Storage solutions

October 6, 2020

My sewing room has a small built in wardrobe, which I have big plans for. After a year and disrupted by covid I have accepted the big plan will be waiting a while. That being so I needed to find a way to get the space usable. I need the storage. I don’t want to go out or really to spend money on a hopefully temporary solution so I needed to scavenge something we had. The old house had been full of storage so I have some options. While a lot has been put into service here there is a pile of bits left waiting for jobs. To make things simple I thought I would use a slot together shelving system.  The one I had left was the right depth, a bit shorter than ideal and way too tall. This house has much lower ceilings than the old one, and I thought those were low. Here there is only one room where this shelf unit could possibly fit. I feel guilty about cutting up a fairly expensive piece of shelving but after trying it in my longarm room I decided there was no way it was going in there. So I may as well cut it down as the alternative is to just store it. At least I now have room for and access to the tools easily.  So adjusting the uprights wasn’t too tricky. As the shelves are shorter than the wardrobe space I left in the old shelf support to use as an attachment point for one upright. The wardrobes were added between rooms and are a bit flimsy so would need fixings I don’t have to hand if I wanted to attach directly to them. This saved that issue. It did cost me about an inch of storage but I think I can live with that for now.  Assembled it even looks pretty good.

This then meant I could unpack the boxes that had been sitting in there. That is more important than it sounds as some of my favourite and most inspiring fabrics has just been sitting in boxes for a year. It also provides space for my micro bolts of fabrics. Ultimately I want to have shelves in the back of the wardrobe  exactly sized for these bolts with a sliding shelf in front for more folded fabric. It should let me get 50% more in and visible. At the moment this is looking pretty good and I can at least see the fabric (and maybe use it).

Yes there are still a couple of boxes in the bottom. Those are mostly haberdashery. Things like rivets, buttons and beads. I need to sort out some organized drawers for those. For one day this was as far as I got. This is about half the wardrobe, and maybe 2/3 of the shelf. The ends of the shelves being open is a little tricky but I can cope with it and I love the improvement. When we can get the parts to fit it there will be a long curtain rod that covers the mirror doors and the wall next them. I will use it to hang quilts and a design wall. I don’t like the mirrors and I do need a design wall so 2 birds one stone.

Having spent most of Sunday working on this I didn’t have long to work on my quilt. I did start making the modern with squares border ( I realise now I combined two things in my head, I think this only needed to be modern). All the squares for the 2 borders now have their setting pieces on so I just need to assemble it all.

The edge isn’t perfectly straight, a combination of improvisation and using up what bits I have left. The dip is less than 1/4″ though so hopefully it will vanish in the seam. I can line the seam up on the majority of the piece to stay straight. I am now really trying to clear the last offcuts of this quilt. I want as little as possible left when it is made. I have about 160″ of this design to make but once I have this and the next 2 sides can go on in quick succession with just a short pause to finish the last two sides of the quilt. A couple of days solid effort and I could have this quilt finished.