Storage

It seems that I never have enough storage. I try to purge items but things pile up and then I scramble to find ways to store what has come into the house. One thing that keeps coming in is fabric. I'm addicted to fabric. My husband refers to my sewing studio as his own personal fabric store. 

I try to store my fabric in plastic tubs but those look kind of ugly. I like to have pretty containers for storage. Recently I revisited the idea of using old drawers for storage, it was something I saw in a Martha Stewart magazine years ago...accept she used the drawers/boxes under a bed and added covers so items in the boxes would not get dusty. When I first moved into my house the kitchen had 6 very large drawers for storage, the drawers were 16x28 by 8" deep. Some items went into the drawers never to be seen again. When I finally remodeled the kitchen I kept the drawers to store framed art work. The drawers proved to be a little too large for some of the art work so I recently bought some smaller drawers for my art and I wanted to use the large drawers for storage of glass wear and other items such as fabric. I attached wheels to the bottoms of the drawers so I could wheel them under metal shelving and under my sewing table. 

The drawers above were my first attempt to see if the idea would work. The top storage drawer has a lot of glass objects that were sitting on the floor in our basement. Putting the items in the drawer made it easier to find something with out having to pull everything out and risk breaking something. Now I just roll the drawer out from under the shelving unit and look inside. I can also stack a lot more items in the drawer and not risk breaking items. The second drawer was used for my large bin of fabric scrap. The large blue plastic storage container lives under my sewing table and now I can wheel it out and look through the container. It makes life so much easier. But they are ugly drawers....I did not want to put a lot of effort into cleaning up the drawers unless they were going to work. So I left the drawers "as is". Till last weekend......

I pulled out another large drawer to convert to rolling storage.  First thing I had to do was add small pieces of 2x4 to the bottom of the drawers. The 2x4s were attached from inside of the drawer and are going to be the base for the wheels. I thought for some reason that these would look nice refinished & I started to remove the paint. It turned out to be  a lot more work than I wanted to put into this simple project. The paint was difficult to get off the drawer and I was impatience. So I ended up sanding a little to get a smooth finish and started to paint. Inside the drawer was a cute drawing...Not sure what it is...a B B and a heart? 

I had to put on 3 coats of a light aqua paint on the drawer before it looked good. I added the wheels, cleaned the drawer pulls and voila...I now I have a nice storage drawer for my scrap jersey. It rolls out of the way under the shelving when necessary and it looks nice. Now I may have to go back to the first set of storage drawers and get them cleaned up. A nice light coat of paint makes a HUGE difference.

Pants, Totes and a Bunny

My husband wore his pants the other day to the bar. Of course they all know I make almost all of my husbands clothes and area always amused at the loud clothes he will wear. This outfit I think was very reserved compared to others. The pants fit but there are issues with the waist. As I stated in a prior post I had made the pants too small. Now they are too big. They are kind of baggy when he tightens his belt. The issue is the beer gut, it drops down in front. We use to joke that pregnant lady pants were the way to go because they have a stretchy front. But he wanted pants, big boy pants. Not just the light weight baggy pants with an elastic waist that I have made him in the past. But nice cotton pants that look good. I decided to break down and make a muslin. I have it all cut out and I will start putting it all together...making him try the pants on every chance i get.  

I love Martha Stewart. I still read her magazine, watch her cooking show and browse her web site. I like all the suggestions she has for crafting. I have a problem with the amount of $$$ she will spend on supplies or ingredients to make something. Such as the Felt Tote Bag. She suggested making it from heavyweight felt. The bag it's self is about 36" x18", so you would need a 36" x36" piece of felt. The nice pieces I found start at $70, of course there are some cheaper fabric for about $30 for a 3x"x36"...but really anything more the say $20 for a tote bag is kind of ridicules. One comment on the martha stewart site suggested jean material. What a great idea, I tried it..see above. The jean tote is kind if rough, I think it's better if the seams are enclosed instead of exposed. I thought it would look nice but now that I look at the bag it looks messy. I bought a bolt of yellow wool fabric from City Liquidators (see prior post about Fabric World). I thought I would try to felt the wool and make a tote bag. It worked in a way but the wool fabric is a little too lose. I may need to wash the bag a couple more time to make it felt up. I do like the bright yellow color and the black bias tape together..I call this my Bee bag. I want to try some free motion stitching on the bag, an out line of a bee. I'm happy because the City of Portland has 
recently banned the use of insecticides believed to be harmful to bees on city property

Sunday we went to my sisters for Easter dinner. I decided to dress up in my bunny suit. We had a nice dinner with the family.