Crafts make a mess. Even if you’re lucky enough to have a separate room for your hobby — sewing, scrapbooking, toothpick art, whatever your passion may be — you may find, like me, that your projects and materials have a way of creeping out into other areas.
And if you like to do a bit of every craft ever invented… the craft supplies and Work In Progress can take over the entire house!
Take knitting, for example. Every few months I get the urge to knit something, and I like to do it while watching television. Last evening I set my latest knitting project (slippers) aside to make a dash to, er, “the smallest room” and came back to find a wild tangle of unravelled yarn.
(Welcome to life with a puppy! There’s no knitting bag or basket on any known planet that’s capable of discouraging a 10-week-old Fur Ball from Hell.)
So I looked around… and had a wee brainwave of an idea.
Glam sent me a nice T-shirt for Christmas, and the shiny silver mailing tube that it came in was just too pretty to throw away — I just knew it would come in handy for something… sometime…
And (for once) I was right.
The mailing tube is long enough for my knitting needles to slip inside, and wide enough to hold my knitting WIP and a skein of yarn as well. The cap fits firmly — it survived an international trip through the postal system, after all, so stands a good chance of surviving a curious and playful puppy…
The experience leads me to think of other common household objects that could be pressed into service for organizing craft supplies.
An egg carton, for example, can hold a fine selection of beads in its twelve compartments… not too pretty, but better than clutter.
Clear plastic zip-lock bags are the best thing I’ve found for storing my sewing patterns.
And then there’s the time-honoured shoebox filing system.
More creatively, LifeHacker recently ran with IKEAhacker’s tip for using one of those diner-style sugar dispensers for string or ribbon — and that reminds me of a friend who punches holes in the top of baby food jars to serve as tidy dispensers for her embroidery floss, one jar for each colour of thread.
Sometimes the simple solutions are best. An old boyfriend’s mother kept her many many pieces of quilting fabric, neatly folded to a standard size and arranged by colour group, on the shelves of an old bookcase. To keep the dust off, she hung an pair of sheer curtains across the front. Whenever she needed to browse her fabric collection for inspiration or to start a new project, she just pushed the curtains aside.
From a decorating viewpoint, I’ve always liked the look of open shelving with matching baskets or bins, and in fact that’s how I store most of my dog-care supplies: brushes, collars, toys, and so on — anything that isn’t dangerous to pups or temptingly edible.
Community Playthings offers an especially attractive craft shelf with matching baskets and hide-away wheels. The upper shelf of the unit is on a bit of an angle, tilting slightly down towards the front so that shorter people can actually see what’s stashed in that upper row of baskets — what a good idea!
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