Take a peek into my sewing room - Storing notions

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Click the video player to view the tour of my sewing room. It may take a few minutes to load. For those of you with a dial-up connection, you can "view" the tour by reading my description below.

This is a series on sewing room organization and storage, complete with videos! Over the next few weeks, I'll share ideas for fabric stash organizing, thread storage and cataloging embroidery designs. Be sure to visit my blog every week or sign up for my newsletter for the lastest issue!

I'd love to hear the many ways you organize and store things in your sewing room, so leave a comment with your favorite sewing room ideas!

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I love to use totes and drawers in my sewing room to store and organize my notions. I have a stack of different size drawers in the center of my room against one wall where I store many of my notions like pins, scissors, marking pens, rotary cutters and small rulers. All the drawers are labeled with what is inside.

The top drawer has safety pins and t-pins for sandwiching quilt layers together. I keep the pins in ziplock containers, so I can take them with me wherever I'm pinning the quilt layers together.

The next drawer holds binding clips in a ziplock container and quilting gloves. One drawer holds my extra machine feet and accessories. I keep my most frequently used feet next to my sewing machine, but those feet and accessories that I have to have like a circular embroidery tool, ruffler foot, gathering foot for my serger are not feet I use everyday or even every week. So I keep them in this drawer. Most of them are in little baskets inside the drawer.

The next drawer is where I keep my rotary cutters and extra rotary blades. I have different kinds of rotary cutters - Olfa knife, circular cutter, different sizes of cutters like 18mm, 28mm and 45mm. Some I just try out to see if I like something new and some have different uses. For example: I have two 45mm rotary cutters; one I use for cutting paper and templates and another I use for cutting fabric. This way my fabric blade does not get dull so easily by using it to cut paper. And I'm always careful to shut my rotary cutter blades when sticking them back in the drawer; you don't want to stick your hand back in that drawer with an open blade!


All my marking tools are stored in one drawer. Things like Miracle Chalk, water soluble markers, air soluble markers, heat soluble markers, tack-it tool, permanent fabric pens, glow tape for rulers, tailor's chalk, tracing paper, etc. I also keep my Simflex gauge for marking buttonholes and Embroiderer's buddy for marking embroidery placement inside. Anything related to marking fabric is inside this drawer.

Cutting mat accessories and scissors are stored in the next drawer. My binding miter tool, Add-A-Quarter ruler for paper piecing, Add-A-Eighth ruler, buttonhole cutter, applique scissors, embroidery trimmers, etc. Even though I do keep a pair of scissors near my cutting table and snipping scissors near my sewing machine and ironing board, I have specialty scissors in here that I don't use quite as often.

A large drawer near the bottom holds my markers, colored pencils and crayons. No, it's not for coloring, but instead I use them for fixing and repairing embroidery designs where the bobbin thread has pulled up or I've used the wrong color of thread. Also, I keep my larger machine accessories inside like my Cd-Rom that connects to my machine and any other feet or extra bobbins that don't fit into the drawer up above.

The last two drawers hold all my cones of serger thread. For serging, I keep basic colors of thread on cones since sergers use large amounts of thread. I also have some specialty thread like wooly nylon and pearl cotton for fun serging projects.

Clear drawers are an excellent way to store notions in your sewing room! Try combining small and flat drawers with larger drawers and you will be able to organize many of your things inside.

How do you store your quilting notions? I'd love to hear your ideas!