Earth Day: Recycle and Re-Use for Frugal Quilt Room Storage Solutions

From Martha Stewart’s website comes several very inexpensive ideas that not only look pretty (what else did you expect from Martha?), but are good storage solutions for any quilt room/ sewing area.

Save your soup cans, spice boxes or any metal container that has a small metal lip, and simply cut fabric, maps, decorative papers, comic book pages – whatever suits your decorating taste! Create simple storage containers by wrapping the cover around, overlap the edges, and glue with a glue stick!

Got cereal? Got cereal boxes? Another idea from Martha is to cut  and cover cereal boxes to make various sized storage containers – for your magazines, quilt patterns printed off from the Internet, storage for pencils, and more. See more instructions here.

 

Go to any yard sale or local Goodwill store and you will probably find baskets. But how do you make those baskets look look more decorative in your quilt room? Paint them all with the same color of latex paint! Baskets make great storage for fat quarters, paper items, scraps, and sewing patterns. Often priced .25 or .50 each, these painted baskets can add a nice decorative touch to your quilting space.

What time is it? It’s time to quilt! This adorable button themed clock is a perfect quick DIY project for your quilt room/ sewing space. Made from a cookie tin lid, a variety of buttons and clockworks you can purchase at any hobby store, this is a real budget friendly and useful little piece of art for your wall. How about covering the tin with an orphan quilt block or a piece of an old cutter quilt before putting on the buttons?

This basket made from two pieces of wool, two yard sticks, and two dowels can be used in sew many ways! Place it next to your cutting table to drop your scraps into it(until you have time to sort them). Use it for keeping your projects-in-progress together with the appropriate pattern, thread, fabric, etc. Are you collecting salvage edge strips? This would make a great place to keep them until you have enough to use in a project. Complete instructions can be found at Martha Stewart’s web site.

I apologize a million times over for not remembering on which web site I found this photo (if anyone knows, please email me and I will put up appropriate credit and link!). If you have cabinets or perhaps a dresser with knobs in your quilt room, check out this great idea of using old wooden thread spools for knobs! Use a dab of glue to hold the thread tip down, and appropriate sized screw to attach the knob to the cabinet.

That’s all for today!