Spring Cleaning time...and a Giveaway!

To me, there's nothing like spring to get my cleaning and organizing mojo going, and the sewing room seems to be the Ground Zero for it (yet again) this year.  I'm not sure why it's this room in the house - more than any other, by far, which needs a good clean and purge every so often...but (like clockwork) here I am again.  It wasn't simply a case of reshuffling/stuffing things into the same old place, it was time for a complete rethink. This adventure is so big that it's going to take several posts to cover it...I started this process with a lot of frustration, a simple sheet of graph paper,  a tape measure, and a list of what was bugging me.  My room is the second bedroom in the house, and it's a good sized space - with two uninterupted lengths of space in it. It's also been filled with an 'eclectic' mixture of upcycled and repurposed furniture over the years - shopping the basement is my favorite sort of upcycling.The furniture layout was a major problem - the widest portion of my L shaped desk was directly opposite the widest portion of my sewing desk - and there was an issue whenever I wanted to move to the design wall on the short end.  There are two significant lengths of linear space in the room, one on the end (design wall), and one on the left hand wall, which was a lot longer.  The design wall stayed put, and decisions began to fall into place.The upcycled, recycled approach way I had furnished the room  meant that I had a lot of unused vertical space above short, stocky pieces that I needed to reclaim.This was the before shot of part of my yardage stash.  Problem # 1 - it was one of three units in the room; Problem #2 ...it was short. Problem #3 was that it was packed so tightly that I couldn't access any of it.  The problem that it wasn't was too much fabric...are you nuts?This is another older shot that I found, with the bookcase in the corner...again, please notice how short it is. There's a lot of vertical space being left unused in this area...hard to access, but it's there.The cutting table next to the bookcase is one of only 2 pieces of furniture that will stay in the room. I worked on the layout, and then I started looking online.  I found that Instagram (using the #sewingroommakeover) offered up the best sources of inspiration, and I began to explore options which might work using Craigslist.The cliff notes of that was that I was very quickly able to locate some Ikea secondhand pieces  a short drive away from where I live,  one sandwiched in each of our cars. I did have to walk Mike through the measurements to assure him (and me) that the pieces would fit.  First though, there was the clearing out of the room -  Saying good bye to a dresser,  2 bookcases, and the blue shelving unit that once housed the kids legos and race cars...it's now on its' way to the next home at Andy's house, waiting for his kids and toys. I do love that.And the moving of the contents - this was just a portion of what had to be moved out so we could bring in the new stuff. It's good to note that I've been doing this a long time. This pile doesn't even begin to address the yardage stash - or the UFOs. There was too much for one photo.But then...this happened (and it all made sense!)...In the process of beginning to load in the fabrics, I found (yeah, problem #5 with the layout) items which I had brought back from QuiltMarket in the fall. They are a product I found in the Paper Pieces booth, and they are the boards that you can use to wrap fabric.  I brought back 2 packs of the yardage sized bolts, which I used to wrap the biggest pieces of batiks in my stash. They do work, and my bolts are seen in the top left hand corner of the photo below. They are space saving...Here's a chance for you to win the third pack of the Polar Notions boards to try out in your stash - these are Fat Quarter sized (see below). Just leave a comment below about your favorite organizing technique for your sewing space...and I'll announce the winner when I p  Just leave a comment below about your favorite organizing technique for your sewing space...and I'll announce the winner when I post up the second part of the series - the unknown issue that I had that I found out during this process.   I have a second obsession that I didn't even know I had.I also know that there's a blog hop on this subject that started this week - organized by Cheryl Sleboda of Muppin.com for information about the Spring Clean your Studio Blog Hop for more tips on this subject.Til next week...