Thread reorganisation essentially complete

Hello!  Today I'm going to share the results of my big reorganisation project.  This may turn out to be a 'thread envy' type of post as it features virtually every embroidery thread I currently own, but I just want to say that the reason I'm creating it is to share my pleasure at having completed a big job and maybe even give some helpful storage ideas for those in need of them.  Bragging or showing off doesn't come into the equation.

Many of the threads I've got here came in newsgroup stash exchanges, or when I've been given gift money or ONS gift vouchers/certificates.  Some have been special offers on e-bay and some have been me reinvesting money I'd just made by selling my own stuff on e-bay, or just by plain saving up pocket money.

It's also a collection ranging back over 12 years and there aren't any really pricey ranges here, such as Au Ver a Soie, or Silk Mill, where you're looking at around £3 per skein.  Most of my stuff is around £1 per item, even the silks!

OK, having got the 'non-bragging disclaimer' done with, the first photo shows the completed drawer tower.  The thing is, before, I had things I didn't use very often in these drawers, such as haberdashery and papercraft supplies, and that was mad given that it's very much on-hand storage for me, right next to my desk and easy to use.  Now it holds almost exclusively embroidery threads.

As you can see, I moved the art caddy and silks box off the top (the art caddy being far too heavy and the silks running the risk of fading in direct sunlight), and put them on the floor.  I've re-placed the Kleenex on the drawers' top instead, which also frees up the desk space again.  I love as clear a desk as I can manage.

Here are the four drawers now:

The first contains packs of needles, some elastic etc and some cotton and paper round moulds for making stumpwork fruit etc at the back (left hand side here).  The front holds my organza ribbon pack, three packs of scraps of metallic threads, both from use and the smaller bits from a Kreinik Bag-of-Bits that I went through thoroughly the other day and sorted out well.  Other than that, there are a bundle of DMC skein metallic threads and five or six Anchor ones in there as well.

Moving on to drawer two and, with the exception of the DMC Linen threads collection, all these are variegated to one degree or another.  There are some DMC and Anchor multi-colours in stranded cotton and pearl #5 as well as a few from the Caron Collection and some Weeks Dye Works multis at the back.  The front section holds the rest of the WDW and also some Gentle Arts Sampler Threads.  I had a whole lot more, but sold them about 5 years ago as I really couldn't see myself using them, so I just keep useful looking shades.  I've also separated out some Anchor multi-colours in pearl #5 and #8 to sell.

Drawer three is my favourite.  It's the least fancy being just solid colours of cotton threads, but I really like it.  At the back are some skeins of Anchor pearl cotton #5, then almost all the Anchor Coton à Broder #16 shades (not a very good collection of colours, I feel, especially the greens - yack!) and around 40% of the newer Coton à Broder #25 range.  This is almost the only section of my whole collection that I'm planning to expand in the near future as I'm currently saving up for the rest of the shades and, very likely, some of the DMC range to plug the many colour gaps.  With only 80 shades in the range, it's bound to be very limited.  It's better than it was, though, as there used only to be 40.

The bottom drawer contains 'shinies' in the form of Madeira Silks (stopped from moving around by an old pincushion!!) and Anchor Marlitt.

As I'd taken the Marlitt out of my wooden box, I had room to spread the pearl cotton #8 and #12 balls out a little more.  Those on the left are all #8 with three more in the browns section.  The rest are all #12 and there's a bit of room in the drawer to get a few more.  I'd like a few more floral shades - pretty pinks, purples and a deep red.

Although the organiser still hasn't been fixed to the wall, I've finished this section too.  One of the Really Useful Boxes I emptied and put my goldwork threads into (I don't have many as, as you might recall, I'm not big on working pure goldwork, although I love to add metallic touches and goldwork trims wherever possible).  I also decided which pencils I wanted to have to hand and filled up my store tubes.  Those were a really good deal - just £3 from Hobbycraft.  The RUB organisers can be bought from there too at the decent price of £18 (although I got a slightly damaged one for £12 on Amazon), but take care that you get the 0.3l boxes, not the tiny 0.16l ones.  Those tiny, dinky ones look great and now come in all sorts of fun layouts and colours, but they really don't hold anything.  The clear 0.3l or the coloured version is far better IMHO.  Of course, it depends entirely on what you want to store, but Mill Hill bead packs don't fit in and I could get next to no Kreinik spools in one too.

The basic idea of all this, apart from busting out of my old system, was to have to hand and easily visible the things that I use most or want to use more.  I've now put most of my low use sewing threads and card making trims into the blue craft tote on the floor as I don't often need them and it wasn't sensible having those so easy access. Before, many of my threads were in boxes in that blue box.  I needed to go through two or three stages to even see what I wanted, compared to a simple one stage layout now in the drawers.  I was watching a YouTube video the other day where a stitcher showed her cross stitch stash storage.  She had things in piled up boxes and bags in a chest of drawers.  There were several stages involved in getting to each item, including high demand tools and threads.  I wanted to eliminate this wherever possible and simplify the whole thing.

So the real moral of today's story is: if you're thinking about having a sort out or tidy up, take some time to really think about making it the most user friendly system for your own personal needs.

Moving on now to the very last stage of things:  the stranded cottons.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm not that likely to resort my stranded cottons after all.  I think the idea I had would have worked, but I can't be sure that it would have been so much better than it is now.  Actually, the real problem is that the box containing the stranded and pearl cottons is in a different room from the rest of the collection, which is somewhat contrary to the above, no?  Rather hard to solve too, owing to space restrictions.

I have the DMC threads that I've invested in sorted into colour bags and, as you can see somewhat from the last photo, esp. the bottom row, unlike DMC, Anchor colour numbers tend to be in colour families anyway, at least from 1 to 403, which seems to be the basic colour range.  As for the others, I know where the most useful newer shades are in the numbering system and have the real thread colour chart, so I think I can manage for now this way until such time as I find myself rarely working others' designs (when I need to get threads out according to shade number), so I'll leave them as they are.  I don't mind doing the reorganising work, I just doubt it'll really be worth it.  That may mean that I use more DMC when I need to get colours out purely by shade, but that's hardly a problem!  I think I've bought all I mean to get of their collection for the time being anyway and am happy with what I've got now, esp. the greens and purples, many of which are very different indeed.

So, no more excuses now, girlie.  Back to your stitching!=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Beginning a major thread reorganisation

'Hello!  What's occurring here?!' you may well be asking.  Well, I'm in the midst of a major overhaul of my thread storage.  I'd come to the point where I was really outgrowing my old system and my needs were changing somewhat too, so it was time to begin a rethink and, as a result of those cogitations, a rework of my set up.  This first shot shows my desk as I was experimenting with how many boxes of Mill Hill beads etc, I could get into a 0.3 litre Really Useful Box (RUB).

This second picture shows my new RUB organiser unit (which I'd been drooling over for years!) with five extra 0.3l RUBs and two 0.2l ones nearby.  You can also see in the centre right of the photo, that I bought a brown, six tube papier maché storage for pencils etc and had put some of my watercolours in it by this point.  I plan to fill up the other four tubes with various pencils etc, but haven't decided on which as yet.  Each tube holds about 36 art pencils, (more like 30 for comfort and 'movement'), so there are lots of possibilities.   I considered emptying the four Derwent boxes of 24 I had into the tubes and padding them out with others, but I'm not sure that is what I want and need to have at hand.  I'll come back to that later on.  Threads first....

Here are all of the RUB boxes filled and shelved.  The order in the display isn't final as yet as I need to think about what I need nearest to hand and, at this point, the organiser is awaiting Sir's ministrations (i.e. fastening it to the wall for safety), so having the time to think it over is helpful as all the RUBs will have to come out/off for the DIY bit.  There are a total of 23 RUBs here, nine filled with metallic spools (mostly Kreinik, but also some Coats, DMC and Madeira reels), five with sewing threads, Bobbinfil and other haberdashery items, five with beads, and one each with ribbon bobbins, reels of machine embroidery rayon, the old Kreinik Soie Perlé silks on their regular spools and buttons/trims/charms.  The last two are in the smaller, 0.2 litre RUBs.

In this fourth shot you can see the current state of the older, small four-drawer tower.  Basically, I've emptied the original contents of most of the top two drawers into the RUB organiser and the fabric colouring things have been relocated into a 3 litre RUB which you can just see if you look under the desk, bottom centre in the first photo.  The craft things in the bottom drawer will be moving into some of the boxes in my old blue craft tote workbox (from which the beads and some other things have been moved out).  The remaining reels of sewing thread have also been moved into a new box for now and the third drawer is currently a resting point for some of the threads that will eventually be housed properly in these drawers, such as coton à broder #16 and #25, skeins of DMC and Anchor metallic threads and, later probably, things like Marlitt and some or all of the Anchor pearl cottons.  I can't quite decide what's going where yet.

On top of these drawers you can see the box of Pipers Silks I've had for a while, whilst behind is another buy from Hobbycraft this last week in the shape of an art caddy box.  It was £5 and I confess to have been considering it for a while, so whilst in the holiday mood during a day out in Hull on Tuesday, I bought both this and the store tubes.  In the fifth and final picture, you can see how I've arranged my art materials in the caddy, with Winsor and Newton watercolour tubes in the top cantilever section, W&N gouache paints and Reeves acrylics in the lower cantilever, and watercolour pan palettes and my box of W&N half pastel sticks along with some paint brushes.  Thanks to clearing these out of the drawer they used to be in, I've been able to store my fabric dye box and all my mixing palettes (and my spare specs which used to sit on top of the drawer tower) where many of these paints used to live.

I decided to go ahead with my idea for reorganising my stranded cottons, especially as one reader detailed her solution as being essentially the same and working well for her (thanks, Elaine!).  However, I can't do it for a while as I really need to have all the threads 'back home' in storage and there are a few dozen 'out on location' (i.e. in WIP project bags) just now.  Once one picture is done and the other well enough in progress to make it less troublesome to deal with the needed threads, I'll get to that.  Thankfully, that part of my thread collection is independent of the rest and is OK for the time being.  Having said that, I got 35 new DMC threads the other day (I can heartily recommend this UK e-bay seller and her prices, esp. as, once you've bought skeins from her once, she offers further discounts for repeat customers) and so it's certainly getting to be a need to reorganise there too.

So, that's one of the things that have been keeping me a bit too busy to stitch or blog much.  Although it's a big job, it's coming along nicely and is rather enjoyable work.=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Needlequest Update - 8 September 2014

This is how far I've got with my latest Helen M Stevens' design - just the transferring and colour selection done.  Actually, that represents almost an hour and a half's work!  I used a new piece of white carbon paper to transfer the design, so there was a LOT of extra dust to remove.  Anyway, it was done finally and I was able to get down to picking out the threads.  As you can see, I've got Anchor (from several generations of packing type!!), DMC and Kreinik here ready to use.  Hope to get stitching on it soon.=)

I want to ask readers about thread storage etc.  Now, my problem is this:  My main stranded cottons (the complete set of Anchor ones) are stored in press top bags in colour number order.  This is very convenient for getting threads out for cross stitch projects, or other pieces where I'm pulling things out according to colour number, but not so good when I'm selecting shades for today's piece.  Then my storage for the few DMC threads I own is better, where I have them arranged by colour in bags.  How can I marry these two systems up so that they're useful for both?

Of course, I have the real thread shade card for my Anchor threads and I use it a lot, but it's better to hold a real skein against your fabric etc than a tiny bit of sample thread that doesn't often reach anyway.  Any ideas  Here's the solution I thought of earlier, which I would like your opinions on:

I thought of taking all my Anchor threads and re-sorting them according to colour families and making a list of the colour numbers which I would then attach to the bag in number order.  I'd also include my DMC threads in each relevant bag and on the shade number list.  I'd also create a list of all the Anchor shades (there's one on the shade card I can copy) showing which bag they were now in so that it would be a bit easier and quicker to find needed shades for counted designs etc.  It means several hours work, but could well be the half-way house solution I need.

Will that work, do you think?  Or can you think of a way to improve it?  Thanks!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Where Bloggers Create Link Party Post

Karen of My Desert Cottage has been running a blogging party where creative bloggers are invited to create a photo post featuring their own creative space, big or small.  I'm late joining in this event as I only found out about it yesterday and couldn't put together a post (my second today - wow!) until this evening.  However, you can see all the lovely links and Karen's own studio post here.

There are some amazing work spaces featured, including large rooms holding a stunning amount of stash with many non-working surfaces displaying a huge collection of decorative knick-knacks and curios.  Some of these studios are works of art in themselves!  Having said that, I'm grateful that I don't have the dusting of some of them and I wouldn't like to have to pack the contents of them for a house move!!!=)  LOL!

Anyway, even though long time readers have seen my room and desk space before, there are always new readers who may be curious.  Also, one of my reasons for joining in this is to show that, whilst big and beautiful rooms are a joy to work in and to have a good look at, they aren't strictly necessary for creating works of art.=)

We live in a medium sized flat (apartment), which is the biggest we've ever had, but still nowhere near big enough for me to have a double-bedroom sized room for myself.  Sir has one, but I'm still in the queue for a good sized area, where I can even leave the sewing machine out etc etc.  Much of my stitching actually takes place in our living room, in this corner of the sofa.  The white scatter cushion actually on the seat is there to even up the height and stop me getting sciatica, as, like pretty much all our furniture, the sofa is worn out and needs replacing!!  This workbox lives in a discreet corner just inside the dining room end of our main room.  I keep my main collection of plain/solid colours in this, such as stranded cottons, coton à broder, perle cotton etc.

Moving on to my own tiny room now.  The room is 1.9m x 2.1m, which is around 6 feet, so it really is small.  This is the view from the entrance.  I can't say 'the view from the door' as we had to take the door off as it was inward opening and you could barely turn around in there!  So, we replaced it with an old curtain from our previous home.  It gives a little privacy and helps keep the heat in when I have the fan heater on during winter days.

Virtually every space is taken up, so I wouldn't have room for any more souvenirs than the postcards and bookmarks you can see decorating the back wall.  Sorry, it isn't very tidy at the mo!!

This is a closer view of the shelf area:

And here's a shot of the plastic drawer towers, which are, of course, one small set on top of one large.  To the left of the larger drawers is a basket bag full of hoops, plastic snap frames (Q-snaps and R&R Frames) and things like that.

Anyone interested in seeing the contents of these drawers may like to visit this old room reorganization post where I give a bit of a tour of things like that.  They haven't changed a great deal.

The last shot is the lower part of my main bookshelves where I keep all my stitching books and magazines as well as some art pads and books and so on.

The 'Butterflies' books on the left hand side of the floor is to go back to the library this week and the 'Little Flowers' one is my latest acquisition when I won Mary Corbet's giveaway (I'm still stunned about that one!!)  It's on the floor as yet as I don't actually have any shelf space for it just now.  In her 'And the winner is post', Mary mentioned that I wasn't one to arbitrarily add new titles to my embroidery book collection, well this is one of the three reasons why.  (The others are lack of funds (almost all my recent buys have come mostly from cashing in Nectar points on e-bay!) and a decision only to buy what I think there's a real chance I'll use!!!)  My last buy (Jane Nicholas' 'Stumpwork Butterflies and Moths') is sitting, out of view in this shot, above the Chinese dictionaries you can see top left as I haven't room for that either!!  I need a bit of a clear out....

So, those are my creative spaces.  One is just a corner of the living room and the other, the tiny box room that most people probably just cram their junk into.  Hope it's been of interest and maybe even inspiration to some.=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Pipers Silks arrived!

Thursday was a great day - my order from Pipers Silks arrived!  It was way faster than I thought it would be as I hadn't thought of even hoping for it before this coming Monday, but the despatch note hit my in-box on Tuesday evening and the package arrived less than 40 hours later.

Above you can see the new arrivals.  There are 4 of the 'Embroidery Packs', which are good value collection builders at 10 cops for price of 9.  In the centre row: 'Nature' (various brown-based shades) and 'Summer Fruits' (purplish pinks and deep reds); and the bottom row: 'Autumn' (golds and oranges) and 'Plush Pinks' (reds and red-based pinks).  I used the colour lists from other packs as well as the on-line colour chart and Susan Peck's helpful advice to select the greens, blues and purples etc that you can see at the top.  I managed not to overtly duplicate any shades I had, although one or two are remarkably similar and there may have been one or two name changes since my first lot were made as I noticed, for instance, that I really couldn't tell any difference between 'rhubarb' and 'dark rhubarb'. 'Dark lettuce' and 'leaf' are almost the same too, as are 'champagne' and 'deep cream', so those are to bear in mind when it comes to time to restock.

This is now my whole collection of Pipers Floss Silks.  Which section does your eye go to?  Mine's really drawn to those lucious pinky purples part way into the middle row (from the left).  I think I bought that set simply as I love that type of colour so much!  Now I'm longing to find a use for them.

I also have black and white of the fine twisted silk 2/20 and a black 4/20.  I've become quite curious as to how all those numbers work!  I can see that the lower the first number, the finer the thread, but what happens when the second number changes??  Anyone know?

When I came to arranging the whole lot in my box, I ran into something unexpected:

If you read my last post, you might remember that I thought I would be able to get all these floss silks into the first two layers of my box, thus leaving the third for finer gauges of thread that I hope to get hold of later on.  So, what happened?  Susan tells me that the company who make the cardboard core of the cop (they call them 'cops' as opposed to 'reels' or 'spools') have increased the width of the tube a little.  So, whilst they fit into the sections nicely still, I can't get three layers in as expected, but only two.  Where I have a mixture of older, narrower cops and newer ones, I can get about seven in each section - eight at a push, but only six of the new ones.

At first, I was a bit disappointed about that, but then I realised that it really has its good points as putting fewer in each section means that it's both easier to see more of the colours and is likely to preserve them in better condition as there will be less fidgeting around in each section to get to the shade I want and the cops rubbing against each other tends to lead to a slight 'fluffing' of the silk (I had to rewind parts of some of my old cops to reduce this after long storage).  So, I've decided it isn't so bad after all.  For those of you who expressed an interest in this type of box as a storage solution for Pipers cops though, please note that you can only store about 108 in it as opposed to the previously advertised 160+.

I can fit about another sixteen cops into these three layers and then I need another box to store finer gauges in.  Oh, what a shame!!!=)LOL.  Watercolour paints, you're getting your own box soon!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013

My new thread box has arrived

When I was putting together an order for Pipers Silks recently, I was also wondering where I was going to store them as, frankly, my workboxes are already packed and I had to move the metallics into the top drawer of another fixture in order to fit things in.  Looking around on Amazon UK, I found this little box, which seems to be used mostly for jewellery making supplies.  Each of the 18 sections measures 7.5 x 3.5 x 5 cm, which fits Pipers Silk cops beautifully, as you can see!

Although my order of threads will take a while to arrive, (Pipers is, basically, run by one lady - Susan Peck - and she does more or less everything herself and so, sometimes, things take a while to get to), I organised the shades I already had into the box to see how it worked out.

So far I've got (from top left to bottom right, across both tiers) blue-ish greens, dark greens, lighter greens, reds, oranges, yellows, blues, purples, pinks, black - white, dull browns and yellow browns.  Whether or not I'll be able to maintain these divisions when the 58 new shades come, I can't tell as yet, but, as the lions share seem to be in the red and pink category, I think I will have to play around with sections somewhat.

The two in the tier you see top right are incredibly fine 2/20 twisted silks and I plan to use that tier for more of those shades and some of the 4/20 ones, one of which (black) I have on order at the moment.  I'll post something showing the gauges against each other and a strand of regular stranded cotton when I have them all to hand.  For now, suffice to say that one strand of Piper Floss Silk (most of the above) seems to be about half the thickness of one strand of Anchor/DMC and that 2/20 seems to be about a third of the thickness of that!  For future dolls house work, it seems that one strand of 2/20 fine twist will be about the 1/12th scale equivalent of two strands of regular floss!  Tiny!

From the dimensions given on the Amazon page, I was able to work out that I could get 9 cops in each box section and that the whole box would hold a total of 162 cops, 54 per tier.  It's possible that another one could be squeezed into the six central sections, but I'm not sure that's too wise an idea.  The top two tiers I plan to keep the regular silk floss in and, when the newbies come, I'll have room for only another half a dozen.=)

It won't surprise anyone to read that I'm already considering buying a second box!  The tiers are made in such a way as you can add on as many as you like (vertically, of course), under one lid.  So, if I began to 'spill over' into a fourth tier, it's not out of the question to get one.  I also realised that threads weren't the only things that I could use this sort of box for and that my watercolour tubes could find a new home too:

All the smaller ones and all but five of the larger ones fit into this one layer, so there is a potential use for a second box with just one or two tiers as need be.

So, I'm now waiting eagerly for Postie to bring me a lovely packet from Pipers!  I've to allow 10-21 days, so, as I was only able to put in the order for this last Thursday, I can begin to look out for them from a week on Monday.  This box will soon be a good deal fuller....

BTW, Pipers Silk cops are somewhat shorter and a little narrower than those use to wind Japanese silks onto, so this sort of box may not be too useful for other brands.  If in doubt, measure first.=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013

Weddings coming up!

Two weddings are happening within the next 3 months and so I'm already well on with the gifts for the first one (in mid-August).  I've done the card and have got everything ready to start stitching for the gift.

<-This is the design I used for the card.  As you can probably see, it's part of a long, narrow sampler design and is by Patricia Bage of Patricia Ann's Designs.  It's from her 'Beginners Guide to Drawn Thread Embroidery'.  I just used this central square and then added a line a silver cross stitches around the outside as it was really too small for the card blank. Yes, the fabric is lilac, but it hasn't shown up well here.

Here's the floss toss for the gift.  The design is the 'ring of roses' you can see on the right, here finished up as a table centre, but I'm going to work it as a cushion/pillow cover as it's more practical and, frankly, I can't stand buttonhole edging.  Caleb, I love ya, but not enough for all that edging!!!  I'll probably also change the woven filling for wrapped bars as they're quicker and, by the time I get to that stage, I'll be ready to do something else, no doubt.  The flowers are to be worked in these pretty yellows as I thought that would be easier to fit in with whatever colour scheme they chose for whichever room they want to use it in than the reds I'd originally planned to do with this design.  Anyway, I expect to be starting on the satin stitching this evening.

This next bit is for Cynthia who, after the room re-organisation post, wanted to see whole room shots.  That's quite a challenge as the room is so small!  However, nothing loathe, here is the view of the (messy) desk area, which is wall to wall as you see, and was taken from as far back in the doorway as I could reasonably stand.

This second shot shows the bookshelves joining on to the new shelves and from that you can see how short that wall is.

So, I live in a rather tiny space, but I think I've got it about as close to optimised as one could hope for.  There's no comfy chair in there for stitching, that's why that takes place in the roomier living room.  And, if we do move closer into town as Sir wants (and part of me does too), then I will almost certainly lose my room and we'll end up sharing a second bedroom as a study.  Not as good, but still far better than being restricted to the dining table, no?=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Room Re-Organization

This was L-O-N-G overdue, but it got delayed whilst waiting to have the shelves up etc etc etc.  Anyway, here are some before and afters, including what's in the drawers. Well, I'd want to look in yours....:)

Starting at the top with what used to be a blank wall space between my framed degree certificate and the old fabric bins.   Here you can see how it used to be and how it looks now.  A lot less bare, isn't it?

Then we come to what's in the drawers.  You've seen the first drawer already, the one with all my metallic threads in.  Under that comes the general sewing drawer into which I also stuff my paper scissors!  They need a new home since their hook fell off the wall and I haven't got around to re-doing one.  Er-hum..

The third drawer contains my fabric colouring things - small tubs of silk paints, fabric paints and fabric dyes are in the box at the back.  The other two boxes contain tubes of acrylic and watercolour paints, although I do have other watercolours that are artists' quality in my white drawers.  Under that in the fourth drawer is card making materials.

Here are some of the drawers in the old Ikea wooden set of drawers on the shelf.  There are lots of highlighter pens and erasers in one, pencils and cheap coloured pencils in the other (with a big tin of Derwent Coloursoft good quality pencils just visible above), and there are two drawers to be seen underneath, one contained multi-coloured biros and one with various gel-type pens.

Moving down now to where the old bins were and where there is now a large 4-drawer tower, here are the general before and after shots.

Contents-wise, the top drawer has all my counted thread embroidery fabrics in, so Aida, Jobelan, Hardanger & Oslo and linens etc.  There are also white, cream and black fineweave fabrics including silk for surface embroideries at the front.  The second drawer contains general coloured fabrics.  You can see silks at the front of the left hand row of pieces and cottons etc behind.  On the right hand side of this drawer you can see rolls of cotton fabrics I got in Taiwan as well as some rolls and other pieces of sheer fabrics and some other, larger pieces of cotton and cotton mixes.

Drawer three contains my kits - the few that remain after my having sold quite a few in recent e-bay sales, some sewing paper patterns and what I call auxiliary fabrics such as Romeo, interfacing, Bondaweb and also stuff like felt.  The bottom drawer is where I keep fancy fabrics and is mostly made up of offcuts that I bought in Taiwan supplemented by some offcuts that were given to me by mill workers when I was 12-ish and my dad rented a workshop on their top floor.  I was given lots of ends of reels of Lurex and some scraps and small pieces of the fabrics made with it.

And here are two quick shots, before and after, from the right hand under-desk area.  Both the plastic and the wooden drawer sets are now out and in a more user-friendly place and the boxes at the back have been whittled down - two are on the new shelves and one was emptied into the bottom drawer of this plastic unit.

So, now I feel much more comfy and really enjoy working in there.  I don't stitch in my study, although I do design in there, when relevant.  With the exception of the current project bag and my old wooden workbox, everything else is stored in here at least.

I hope you enjoyed this post, 'cos it took forever to get the photos lined up right, and they may well have gone pear-shaped on your screen anyway, as it'll be different from mine....

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012