to fold fabric of varying sizes as well as how to organize and build a fabric stash.

Thanks, Cindy, for sharing a great Do-It-Yourself solution.

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Gina has a lot of ideas to share with all of you readers, so sit back and enjoy.

This is Gina’s room. The wall unit and cutting station are from St. Louis Closet Company.

Now let’s zoom in and check out these great little baskets which hold all of her in progress projects.

Here is how Gina organizes her fabric, by color and in a drawer that is easily accessible. She uses a method from Turning*Turning for folding her fabric, which she too shared with us during the meeting.

Lastly, here is how she wrangled those pesky but useful scraps. She even organized them by color.

Gina has all of her scrapbooking, gift-wrapping, etc. supplies organized too in the same room. So if you want to steal borrow some of her ideas, you should ask her about it.

Thanks Gina, it looks great.

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Candy rounds out the bunch and it’s funny because she said that she was “embarrassed” as her fabric was organized not only by color; but also fabric type, etc. Well, Candy…you are in good company here with us.

Here is her wall of wire drawers, and yes everything is organized so nicely. These drawers are great, because, as she says, if she wants to look through all of it, she can pull the whole drawer out and take it to her cutting table.

Candy, thanks for sharing.

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Before I close this post, I wanted to share a few quick photos of my studio and how I wrangle my fabric.

That center drafting table is where I do everything, sew, cut fabric, and when it’s time to iron, I break out the "dorm-room sized" tabletop ironing board and press away.

This is where all of my fabric is stored, in an old filing cabinet. FQs are in that clear drawer system sitting to the right.

This is what is hiding inside the drawers…surprise!

While I’d love to be able to have my fabric on a shelf so I could see all of it at once, due to a drastically slopped ceiling that wasn’t in the cards, the filing cabinet was my solution. I too use Jeni's method to fold my fabric, although I get lazy about it sometimes and I end up having to refold it all anyway.

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Again, a big thanks to all of the participants.

Nancy

Cindy

Gina

and Candy

No matter if you have a dedicated sewing room, corner of the living room, share the basement, or even a garage; it’s finding the solution that is best for you. I hope this gave you a few ideas.

If any of this spurred further questions or you have a comment to share, ask away or hop on over to Flickr to continue the conversation.