New sewing space.

I mentioned the sewing room move a lot last week, and if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you've been undoubtedly inundated with photos of the shift. I started last Friday and we finished Saturday night; so we've been in for just over a week. I have to say, I'm already heaps more productive than I was in the other room, but aside from that, I thought I'd take a few non-iPhone photos and share my fabric storing methods with you all. Here we go!

I set my work area up in an L-shape, so I can get to it all fairly quickly in my swivel chair. Since we had the big wall (and two Ikea Expedit units), I took advantage of the corner and placed my fabric shelving there. This is most of my sewing storage, as you can see.

I use six of the 16 cubbies for straight fabric storage - that means yardage (anything over half a yard). If I have a piece of fabric that isn't selvege-to-selvege it gets put into the FQs/large scraps section, neatly folded to fit. The FQs are in two places: in the wheat-colored basket drawers (right edge, 3rd row down) and in plastic dividing containers (right edge, top row). They are very visible and in color order!

The drawer units are used for small scraps (6" x 6" or smaller) and are also color coded. I have set aside rare and precious scraps, like Mendocino, in a drawer unit, and my precuts live there too. This makes it easy to fossick around for specific projects. Also in the Expedit is a storage box with batting and Insul-bright, and a stack of ready-to-be-pin-basted quilts (batting and backing included).

The top is currently a huge mess - it's part SydMQG group quilt, part Etsy stock, and part random necessary haberdashery and stationery! It should be much tidier at the end of this week, though, when the SydMQG quilt top is finished and my Etsy stock is moved to a different room in the house. :)

Now, on to the other furniture! This is my computer and sewing machine. I leave my machine out and open. Since I am obsessive about cleaning it, I don't worry about a dust cover. You can see how easy it is for me to watch my shows on my computer while I sew!

The opposite corner of the Expedit is the threads & snips corner, or where my cutting tools and thread rack lives. They're in a pretty convenient place for cutting and sewing! I also have my mini-ironing board (which is a converted TV tray) and iron there, for quick pressing.

On the other side of that is my Alex drawer unit, also from Ikea. I love this thing: it's on casters, it's a great height for seated rotary cutting (which I do a lot of these days, at seven months pregnant), and the drawers are great storage for haberdashery.

I keep the rulers I use often out, within easy reach; everything else goes into a drawer. Templates too.

The design wall is just a piece of quilt batting we used sticky-back Velcro (hook side, not loop side) to fix to the wall. It took about five minutes to hang up.

For my fabric, I arrange it in color order, starting with my whites/low volumes. I did try to destash this, but I gave my husband veto power, and every time I put one in the destash stack, he snuck it right back into my stash. I think someone deserves a low-volume scrap quilt. :)

I also have a fondness for blues.

I have been focusing on building up my greys/blacks/purples lately, and combined my stronger pinks into the purple/plums so I had a clearer color scheme.

My medium and light pinks sit alongside reds and oranges.

And the greens and yellows are all by themselves in a stack, so I put my little Ruby Star Shining divided basket (pattern here, by Anna of Noodlehead) in the gap and added a few precut stacks (Sarah Fielke's On the Pond bundles, Notting Hill by Joel Dewberry, purchased from Knotted Threads) to one half. The other half of the basket is devoted to Liberty tana lawn, both yardage and scraps.

Finally, my solids and linens are all separated out. I have Kona on the right, Michael Miller on the top left, and my linen/cotton blends below those. I love having a well-stocked solids stash!

For the smaller yardage, I use two methods. I have these file boxes from Howard's Storage World, recommended to me by Jenna, which I use for my blue and low-volume FQs or similar.

The rest of the rainbow of FQs/larger scraps goes in these baskets, also from Ikea. The idea behind both these systems is that I can pull all my FQs out in their containers and see what I have. This is quick and clever!

I keep bigger yardage (for quilt backs) and special fabrics (oilcloth, laminates, flannels and voiles) here in the big white basket, also from Ikea.

I've committed to getting a LOT done this week, so I'm using a "spare" cubby for quilts that are ready to be pin-basted. These are backs, battings, and tops in order. Can you believe I have four quilts in my queue? Five, if you count the picnic rug that I need to buy batting for?? This should keep me out of trouble!! :)

So this is it, basically: my new space and how I organize it. It works for me pretty well, though time will tell, won't it! How do you organize your sewing space? :)