Category: Organization

I bought this old, heavy, and apparently very dirty dental cabinet two years ago with the intention of cleaning it up and storing sewing supplies in it. I knew at the time that it was going to be a big job, but damn, I really underestimated it.

In addition to 75+ years of muck, and a little bit of mildew, there were a few forgotten treasures inside. The diagram of “The Teeth of a Seven Year Old Child” was my favorite find.

I cleaned the whole thing and stripped the drawer fronts of paint, but then simply couldn’t pick a color. Then winter hit and I didn’t have to choose a paint color… and then it was two years later…

Well I think working through my sewing WIPs made me want to wrap up this furniture WIP. So I went back to the paint store and picked up even more color chips.

It came down to these two colors and since I already have a lot of green in my space, I went for clay. The basement lighting made it look like a Halloween cabinet and I did briefly question everything. But once the back was dry, I brought it upstairs and in natural light, it looked just as I’d imagined.

In the stripping process, I accidentally removed spots of the enamel on the insides of the drawers, which added MORE things I needed to paint. But ultimately the insides needed to be repainted because they were truly gross, even without my paint stripping damage.

I used spray enamel for just the drawer interiors and left the original paint on the outside because of the locking mechanisms. There’s also writing on the bottoms of the drawers. This cabinet appears to have been built by a couple of people (they all initialed a little sticker) and the process included numbering the cabinet itself and each of its parts. So each drawer and each drawer pull has a hand written number, which is pretty cool, and I didn’t want to cover that up.

The cabinet probably weighs around 200 lbs and needed to be maneuvered up two flights of stairs. It was awkward and a little scary but we did it! Due to space restrictions, I had to work on the drawers in two batches. Getting the first batch done and in the cabinet was really exciting.

My paint job isn’t perfect, but I wasn’t starting with a perfect surface either. I did my best and think it looks a whole heck of a lot better. I added this photo to show how much time has passed – my hair is quite a bit longer than in the first picture.

This cabinet holds a lot and I’m really enjoying that every drawer has a certain supply in it.

11.5 months later, I’m back with part 2 of my studio update! If you saw part 1, you’ll notice quite a few changes. The main update is, like a lot of people, home is now where I work. And my work involves a lot of filming equipment. Equipment that takes up a lot of physical space… and mental space. Anyway, all of the extra stuff and well, *gestures broadly at everything* I just didn’t feel inspired to share. But I want to now!

This corner is no longer home to my horrible exercise bike, but instead a bunch of plants, UFOs, and occasionally a yoga mat.

I’ve wanted to sew curtains inspired by this artist for ages, but decided to purchase some simple shades. I’ll eventually finish those curtains, but flashing my neighbors was getting old and I was having to tape paper over the windows to film.

There’s a lot more stuff on the walls now too. I hung IKEA pegboards, art, and made two bulletin boards out of homasote and canvas. The board pictured here is holding a project that will one day be a quilted jacket. The top shelf of my cutting table stores a bunch of tripods and lights (hidden by other stuff), batting, yarn, and fabric scraps.

Large woven scraps are folded and stored on one of the open desk shelves and the small pieces live in these baskets. I can easily pull them out when I’m working on one of my two long-term quilt projects. You can see how I store my fabric stash in this blog post.

This dress form is from my vintage selling days. She’s definitely not my size, but it’s fun to hang an in-progress project on her. The baskets hold printed patterns and fabric on rolls. I went with Husky workbenches to hold my sewing machines. They’re really sturdy, easy to move around, height adjustable, and have two drawers for storage. I didn’t really think through the drawers and the free hand system of my machines, but whatever.

I love this old banker’s chair. I thrifted it for a cool $15 in Tulsa, OK and it’s the best for rolling back and forth between my sewing machine and serger. The machine pictured here is a Bernina 475 and it’s from work. My personal sewing machine is a Bernina 770 QE (hasn’t arrived yet, upgrading from a B 530) and my serger is a Bernina L 460 (currently getting serviced), which is why they aren’t pictured.

This board is the second homasote and canvas board and I’m using it to plan projects. Once a project is finished, I’ve been trying to add both the drawing and swatch to a notebook with a few notes about it. More plans can be found here.

The IKEA cart holds distilled water for my iron, spray bottle, lint rollers, a handful of Pyrex saucers I sometimes use as pattern weights, hand sewing supplies, and supplies for the quilted jacket project.

I recently bought this ironing board. I had to upgrade because the one I bought from Target 12 years ago was completely rusted and started staining anything I pressed. Really happy with this upgrade! It’s wider, has a special place for my iron, and a handy shelf, which I’m using to hold WIPs and pressing tools. Can you spot Otis?

Here’s a closer look at the big board. The little light and Herman Miller chair used to be my grandfather’s. The block printed bag holds scraps that are too tiny to be turned into anything and are destined for the trash.

This IKEA cart holds a bunch of stuff. Top shelf has tools, a Gutermann thread chart (highly recommend getting a thread chart during quarantine), an RK Kona cotton swatch book, my classwork from GarmentWorks, and my button stash. Middle shelf has rolls of elastic, muslin scraps, and mask making supplies. Bottom shelf has fat quarters for that previously mentioned curtain project, more elastic, and a bowl of Petoskey stones! This section of pegboard is home to my block printing supplies. The closed cabinets hide a mess of random stuff and more filming equipment.

This is another quilt project and it lives in this IKEA drawer thing. Whenever I cut out a woven garment project, I also cut out as many 2 x 2 inch squares as I can to reduce waste. Here’s an idea of what it’ll look like once it’s assembled.

I love this space and I’m super grateful to have it. Anything else you want to see? Have any questions? Let me know in the comments!