Part of me is envious of those individuals that have a whole room devoted to their craft, even if that room also doubles as a guest room or office. In the one bedroom apartment that my husband and I share the only space I can craft in is our living room/dining room/entry way which means I have to disguise the madness to prevent my husband from being overwhelmed by my crafty chaos. Which is honestly okay with me because as it is now I can craft and be with my husband and fur babies. I feel like I sew more often because I’m not off in a corner by myself. My husband and I are also into being green and living comfortably on less so it only make sense that we find a way to fit our lives and creative passions into a small apartment. Of course the only way this would be possible is if we have awesome furniture that is beautiful to look but also highly functional. Where better to find such pieces at an affordable prices than Ikea?
This is a combination of seven pieces put together and it cost us about $1,500. That may seem steep but something similiar made of real wood and with this much storage would cost two to three times as much anywhere else and that’s if I could find something remotely similiar. Personally I think it’s almost a steal, since it holds all of this!
Bet you didn’t see that one coming 
Even I forget how much is in there since I rarely open all four doors at once and never while my husband is around 
I keep my 1/2- 1 yard pieces organized by color on one side along with my craft books and sewing tools. The bottom shelf has my growing stash of solid fabrics and home decorator weight fabrics. You can probably tell it’s a bit messy but I need more space to properly organize it…
The other side holds my fat quarter collection organized by color or fabric collection, interfacing, and pattern pieces (paper and plastic).
Not everything fits inside my Ikea furniture you can see the white cardboard boxes on top that hold in progress quilts (in this case my Single Girl Quilt and my Bee Modern Quilt). Another shelf from Ikea stands behind my sewing table and holds fabric pulls for projects that I haven’t started and my fabric scrap collection.
The “design wall” is a piece of white flannel held up by a couple of pins and usually isn’t up unless I’m working on something that I need to see (in this case the Tokyo Subway Quilt Along). I’d love to say this is everything and pat myself on my back for being so organized and streamlined but I would by lying. I have a set of three plastic drawers in my laundry space that hold in progress quilts that I won’t get to anytime soon and more interfacing. In the garage I have one or two medium sized plastic totes full of Munki Munki PJs that I have only once cut into to… Oh and a large (my husband says giant) roll of batting on the floor of our bedroom closet. In my defense I only buy it when it goes on sale for 40-50% off, so of course I need to buy it in large quantities!
Still I think it’s quite impressive how I’ve managed to work all this into our everyday living space in a functional for me but hidden from my husband way. I can work with everything I need only a few steps away without having it overwhelm our living space and take over our lives! You can see how other people store their fabric on this thread and if you are curious how fast a fabric stash can grow in a year here is what mine looked like a little over a year ago. (In case you are wondering at the time those photos were taken we were living in a 1500 square foot house and I had a seperate room to use as my office/sewing space. But I still kept my sewing machine in the dining room.)
How do you store your fabric?
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. I’ll probably buy a 1/2 yard of four or five prints. To be honest I’m more interested in what everyone else does! The madness is sure to be exciting, I just need to make sure I don’t get caught up in it and buy more than I really want.
