Showing posts with label sewing room. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sewing room. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Frugal and Convenient Thread Storage

I've been working away on the sewing room which IS almost finished, but I thought I'd show what I did with my thread.  My thread storage started out on one of those hanging things with dowels-- pretty, but the thread got dusty.  When the collection outgrew that rack, I upgraded to plastic boxes that would keep the dust out.  When the boxes increased five boxes requiring a constant and frustrating shifting of the stacked boxes to find what I wanted, I knew it was time to make another change.

 Until I can afford one of those incredible wood cabinets, here is my frugal but convenient thread storage solution.

 It's a Sterlite and I paid $14.  The four shallow drawers work well for all the smallish spools and the tall bottom drawer has my large cones of thread.  My old boxes had inserts with dowels for the thread which I was able to reuse in the drawers.   Otherwise I was going to line the drawers with that rubbery shelf liner to keep things in place.  I have so many spools they pretty much hold one another up.

I even marked the colors on the outside!!  See those nice little rectangles of color?

The first label on the top drawer is metallic for my metallic thread, but it doesn't show as metallic in the photo.  The last one is stripes to designate all my strange threads-- plastic, button, upholstery, that kind of thing.  The rest signify the colors in the drawers and the sides they are on.

So much easier to find what I'm looking for now.

I used my ever-helpful Xyron Magic Sticker Maker and EK Success Photo Labels paper punch along with scrap paper in the appropriate color.
Just slide labels into the back of the sticker maker:

And twist the knob to turn them into stickers:
The paper punch has 3 different size labels which will be nice for labeling the rest of the sewing room, too.  The sewing room is almost done--really.  I'd say I will have it up next week, but I remember how that worked out with the master bath.  MAYBE next week.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Sewing Room Closet Door Decals

When  I decided to paint the closet doors in the sewing room white to match the trim, I wasn't prepared for the rather massive expanse of white I ended up with.  It looked a bit like a giant movie screen as you can see here.

Since I've been wanting to try vinyl wall decals, I thought I'd get some for the doors.  Here's the result.
I love it!

This was my first experience with wall decals.  I was a wreck when I unfurled the whole thing.  It looked daunting!  I feared that I was in over my head and would ruin it.  The actual process turned out to be easy.  The only downside was that all the leaves had to be put up individually.  Still,  I managed to finish it in four hours without any assistance.   I'm looking forward to trying a few more of these--without the individual leaves, though.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Stashing the fabric without spending a fortune

As part of the "Use Your Crap Challenge," I needed to be able to see what crap I needed to use.    I cannot show you how the stash looked to begin with because it would take too many pictures--it was all over.  (Not to mention that I would die of shame if I posted pictures of the mess.).  Now, I can show it off!

 and this:
Lessons learned from past attempts are that you HAVE to have dividers or the stacks will fall over as you rummage through.  You also cannot stack things too high.  It makes it sooo difficult to get at the stuff on the bottom.

Taking out the wire closet organizer was not an option--too expensive to replace it right now.  Fabric or plastic cubes would have been nice, but at $5 a pop at the very least, that was not happening.  Instead, I folded large pieces of fabric over hangers, used corrugated storage boxes small enough to fit  between the shelving to hold fabric and serve as dividers, put in a hanging cloth piece meant to hold sweaters, and used plastic containers on the floor. 

Yes, I know the cardboard storage boxes are not acid free. I'm planning on that being encouragement to succeed at the goal of USING the fabric rather than just looking at it.

Let the sewing begin in earnest.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

What happens when you mix candles and pin cushions?

I've made a number of pin cushions from simple cloth to the ornate teacups variety.  But I really like the gritty stuffing in the plain old traditional tomato pin cushions.  I am convinced that gritty texture keeps my pins sharp.  Unfortunately the tomato pin cushions are so light weight that picking out a pin sometimes resulted in picking up the entire pin cushion, too.  I also have a near obsession for scented candles, so I had a few left-over glass tops from jar candles sitting around my sewing room.  Hmmmm.....Voila! My new favorite pin cushion was born.


I used a hot glue gun around the rim of the inverted candle top and sat the lovely but lightweight, store-bought pin cushion on top.   It kind of spins if it is sitting on a wood surface, but I like that.  It prevents me from sticking all the pins in one area.  You could put some felt or silicon cushions on the bottom if you didn't want the spinning. 

Wandering into a Yankee Candle shop can be an expensive trip for me.  Their vanilla lime scent is my new favorite.  Adirondack Candles has some amazing scents as well, and they last forever.  Their Adirondack Lodge scented candle is on my permanent wish list. Adirondack candles are harder to find, but you can check them out online here.