Chie

Cleaning my sewing space was in my to-do list before the end of the year. I use my sewing machines almost everyday, and sadly, before the clean up I really hated working at my space. I’m not a neat freak, so I have things all over the place – notions were in this ugly make-up box, threads every where and multiple projects laying all over my ironing board. Every time I looked for something, I wasted at least five minutes trying to find it. So, beginning this past  Summer (That’s when the “before” photo was taken), I slowly began to organize my space. Although it is not yet perfect, I think I took it to an acceptable level.

First I installed the racks on the wall for my thread. I bought them for 300 yen (2.5 USD) each at the aptly named “300 yen” shop. I like the look of them and am pretty happy with how they have been used. On the sewing table, I have a serger and sewing machine. I also have some ceramic coasters that I use as pattern weights, a pencil stand (recycled a jar that instant coffee was in) where I put scissors, pens, and a small ruler.

On the adjacent wall of my sewing space, I installed wall pockets bought  from the kid’s section of Ikea. These wall pockets are very useful. I use these to store often used notions. The only problem is that they don’t fit all my notions and I have not found the space to store the rest of them. Underneath the wall pockets, I have a cork board where I pin some sketches, pictures or customer measurements.

Organizing my fabric stash was the biggest challenge. If you follow me on twitter or facebook, you might have seen me complain about my fabric mess. To clean up my fabric stash, I was working on various scrap heap projects (1, 2), but never finished them and they got lost in the shuffle after going back to work from maternity leave. It got worse during the past month so, I got completely fed up with my inability to find the fabric I needed.

Last weekend, I went to a thrift shop and picked up an old book shelf. I organized my fabrics and divided them by the color. For small scraps, I trimmed them to squares and put them in a small basket placed next to the fabric. I am not done yet, but I am happy with the progress I’ve made so far. You know what I realized after organizing my fabric stash? I realized I have much less usable fabric than I thought. Small scraps were taking so much space, and it was giving me a false vision of my actual usable stash. I am planning on using the small remaining fabric sections for quilting, baby clothes and other small accessories in the future. Also my husband, Andy is going to start sewing using the BurdaStyle Sewing Book, so I am keeping them for him! We will see how it goes..

Next to the sewing table, I have an ironing board, fabric hanging as a picture background, dress form and a mirror.

I recently received my new clothing labels that I ordered from the etsy seller. This was my second purchase from this particular seller. This time I asked for a custom design label to match my banner and I’m pretty happy with the result 🙂

I’ve been also listening to some sewing related podcasts. I love to listen to radio or some online programs while I work. My favorite is Sew Forth Now by Lori. She talks about different sewing (garment sewing) topics each time, and often has interviews with interesting people. Does anyone have other good sewing podcast recommendation?