text: Amy Designs Musings: Organizing Tips for a Sewing Room
  Organizing Tips for a Sewing Room
  I love great organizing ideas!
  I have reads loads of articles, books and blogs about how to get organized. It's a lot more fun to read about it than do it, that's for sure! I also like to recycle and reuse what I already have when possible. I must admit, from experience, that it's sometimes better to buy something that will really work for you rather than waste time looking for something (every time you need it) that you stored in a container that you already had but isn't really very functional. That was a long, awkward sentence to say your time is valuable, your materials are valuable, and you are wasting both if you can't find something easily!
  Keep in mind about stacking: tall stacks of folded fabric become very messy, very easily. Many short stacks are much easier to grab fabric out of. Most shelving units I've owned had shelves that were really too far apart to make usable stacks of fabrics in and not waste a ton of space.
  Comic book boxes are great for holding patterns--you can even put
  Mug racks--those little stands that are a vertical "stick"
  my habbit of losing my scissors and rotary cutters under all my stuff while I'm
  working! The scissor handles are so easy to slip on the rack and I've
  bars. I've made loops and hung other gadgets on, too.
  Baseball card boxes--I use these to organize fat quarters and all
  They're all folded and stand on their folds so I can scan across them
  quickly. When I'm working on a landscape or other type of applique, I lay the open box out on my table til I'm done. It's not fabric I use every day, but when I want it, it's easy to grab ALL of it and quickly find pieces (and replace them) as I work.
  Plaxic shoe boxes--I store all my commercial cotton prints (fat
  florals, a box of brights. I stack 'em 3 high on some book
  shelves, and I can see into the end of each box so I don't have to mess
  bindings, etc. I have about 8 of these and it's great to just
  I've labeled each so I can grab the one I need quickly.
  I've tried sorting and packing up ALL of my fabrics but I can't stand
  working (or daydreaming/designing) without being able to look up and see my stash! So I'm
  I've realized over the years, however, that I don't need to
  see all of my plain solid cottons so I keep them in deep drawers--black
  bins if I didn't have drawers). Another deep drawer/plastic bin
  Plastic drawer units-- I a few of these use for all my art
  Printer's drawers (from antique shops) are a great way to organize
  cardboard over them to keep out the dust--not that I have any dust in
  Thank you so much for all these great tips! My fabric stash is such a mess- I really need to implement some of your ideas!
  Good ideas, Amy. You've inspired me to try a few when I re-organize next week...its a wreck in there ;) Here's a storage ideas that came from my Dad's workbench. I use those small plastic jars from peanut butter to store my buttons...each jar gets buttons of a certain color. They stack and are easy to see what is in there without going through all the buttons.