Becca's Sewing Space

Happy New Year, Project Run & Play fans! I'm Becca, sew blogger at Free Notion, and brand new owner of a turn-of-the-century row home in Richmond, Virginia. 

My family and I spent most of 2016 in the housing market, and we lost a lot from our list of "must-haves" along the way. Thankfully though, the space I'm going to show you today was not one of them.

So head on down the ​hallway, to the back of the house, up the "secret" staircase, into the re-purposed servant's quarters that I proudly call my studio:

This is our third bedroom - theoretically a "guest room" with the addition of the futon - and the only one with a closet. In fact, it's the only closet upstairs, a recent add-on from the previous owners. Sadly, that storage space is already 100% spoken for as a catchall of family garbage ...er... heirlooms. Not great news for a woman who unloaded half-a-POD's worth of craft supplies! If this was going to be a successful studio space, I was going to have to 1. purge and 2. organize. 

​I made a point of keeping only those fabrics that brought me joy. They had to be pretty to look at, and they had to be usable. The guilt-laden batik I swore would become a bag for my mom Christmas 2013? Gone. Those odd-shaped, long-outgrown-kid-print, knit scraps that "could make such cute bindings!"? Gone. Donated to various local sewing friends who will put them to better use than I ever would. 

Purging was such a freeing process - but one I'd be bound to repeat year after year if I continued to keep my fabric hidden away in totes, forgotten about and replaced with new stock in a matter of weeks. So the "organizing" step came with a promise designed to keep me honest: all fabric I owned would be on display. 

I wrap all my fabric around these comic book boards to create ridiculously-satisfying uniform folds that I keep on three bookshelves. They're super easy to search through, and when I've finished auditioning fabrics for a project they slip nicely back on the shelves.

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My first book case is all quilters cottons. My second is full of seasonal apparel fabrics. The third, seen in the first photo beside the fireplace, is a medley of all kid's apparel fabrics and out-of-season women's apparel fabrics. It's admittedly a work in progress, but the comic board trick is here to stay!

I do still keep scraps - mostly in paper bags awaiting donation - but also to reserve for future quilting projects, neutral knit scraps for bindings, and the kid's inevitable patch-these-knee-blowouts emergencies. I keep those in canvas totes I picked up from target's back-to-school specialty stock, but they're essentially just more colorful versions of these.

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There are a couple more of those wood crates in the other storage cabinet, where I keep my patterns. I purged those too, and any I kept are in labeled gallon bags so I can find them easily and keep all the pieces together. The other crate is filled with cones of thread. Neither crate is pretty, but these things have to go somewhere! 

Now, I take zero credit for this last storage idea (or any of the others, really...) - but I feel clever anyway every time I see this genius re-purpose of the IKEA grocery bag holder. Doesn't it look like it was made to display my vinyl collection?? Bonus: It's an extra splash of color and sparkle that brightens my studio every day!

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Thanks for touring my sewing storage today! And thanks, Project Run & Play, for having me guest blog, and giving me the nudge I needed to clean up my studio. Just.. mind the fresh trail of 3 year old on your way out...

​Happy organizing!! Xoxo, Becca

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Thank you Becca for giving us a peek inside your amazingly organized space! 

If you would like to see more of Becca, you can find her over at her blog Free Notion,  Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook .

Be sure to link up your sewing space here, and today is the last day you can enter the Sew Sweetness Giveaway!

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