An Organized Sewing Space - Making it Easy to Just Sew!
Michelle Burke
As I organized my sewing room, I decided I wanted to make it as easy as possible to get the sewing part of a project quickly. I don't know about you, but I love to spend time picking out the fabric for an upcoming project. I have fabric picked out for projects that I probably won't get to for another month. When I am ready to start a new project, I just want to start cutting the fabric and get to the sewing part! I don't like getting slowed down trying to find the fabric I was going to use, then gathering hardware and zippers (although the bling is fun to play with), searching for a Uniquely Michelle tag and then there is the pattern to locate. Even worse is finding a stack of fabric in some corner of my sewing room and having to decipher what I had intended to make with the adorable bundle of fabric.
Although my fabric is easy to see now and my hardware and patterns are organized, I needed a way to keep my piles of upcoming projects contained and organized. I decided that I would use a couple boxes that I have to store my nice piles of future projects. I found that I can fit 3-4 projects in each of my two boxes. I now put the fabric, bag hardware, zippers and pattern for a project all together. When I am ready to sew, I can just grab my stack and get started.
The only problem - when the boxes are closed and on the shelf, I can't see what is in them. To solve this problem I decided I would keep an index card with a list of "projects in waiting" on the box. I know it is a simple system - nothing really novel here, but it is new system to me and it works really well. Now not everything fits in the boxes. I have a pile of fabric and zippers that will someday be a wool coat (hopefully I will make it before next fall). The wool coat pile is too large to fit in a box, but I keep track of the location of projects that don't fit in the box on the index card too.
Another part of the getting ready to sew that I don't like is cutting out interfacing. Interfacing is needed to make a bag look beautiful, but I find it very boring to cut out. Cutting fabric - fun, cutting interfacing - tedious. I found that if I have a bag that I make frequently, it is worth spending a couple hours one day cutting out the interfacing pieces needed for several of those bags and storing them in a marked bag in my box of interfacing pieces. When I have the fabric all cut out for a bag and I know that I can just grab the interfacing for it and start fusing, I feel like I have won the bag-making lottery!
When I start working on a new bag, I use a small box to contain all the bag hardware and bling, zippers, snaps, a Uniquely Michelle tag, anything small that could get lost in the fray.
It is nice to know when I am ready to start on my next sewing project, that everything I need is in one place, ready for me to grab and go - making it so much easier to JUST SEW!
I hope these organization hint have inspired you! I would love to know what your favorite organizing tips are for your sewing space - please leave a comment! Everyone can benefit from some organizational ideas! Now I am heading to my sewing room with my Cheshire Cat smile and a clear mind to start my next sewing project!
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