sewing room – 3and3quarters

May 11th: Sewing Room Organisation & Storage Tips!

Now, I’m possibly not the best person to be chatting about sewing room organisation and storage! One glance into my currently messy sewing room and you’d get it! My organisation skills are chaotic, simplistically naive and (perhaps) a little non-existent! While my storage areas are overflowing, out of order and oddly colour-coded!

However, I think there are a few things here and there that I can share and inspire you with! And I’ve also been researching on how one or two other quilters have organised and stored things which I’ll share with you as well!

Firstly, let’s get into a few of the ways I organise and store things in my sewing room! I’m one of those people that like to re-use as much as possible and keep things quite simple. So I have lots of bits sticking out of glass jars and broken mugs (rotary blades, pencils, scissors, buttons and paint brushes!), items secured in pretty but battered tins, fabrics roughly folded and stuffed backed onto their shelves as well as a tonne of those handy plastic containers you can get at the $2 shop! 😀

Tins:

You may’ve caught me mentioning in my recent Sewing Room Tour video that I love to use tins to store and organise lots of stuff! From pins to threads to hexies to notions. Pretty decorative tins are everywhere and I love it! I’ve been lucky in the fact that my Dad is a keen collector of Arnott’s Biscuits tins as he worked for them for nearly 30 years! So very happily we have lots to spare so that I can store all of my sewing knick-knacks in them! I’ve also sourced a lot of my smaller tins online from little indie companies such as Belle & Boo, Emma Bridgewater and Lark.

Fat Quarter Drawer

A little while ago I purchased this hard-plastic type drawer from Spotlight made especially for storing fat quarters. It’s about 50cm (20″) long and can hold well up to 20-30 FQs. I’ve found it so handy to quickly place new FQs into it and then be able to pull the draw out and easily rummage through what’s in there.

Fabric

I’m quite boring when it comes to organising and storing my fabrics. I don’t really have any fancy folding or hanging system. I have a main bookshelf next to my sewing table that has all of my favourite or most used fabrics in a very relaxed colour-coded system: Whites, creams, yellows, browns and oranges on the top shelf, pinks and reds on the next two shelves, green and blue hues on the two after that and then right down the bottom I have my purples, greys and blacks. The majority of these fabrics are all half-metre (or half-yard) pieces or less. I tend to store all of my larger cuts of fabrics in the plastic containers I have under my sewing table. They’re quite easy to slide out and to have a quick little rummage through when I need to. These aren’t colour or range coordinated. Just folded up nicely and stacked one on top of the other.

Very conveniently, one of the crafty YouTubers I watch, Melanie Ham just recently uploaded this video showing how she organises her fabrics in her sewing room! I think if I had the time (and cupboard space!), this would be such a great idea to follow! I hope it inspires you just as much as it has me! 🙂

Another YouTube video I found that was all about sewing room organisation was this one by Stephanie De Pasquale Soebbing from Quilt Addicts Anonymous. I found that she had a fab idea for storing your ironing board, jelly rolls and pre-cuts as well as another neat and lovely way to store and organise fabrics.

Tools:

I tend to try and keep all of the tools I’ll need when cutting and sewing dotted around my cutting mat as this is like my central space in my sewing room. So here I have my rotary blades and quilting rulers close to hand along with my pins, thread snips, lead pencils, essential paper-piecing tools as well as threads and binding clips. These items are either stored in glass jars, pretty tins or placed in an easy to reach spot on my pink IKEA shelf.

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So as I sit here and look around at all of the different areas in my sewing room, there are still so many little things to do with the way I store and organise stuff that I could share with you… Like the way I’ve organised all of my craft stickers and die-cuts, to how and where I have my coat-hangers ready to hang a finished block or quilt, to the way I organise and store all of my patterns and paper-trail as well as the way I’ve organised my books based on how much I love them!

But unfortunately, I just don’t have the time to get into every nook and cranny that cleverly hides away a WIP or stray crafting notion! Today I just wanted to stick to the major areas that most people tend to struggle on finding a solution for… I hope I’ve helped in some little way!

Though in honesty, all of us quilters have our own unique way on how we like to organise our sewing spaces and store all of our wonderful fabrics and notions. I don’t think anyway is the wrong way. As long as whatever system you use works for you and the limits of your sewing room than that’s all that matters!

Have you got any fab ideas on how you organise or store things in your sewing room? Feel free to share it with us in the comments section below!

Happy Sewing, Friends!

May 10th: My Sewing Space Set Up

For a while now, I’ve been trying to come up with a way of showing you how I have my sewing space set up as well as how I move in and around it when I’m sewing. I’d considered doing a video about it on my YouTube channel but realised quickly that the software I use to edit my videos wasn’t quite good enough to get the vision I had in my head onto the screen!

So we’re going old-school and doing a blog post about it instead!

So this is a birds-eye view of my sewing room.

I set it out in a way where I would be able to work as efficiently and hassle free as possible.

When I’m cutting my fabrics I stand along the left side of the sewing table in front of where my quilting rulers hang from a hook. Close at hand on and around that pink IKEA shelf I have my rotary blades, pencils, thread snips and pins ready to go as I cut and piece blocks together.

Then I have my sewing machine set up as close to the window as possible so that I’m working in natural light. (FUN FACT: I do a lot of my sewing standing up! I find I work so much more efficiently and quicker when I do. I’m able to do this as the table is quite tall and is at the perfect height for me to easily sew while standing. The only time I sit and sew is when I’m quilting and sewing on the binding!) The ironing board permanently stands in the corner and in front of the window ready to press units and blocks as soon as they come out of the machine.

Along the back of the room, I have my design wall. It’s nothing fancy. Just odd pieces of white cotton batting simply pinned onto the wall using thumb tacks! It spans about 60″x65″ (1.5mx1.6m) along the wall and can easily accommodate most of the quilt top designs I make. I find having a design wall such a help! Sometimes you can get so engrossed in what you’re doing close up that you forget to step back and see what the bigger picture looks like. With a design wall, I can place all of my blocks up, step back and see what (if anything) needs to changed, swapped or binned!

Another big area in my room that I had to plan cleverly was the placement of my computer and desk. I wanted it to be in a position where it would be central to me when I’m sewing so that I can listen and change music, read and follow a tutorial or pattern, find inspiration easily as well as to document my sewing adventures and knowledge on my blog and on my YouTube channel.

In terms of storage, I have a few book shelves here and there where I lazily (yet strategically) stack my fabrics, craft accessories and books. I also have a few huge plastic containers of fabric meterage under my sewing table as well as tubs full of scraps, strips, leftover batting and lots of WIPs!

So that’s the basic layout of my room and I how I find it best to work within it. When I am working on a project, like anything, it does take me a while to get into a rhythm or flow with how I move about and get things done efficiently and safely! I usually do all of my cutting first (whether that be for just one block or a for good chunk of quilt I’ve got going on), then lay out all of the cut pieces in the order I need to sew them, I pin, piece and press and then pop it up onto my design wall. Then repeat until I flop! 😀

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Look out for tomorrow’s post where I’ll be delving deeper into a few ideas and ways you can organise your fabrics, notions and general everyday-ness in your own sewing room or space! Hopefully a few things might inspire you (and myself to be honest) to get your sewing space in tip-top organisational heaven!

Happy Sewing, Friends!

Sewing Room Tour!

If you’re a regular reader of this darling little blog, you may have notice that I didn’t post up a weekly WIP update on Monday, as I have for the past month or so.

This is mainly because there is nothing to really update you with i.e.. nothing has changed since I last wrote about my WIPs. (My laziness/procrastinating ways are finally showing!)

However, this week I feel very proud to introduce to you a tour of my sewing room!

I love this space!

It’s where I feel the most comfortable.

Where I feel the safest.

The most inspired.

Freely creative.

And connected to the rest of the world.

In the video I show you where I sew/quilt (duh!) but also where I write, shoot, edit and publish my blogs and videos.

It may not be the best kind of sewing space as some others may have (look up ‘sewing studios’ on Pinterest and you’ll know what I’m talking about!) but I’m thankful for my mum giving up her little study space for me to have my very own little sewing space!

I also made a second video with some other extra bits I couldn’t quite fit into the first Sewing Room Tour video.

If you want to check that out, click right here!

Happy Sewing Friends! xx

#instagramjunkie

So over the past day or so I’ve been overloading my instagram feed with a whole bunch of quick pics of tools I use (and could not function without) within my sewing room.

#takealook