Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Craft Storage

I've been enjoying a few discussion threads on how people store their crafting stashes, so I thought I'd share mine.

Since I live alone, I have the freedom to use the entire living room as my 'craft room' which suits me just fine.  I do like to keep things tidy so that if I wanted to have people over, I wouldn't have to spend a week hiding all my projects.

Knitting:
Knitting is really my travel-hobby so my stash is pretty small, and honestly I don't have that many projects in the works.

The top two hat boxes contain misc. quilting and sewing tools. The box on the bottom contains all my embroidery thread, hoops and patterns.  The pink striped hat boxes contain my yarn stash, the blue wine-box contains my sock yarn, and I try to limit my WIPs to what will fit in the bag.


Official 'stash' yarn... no projects in mind for any of it.


Current knitting WIPs - a mindless scarf to go with a hat I made a few years ago, Shedir cabled hat, and well, not really in progress yet, but I was going to cast on for a new pair of ankle socks.

Quilting:
I've got a lot more quilt projects in progress / in mind than knitting.... but my fabric stash is still fairly small.  It's kind of surprising because I feel like I'm forever picking stuff up at Fabric Depot... but I guess I've also made & given away quite a few quilts, so there you go.


The fabric stash is divided into the following categories: batik, non-batik, holiday, character prints.  From there I group the fabrics by dominant color - more or less.  I've also got a box of scraps that have been cut down into 2x2 or 3x3 or 1x3 pieces.  Although I have many specific ideas for what to do with these fabrics... they're not really in the 'active' phase yet.  There's sewing fabric in the purple rubbermaid bin... and I keep my batting in another bin in the closet.


These are the quilts in progress... or in some cases quilts in hibernation.  This is also where I keep my box of real scrap scraps.  On the top shelf are all my crafting books and magazines. 

Finally... my 'craft table' where all the magic happens... is just my dining room table.  But I also have a folding table (in the back) I bring out for cutting sometimes. 

Overall I'm pretty happy with my 'craft room' and stashes.  I like having everything easily accessible... but also neat enough that I can put it all away pretty quickly.  I'd love to have a ton more fabric... but realistically I know I don't have nearly enough time to make all the quilts I'd like to... so it's good to keep the stash somewhat lean. 

So how do you organize your crafts?  Do you limit your stash to materials for specific projects or do you have a 'stash of possibilities'?  I'd love to see everyone else's craft rooms. 

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