I’m busy making my main studio space more usable… check out my progress AND enter my giveaway!
I give you a BEFORE tour
My main studio space is where I work all the time. It has my projects in progress, machines, computer, and most of my fabric.
About 3pm I started pulling all the projects out of my studio space to resort them and put them into better size container and more effective & productive spots for my use. I did a video for you
For the post part I’m not doing fabric, just projects.
That includes all the different products I review or test. PLUS I had some UFOs in my main space that were not being worked on and taking up valuable work space. They needed to be moved.
Taking it out is EASY.
Deciding how to regroup and where in my studio should it now be, is more difficult. I started when I got up.
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For our family business we work at home, so our whole small home has become our office.
We have no basement and no usable attic. So my business takes up 4 rooms in our home.
- My studio is my main work room and what you see all the time. It is the family room of our home, it’s what in the videos with my beautiful Koala Furniture and my Baby lock machines
- The shipping department has one room as his office.
- We have 1 other rooms for quilts, batting, notions, projects not being working on, other fabric, books, etc.
- AND the ‘over flow’ room right now is our dining room as it can’t all fit in the one room upstairs. The photo above is one wall in my dining room. On the wall is my village quilt (BUY the pattern here), and the blocks are from my Triangle book (HERE)
In my studio I keep JUST what I’m working on and my main fabric. On that video I talk about it being messy. It is ‘messy’ in that projects were not in optimum work places, split across areas, and things got put in spots that took up valuable space in my small room
Now for a few photos of my ‘after’
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Keeping it organized keeps my sanity 
Hope you enjoy watching as I make progress!
If you are new here, welcome! I run a lot of fun projects
These are my 2 latest FREE sew alongs, join me!
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1,818 Responses
I have such a hard time throwing out strips of batting cut from trimming a quilt. I know I can use them for straps for totes, etc. but geez, they’re filling up empty dresser drawers in our spare bedroom!
My biggest problem is figuring out the best way to organize fabric yardage so I can find it easily – by color, type, etc. It would probably be helpful if I purged but that’s another problem!
Storage is my biggest problem. I think it would help to have a larger Koala cabinet with lots storage. That way I would not have wasted space and no boxes of supplies and material that had to be moved when ever I needed to clean the floor.
My biggest problem with organization is my works in progress…I have a room but it is overcrowded and I need to find a way to organize my WIPS so i don’t bury them and forget them!
I need to find a “roundtoit”! My biggest problem is space . Also I get started and then get sidetracked.
Way to much stuff in a very small room.
My biggest problem is deciding what size of scraps to keep. I have a bucket of fabric pieces to do a scrappy quilt which hasn’t been initiated yet.
My sewing room is very small and have a large table in the middle. Need more space. Thanks
My biggest issue is space and the things get put into nooks and crannies all over and then they get lost or I pull out material for a project and never get to it and suddenly my material is not colour filed but project filed.
My biggest problem is remembering all the how to’s after not quilting for several years and now going back to quilting. A lot of things are coming back to me. And now I need to organize my fabric and tools before I start another project. So in other words I would rather be sewing then organizing.
Space is my biggest problem. I have a corner of my living room that I use to sew, and my desk is constantly a catch-all for old mail and other items that my son or husband move out of their way. I have to clear everything away to sew.
It took me awhile to figure it out, but these things work for me and I hope they will w
work for some of you.
Fusibles, interfacings…roll them up and stick them into a partitioned box..Homesense/Homegoods helped me…..or a beer bottle carton or wine box would work,but not be as attractive.
Large yardage for backings…keep them on an empty bolt cardboard (quilt stores will give these to you as they are garbage to them)…and on a bookshelf.
Smaller yardages fold and stack on bookshelves with the folded side out…just like a book..don’t have to be on cardboard. This works for fat quarters too…use cd shelving and sort by type (contemporary/reproduction, etc) folded side out…IKEA here we come. Buy one unit at a time, if money is tight. Christmas fabrics/Halloween in a Rubbermaid box folded neatly,,fold facing up so you can see immediately what you have. Some of my friends slide these under beds…along with Rubbermaid boxes of yardage.
Narrow shelving units like cd shelving fit easily into hallways….look your home over for a bit of blank wall space, a bit here and here,…I have taken over a whole wall in the family room with shelves of fabric mingled among books…people really like the look and its storage for me. Use the blank wall in your dining room for bookshelves and get your fabric up.
Scraps when sewing go into a fabric only waste basket as a sew and I deal with it…a few mins here and there and soon its empty…scraps cut into square sizes I like to use, or strips into empty salad containers and labeled; bigger pieces folded and into a plastic storage container. A little time now saves alot of time later looking through a mess. Very quick when watching t.v. or listening to Pat’s podcasts. Hope this helps…family should be happy your happily organized…and visitors love it. Kick your family out of the house for a day and have fun organizing. Good luck.
Wow. Would love to have these. Which texta pens do this please. Thanks
Like Sheila Boser commented, I too am pretty well organized. My biggest challenge is a large enough design/lay-out space combined with needing a central workspace. I sew and press in a guest room with queen size bed (materials stored in chest, closet, and sewing table in that room); do serious cutting at the kitchen bar; sandwich and spray baste on the folding table in the laundry room–a separate building outside the main house. The bed guest bed works for most projects, but only 1 at a time and nothing huge. Children and grandchildren still visit overnight so can’t convert one of the extra bedrooms to a studio and I’m not willing to give up my library/office. I guess the problem is as much about making good choices as it is about space.
My biggest problem is having items organized to sew. I usually find a fabric and don’t always get enough fabric for my project. Making a list of items to quilt and doing it. Also organizing tools.
One (of many) problems I have trouble organizing is fat quarters that aren’t full. They are everywhere!
My biggest organizational problem is jumping from one project to another. My goal is to use my bigger sewing machine for bigger projects that take longer and my portable sewing machine for smaller quicker projects.
I am great at original organization. I cannot keep it that way. While I work I just stack things up any where and go on to the next project. I am sure I need a keeper to make me clean up after myself more often LOL.
my problem is keeping organized, I have plastic bins but after a while they get full and it is hard to keep organized, I love your small flat plastic cubies
I am overwhelmed with the different size of fabrics. Anything from a yard or less, I cant seem to come up with a system to store it where I can access easily.
My biggest problem is where to keep all my fabric. I have a chest of drawers but it is filled to over-flowing!
I don’t have enough room to properly organize and have things stuffed everywhere, even in the sewing annex, aka the master bedroom!
I’m sharing my sewing space with our second floor guest room. Ironing board is in the basement due to wiring issues and cutting fabric set up is in the DR on first floor. I dread having overnight visitors!
I think that I am pretty well organized. Probably what I would make next is my problem now.
I am dealing with a very nice left over space and things that are in the process of finding new homes as I work through a family member’s estate. Trying to keep a pathway to things is challenging.
I think the greatest hindrance to lack of organization is my lack of self control in sticking to my plan. For example, with SS2 I chose a group of fabrics to use, but as each new block gets posted I’m back in my fabric stash picking out more fabrics. My fabric pile for this project is, one day, going to be larger than my stash in my sewing closet. I just hope it all goes together in the end.
My biggest organization problem is my flannels. I love to buy flannel for baby quilts and little projects. I have so much and it is bulkier than my cottons so it is taking up a ton of my space! I guess I need to spend more time sewing!! 🙂
Thank you for showing sharing your posts
We recently moved to a smaller home. I purchased a shelving unit for most of my fabric stash, but still have all my Halloween and Asian fabrics in 6 large plastic tubs. I am still working on organizing. I can’t find the projects I was working on before we moved. They have to be in a box I haven’t opened yet.
My biggest problem is keeping track of scraps that someday I will use. I have tried bins but it has become a huge mess!
I need help with organization – I have fabric and patterns and projects and books and accessories everywhere.
I have trouble keeping my cutting table clear.
I have a decent size stash of fabric and embroidery threads, but organizing the fabric in a way so that I can find what I am looking for has proved difficult. Also, when I am searching for fabric to put together a project, the piece I want always seems to be on the bottom of the stack. I have to take everything out to get to it and them spend time putting it all back in. Unfortunately, I often discover the piece I pulled out doesn’t work and the whole effort was in vain. I’d like to be able to open the cabinet, select the correct fabric and get to putting my quilt together in a more organized manner.
My biggest problem is buying more fabric, and not having room to storage except in bins, then I forget what I have
Sharing my space is my greatest challenge. It is my sewing room, our family office, and at times the overnight room if we have company. Then the kids move in and we are frantically moving stuff around. Getting the room back to sewing mode takes some time.
My biggest problem is space to work. I run up and down stairs from dining table (for cutting) to tiny sewing table and ironing board.
My main problem is keeping it up after I organize!
http://sewknotright.com
Biggest organizational problem for me is a tie between making the time to do it and putting things away where they belong.
My biggest organizing problem is NOTIONS. I have them in baskets, plastic containers, and little boxes. I really need to find a better way to organize so I don’t waste time playing “Where’s Waldo” when I need them.
Too much stuff!
Organizing printed patterns, tutorials, cheats sheets, etc. Right now they are in stacks and I have to go through each stack to find anything. So time consuming and most of the time I can’t find what I am looking for.
My biggest organizational problem is that I have too many ‘skill sets’ and not enough room for all the supplies and projects! Sewing machines, computers, large printers, glass cutting supplies, candle supplies, wood working tools, paints, etc. Then I also have chickens, so I cut and decorate extra eggs.
My biggest organization problem is space. My sewing room is in my living room, I have supplies in my hall closet, some in my sons room in the closet the goes under the stairs and my bigger bins with with fabric and such are out in a storage shed. Would be so nice to have it all in one place instead of trying to remember where a certain something is being stored.
My biggest issue is where to put all my fabric. I hope to figure out a better way soon.
Yikes, a lot going on in your studio. My biggest organizational problem is PAPERS..copies of patterns, some I will never make, but don’t want to throw them out. Copies of pictures of quilts I saw and liked, copies of class instructions for various classes I’ve taken. I have the best intentions, have purchased many notebooks to organize in, and I don’t do it.
my problem is too much stuff and too little room (10X10) but, i am grateful to have all the room and a small but shelf laden walk-in closet for fabrics.
My issue is space. I’m in a small bedroom that serves as my craft room and a guest room. I’m trying to organize but there is just so much room. Wish I could add a room to the house. HA HA.
I tend to work on more than one project at a time and I make piles, especially when cutting. I try to keep each project in its own container but somehow things can get mixed up. Then when I’m ready to start a new project I have to tidy up my cutting table and put the odds and ends away. I can’t start until I’ve cleared off my cutting table. Thanks.
Space! Right now I am in a small room in my basement. Hopefully when we retire and move closer to our kids I will be able to have a larger space to work in.
Oh, I try to be organized but I’ve been relegated to a small corner of my living room for my sewing space. I have added a bookshelf with some bins with lids for my fat quarter and charm pack storage and have some small flip top totes for yardages. I am working on getting a system in place so that I don’t have to reorganize every time I want to sew/quilt… work in progress!!!
I organize my scraps by size in different labeled bins. If I need a certain size I reach for the bin containing the size I need. Extra cutting tools, blades, scissors, etc, are in a bin up there too.