Craft closet clean-out!

Last week I mentioned the dear friend who is gifting me with her fabric collection. Well, I had a grand total of three paper boxes to hold my fabric. I had labeled them "scraps," "small fabric," and "large fabric." Well, once the bags and boxes of fabric from this lovely woman started to trickle in it quickly became clear that I was outgrowing these three boxes!

So I cast a critical eye on my craft closet and decided it was time to shift my storage to match my current craft interests. If I needed more space for fabric, then I needed to remove something!

This led to a range of other projects: photographing and removing* old student work and portfolios, sorting through design samples (three boxes whittled down to one archival quality storage box), selling stuff on Craig's List, sorting out files, and finding new homes for various crafty things I no longer need. Needless to say, this project creep created a mess in rooms all over the place!

*removing as in: framing, gifting, and even recycling!

So, closet before:

And, closet after:

In the spirit of "use what you have" my system is built from paper boxes and sheets of colored paper as labels held on with clips. I did have to scrounge a bit to come up with the paper boxes but everything was free!

Then I took the organizational sweep through the rest of the room and re-did my shelves. I framed more photos and I displayed some childhood treasures.

I was especially happy to frame the photo of my great-grandmother and have it with me in my sewing space since I use her machine.

And in one last happy project, I hung a wide ribbon on a doorframe to display a collection of buttons and pins. I know I saw this idea somewhere else so I can't take credit for it myself.