August 21, 2012

Studio & Stash Tour.

I have grand plans in my head that involve IKEA and finishing this room out awesomely. But as there is no IKEA near me and I'm short in that funding department anyway I finishing cobbling things together over the last weekend.

I moved in to my house about two and half years ago and for the first time had my own sewing room! Before that I had some tubs of fabric and a tv tray for a sewing table while in Grad School, and while living with my parental units I had some space, but an entire room to just lay everything out every where is AWESOME.

It's gone through several changes over the last two years. Storage system going from plastic tubs to two church sale leaning book case, to where I'm at now. I think I'm mostly happy with it. I would love a wall of IKEA Retur bins instead of the metal shelving, and I want to build my own cutting table using some Expedit Cases and two Vika Table tops with a built in light table.

It took a few trips to Lowe's and Harbor Freight, an exhaustive searching for the battery saw, and a dinner of scribbling notes on the back of a restaurant napkin, but I got it done.

Corner 1

Turn Right
Organization  wow!

Turn Right again,
Corner 2

Finally back to the beginning.

Sewing Machine and Thread


I feel like I could talk this all to death, describing why I did this, why I did that, what made me think to use that material. It's a combination of what worked in my sister's sewing room, my dad's workshop and what I could afford.

Under the Jump (where it says Read More...) I go into more depth about what's what and all, but for those of you who just want to go look at photos, that's fine too. Here's a link to my Flickr Set for just the room.

This is a link to the Studio & Stash Collection, that has most of my sewing related sets, including fabric stashes, quilts and other projects that have been done or in the works.



Pegboard:
Large Pegboard - 1 Pegboard - Cutting Table

I love pegboard. It's so versatile. I like that I can rearrange how items are laid out, where they hang, how they hang, etc. It was easy to get in 24" x 48" sheets at Lowe's and the different hooks and baskets that can be used are easy to get. Pegboard comes in white as well, or you can paint it. I think you can get it some places in colors other than white too.

Slat wall is what originally came to mind because I had printed about 20 sheets of it at work recently. It's an option as well - there are hook and basket and shelf systems that work with slat wall (just like at the stores). It is more expensive, and also heavier in weight, meaning you will definitely need to hit studs or use heavy duty hollow wall anchors.


Plastic Parts Bins on rails. 

Parts Bins

These I found at Harbor Freight. They are smaller than the usual Red, Blue and Yellow ones that you see in work shops and parts stores. You can easily take them off their mounting rail when you need to use what's inside, or to move them around.

Steel plating / magnetic bars/ magnetic tins & bowls. 

Sewing Table  Pegboard - Cutting Table

You can by strips of steel at Lowe's, Home Depot, and other hardware type stores. Usually found by threaded rod near the Hardware department. Though sometimes by metal works or weldable steel, all depending on how that store is organized.  I used 1" x 36" 1/8" thick steel plates for my magnetic tins and parts bowls - another cheap find at Harbor Freight. You can mount it directly to the wall with a few deck or drywall screws, or hollow wall anchors if needed. I put one strip across the top of the pegboard above my cutting table. A regular cordless drill can drill the pilot hole in the steel. We have an 18volt Ryobi, so I'm not sure how a less powerful drill will do. I also did not use any special type of bit to drill the holes.

At Joann's and other fabric, craft, and sewing type places that sell notions, you can get magnetic pin bowls. At the Joann's here they are about $11 when not on sale. However, at Harbor Freight, which happens to be right next door, they have essentially the same the for about $4 - $5 depending on the size. There's also a larger rectangular one for around $10. Auto parts and hardware stores (and well the internet shopping too) are other sources cheaper magnetic bowls, for 50% notions sale or coupons as well.

If you are by IKEA they have their Grundtal containers with magnetic backs. I have several of these and love them to bits, I supplemented them with some similar ones from World Market. Magnetic Knife racks or parts/tool holders also very handy.

I like the metal rails that I have too. I got them from IKEA and they are the Bygel rails. They are the less expensive of their rail systems, the other being Grundtal and Fintrop and I'm wishing I had some more parts. I have some Grundtal ones in my kitchen that have been working awesomely. I really can't say that one is better than the other, just look to see what will work best for your uses.  I have a four foot rail by the sewing machine, and a four foot, and two and half foot one on the wall above my deskshelf behind the sewing machine. The pink bins hold all my markers, colored pencils, sewing tools, and I can slip my laptop behind rail above deskshelf and it keeps it out of the way while it's not in use.

This little wall section took the most work to sort out.

2inch Squares!

I have a lot of little 2" squares, and I used to keep them just tossed in bags, or bins. Sometimes sorted by project if nothing else. I really didn't like having to keep digging them out sorting them into piles only to jumble them all up again.

I sprained my wrist, rather wretchedly, at the beginning of July, and I couldn't do much in the way of sewing or cutting with a rotary cutter so I started sorting through fabric and scraps, giving some stuff away to new homes and loosely organizing others. I started using an extra plastic case that used to hold beads to sort out the different prints in a color range. I loved this idea so much I went and got some parts boxes (another awesome Harbor Freight find) and voila 6 boxes of sorted 2" squares.

I needed a place to keep them and did not want to just keep them all stacked on top of each other. I also did not want to invest in something that would ONLY work for the part boxes, I wanted it to be flexible. I know it's my house, and I can drill all the holes in the walls I want, but that's extra work, which I like to avoid. I had an extra sheet of pegboard and two extra 1" x 2"'s and came up with what's in the picture. Double prong 4inch hooks and mini bungee cords. The boxes actually do fine on their own, I added the bungee cords for added stability.

I have other precut sizes as well, and made drawer dividers or used store bought drawer organizers to tame the drawers under my cutting table.

These are the 2.5" squares that I will be using soon on a project for one of my nieces.
2.5" Squares


I just rambled on a lot longer than I had intended to, but I was trying to anticipate some questions about where I procured some items, though I'm confident I didn't cover everything.

My wrist was sprain severe enough that after the month of July in a brace and no improvement, I was put in a short arm cast for the month of August so that I could not move my wrist. What a JOY that has been! /sarcasm One of our hottest summers and I spent it in a purple fiberglass cast. ugh!

I cannot wait to get my cast off next week, and hopefully will be back to sewing full force and getting to turn this lovely organized space back into a slightly chaotic creative mess. :)




1 comment:

Susan said...

*throws pins at the magnetic dishes to see if they stick*