My Sewing Mess -or- Shout Out to Karen!

Hello Friends,

Recently, Karen of Sewing by the Seat of My Pants posted about the, erm, tremendously cluttered state of her workroom. I thought I would attempt to stand in solidarity with her. Here are a few before and after photos of my sewing space.


Here I have attempted to label all of the interesting and not-so-interesting clutter. I was totally at my limit trying to organize this space and get the fabric to fit neatly into my bins. You see them below blocking the doorways. They usually live in a closet off our daughters' room, but I had dragged them out so things could be put away.
 

My worst enemy are my remnants. In my mind a scrap is something smaller than my hand, but a remnant is larger. I have no good system for keeping them tidy. I know that fabric remnants can be terribly useful with crafty sewing, but they drive me crazy. As I have gained more experience with sewing, I have become more of a fabric snob, so getting rid of some of the fabrics was easy. But the cottons and the wools and the lining and the fleece... I finally had to hand my husband a bag of possibly useful scraps and tell him to just stick them in some bin. I just couldn't make any more organizational decisions!

I kept at it, with David sitting at the kids' art table working at his lap top and playing upbeat music. Slowly, everything found a home (or its way into the fabric recycling bin). Look! I can actually access my BurdaStyle and Threads collections without knocking over other pattern books or bike locks or anything else:


And there are no bags of fabric on the floor. Here is the proud stack of bins:


The blue plastic Ikea bag holds foam and stuffing. Below it is the uncloseable bin of large pieces of thick fabric, then craft sale/Etsy materials, and finally a bin of home dec, vinyl, and quilting cottons. The shorter stack is topped by a white plastic bag holding the materials for my Cruella DeVil fake fur coat, underneath this is a bin of lighter weight fabric (which is far heavier than anyone ever anticipates), and finally a bin with fake fur and batting.

The good news is that I was inspired to whittle down the uncloseable bin and now it can close with plenty of room to spare (blog posts forthcoming). The bad news is that my sewing space is getting a little ridiculous again - so much so that I am avoiding being in there. The never-ending cycle begins again...

Comments

doris sander said…
girl. those first couple pics look like an episode of hoarders. glad you got it under control. and wish i lived closer (not really i can't handle the cold - wish YOU lived closer); i'd totally come over and abscond with some of those crafty scraps.

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