cat2quilt

I will do 15 minutes in the craft room this afternoon.

WMUTeach

Organizing? Well maybe you could call it that. On Sunday, I got a text during church from a friend that a mutual friend had some quilting "stuff" from her mother's studio for me and could I stop by and pick it up after service. Well, several mats, many rulers and templates later I brought home the treasures and began sorting. First, the homemade templates were pulled out as I would not trust their accuracy and I have "real" rulers of the same size. Sadly into the trash the homemade ones go. Second sorted out templates/rulers that I can use which are duplicates of what I have - Keep/give away or trash those with nicked corners. A second pressing mat, oh wowzers what a blessing! Thirdly, look at the mats, cleaned them and compared them to those I have. Which are in the best and/or still in usable condition? Keep, toss or save for a give away table.

Last move my new treasures out of my living room and into my sewing room. Living room looks all neat and tidy. Now the question is where do I put all of the new rulers in my sewing room? How to store so I can access them efficiently? Humm? I have never had so many specialty rulers/templates. I am a basic sort of gal. Blessed beyond words, and now knee deep in "How do I store all of these quilty blessings?"

Suggestions are welcome.

aashley333

From the guild donation station, I brought home a Rival Bread Slicer. Worked perfectly as imagined as a ruler storage!

EmiliasNana

I hang mine on a peg board. Mine is hidden in the end of my pressing table but one on the wall or door would work too.

Gemm

What a great pressing table! I'm still using my mother's old ironing board (circa 1970?)! This looks like a neat little storage space, too - functional on multiple levels!

Iceblossom

I was so lucky before to have a dedicated sewing room and a tolerant husband. Even luckier now that I have my spacious quilting studio (and still tolerant husband), but it wasn't always so...

I love these wooden "sweater drying racks". My original one was super and my son asked to have when he left home, since then I've had several some better than others. That one was sturdy and had more of a shelf structure so you could layout stuff flat if needed. This one is also sturdy and I bought for $4.00 at a local garage sale, this is the first time I've used it. For pluses, they are lightweight and fold down/set up easily, you can take them to retreats if you want. I use them when I am ironing long pieces to keep the fabric off the floor/dust/pet hair, you can double stuff up and down and all around. I also use them to organize my chains when I'm doing something like Bonnie Hunter projects where I'm making a kazillion units. Keeps them from tangling/lets you count easily. The rest of the time, it folds up neatly and gets stowed away.

Today most of my pieces were small, fat quarters or so, but the racks can handle quite a load of fabric. At a certain point it almost gets sturdier by the weight.

Buckeye quilter

Iceblossom, don't get rid of your wooden drying rack! If you have to replace it, you'll be stuck with a plastic one from the big box stores and they're horrible! I finally got a wooden rack from a garage sale and couldn't wait to throw that old plastic one away. I swear one-half of the plastic rungs were broken on the day I bought that piece of crap home. You're right about how sturdy the wooden ones are.

Iceblossom

I am continuing (so slowly) with my beaded block labels. Current project needed through H5, so have all (10) of A-H. I brought them to work on at my sewing group.

I have symbol beads with various shapes, like hearts, hash tags, etc. I can use those for when I need more than 10 numbers, but it will be a bit before I get through the rest of the alphabet. Need is a good motivator, as is having a filler project and being forced to go ahead and at least do a couple instead of just putting it off.

Gemm

The thread about cutting up scraps made me think about what is and is not working in my own stash and I've summed it up as follows:

Current successes:
- a set of 16 shoebox-like totes for small scraps (anything from 1" squares to partial jelly roll strips, random precuts and up to about a fat quarter), organized mostly by colour
- a few totes/underbed boxes organized by theme or fabric type: I Spy, Christmas, batiks
- a couple of larger totes - one for UFOs and one for bundles/kits of fabric that are mostly attached to specific ideas/plans

Not so successful:
- general volume of fabric is kind of out of control (sigh) and the fact that my stash is not always the easiest to access means that a large mess usually results from any fabric pull which adds to the chaos
- random pieces larger than a fat quarter and smaller than a yard or two - I've tried to organize them into larger totes by colour but because these fabric pieces really are so random both in terms of style and size, the boxes are hard to search through for specific needs and tend to get messed up pretty quickly. Sadly, I don't have enough room to have more boxes so that I can be more selective about what goes into each one. (This is also sort of successful because I think if I had more room I'd be collecting more fabric!)

My current plan:
Make more quilts to make more room in totes :-) Easy peasy, right? :-D

Iceblossom

Sort of a weird thing from me today, not organization so much but it was for sewing room purchase purposes! I have dust and other allergies and live in a "hard surface" house, ie, no carpeting.

When I moved and replaced a lot of stuff, I found (new technology!) dustpans with fingers in them, so you can scrape the broom off with the pan and not your hands. I also like the dustpans that stick to the broom handle. Got a large dustpan plus a broom with nylon bristles or something like that for the upstairs, and a standard straw broom for downstairs/outside/garage. That straw broom wasn't working so good for my sewing stuff, and was always getting quite a ways away from the dustpan.

I've been doing some fabric project research this past week and decided to check in on pricing at Menards (a big box lumber/appliance store) for color catchers, and as I was there I went past this display, and there were brooms and dustpans on a sale, and I figured I'd pick one up for the Sewing Room. After I got home, I thought the handle was sort of weird for the dustpan, yes it stuck on the broom, but was awkward to use. THEN I read the label -- designed so you step on the dustpan handle to hold it down.
https://www.ocedar.com/p/brooms/indo...-with-dust-pan

Yes, you have to stoop over to put it down and pick it up, but it was much less awkward than trying to hold the pan with one hand, lean over and sweep the stuff into the pan. As a drawback, this dustpan is really too small to fit the broom and it is awkward to get the bristles into the fingers, but I will try mixing and matching my two broom/dustpan sets.

My normal sweepings are dog hair and fabric trim -- and pins. Stepping on the top was important, I was trying to tap on the pointy bit at the end and not just stomping down. Once I stomped on it, even pins went in nice and easy.