My Storage

Hi there! I hope your January is going well and life has settled down a bit since the craziness of the Christmas and New Years period! For me, it’s full swing getting ready for school and kindy to begin… Organising uniforms and book lists… You know, all that fun stuff…. LOL! 🙂

Somewhat related, well, ok, not related at all but anyway! I often see people asking “how do you store your fabric?”, or “how does everyone store their zippers?”. Obviously the possibilities are almost endless, however for those still a little ‘lost’ as to how to go about it, I thought I’d pop up a quick blog post to show you how I store my bits and bobs so without further ado, lets get started!

First up is my modified Sew Together Bag by Sew Demented, and my two Poppy Pouches by Tanglewebb Design. You could say these are the heart and soul of my sewing room as they store everything I use on a daily basis (and then some as well!).

My Sew Together Bag holds all my frequently used, small stuff – pins, measuring tape, tailors chalk, fabric tape/glue, small notepad (possibly a pen or pencil I guess, to write on said notepad), small scissors for sticky tape, small scissors for snipping threads etc. etc. This bag holds all my essentials and nothing else. It’s perfect for my needs and is easy to close up and pop in a larger bag if I’m heading to a friends house for a spot of sewing or teaching a class.

My Poppy Pouches hold my ever-expanding collection of Clover Wonder Clips. I actually have TWO pouches, one sits on my cutting table as that’s where I prepare and pin/clip my pieces together, and the other sits by my machines, ready to catch the clips as they come off of said fabric pieces just prior to being pummelled by a vicious metal spike (hahahaha… 🙂 ). Anyway!! Moving on!

To store my rotary cutters and rulers, a little while ago I made myself a hanging ‘sleeve’ I guess you would call it with three pockets on it – the largest pocket runs the entire height at the back and is for my 24″ (61cm) ruler, and then on the front there’s two smaller pockets, one at the bottom for my 12″ (30cm) and 18″ (46cm) rules, and one towards the top for my rotary cutters.

95% of my fabric stash is stored in a set of drawers which as it would happen, is actually a flat pack set made for wardrobes that I added a ‘lid’ to, to become my pressing station.

You can find out more about my fabric stash in this post here. You can find out more about my pressing station in my workspace post, here.

I have all my thread stored in these clear thread storage boxes I picked up from my local Spotlight. Just like my fabric stash, I also like to organise my threads by colour… Such a pretty rainbow!

Annnnnndddddd….. Of course I also store my bobbins in clear bobbin storage trays, in the same order as the threads. Yes I have a bobbin for each colour, and yes I am THAT organised LOL!

Seriously though, for the small amount it cost to set this system up, it’s paid for itself time and time again by NOT having to constantly spend time winding bobbins for that next colour I want to use, as well as not having redundant lengths of thread on bobbins that then gets pulled off and wasted.

To me it just makes sense… And yes, I’m THAT organised… 🙂

For my zippers, they are all stored in these plastic drawer units I picked up from my local Target for a couple of dollars each. I’ve organised them by length, and zippers that are the same colour within that length get safety pinned together at one end.

I also keep my metal zippers separate, as well as my long pull zippers, as I do use a lot of them and it saves having to look through all my dress/standard size zippers.

Although I don’t use buttons much these days, I’ve kept them stored in their button jars as they’re just pretty to look at on my little shelf! 🙂

All my hardware is stored here, in this brilliant garage storage solution from my local Bunnings. Each drawer can be divided in up to four compartments using the included, removable dividers, enabling me to store all of the same type of hardware in the one draw (divided up by size).

After trialling a few different hardware storage solutions over the last couple of years (and quickly outgrowing them each and every time!), I think it will be a good wee while before I outgrow this one thankfully!

All my creasable fabric such as my glitter vinyl, big pieces of leather, laminated cotton etc., all get rolled on cardboard tubes and stood in one corner. Not only does it help keep the fabric crease-free, it’s also pretty to look at as well!

All my smaller pieces of leather, cork etc., are also rolled but then stored in a drawer for safe hoarding… Err, I mean safe keeping…

And that’s it! That’s pretty much how I store most of my sewing fabric, tools, notions etc. I hope this post has given you some ideas on how you could organise some of YOUR tools and notions!

Feel free to comment and ask a question, or simply let me know how you organise your things!

Until next time! Lisa x