Updated May 29, 2020.
Today we are going to look at some great ideas and tutorials for making needlepoint organization and storage. Tomorrow we’ll look at ways to repurpose ofther items for needlework organization. Making these items can make your studio, office, or stash storage unique!
Make Custom Storage for Charts & Magazines
Do you love charted canvas? Do you have years of magazine around? Using decorative brackets and some simple woodworking skills, you can make a custom and beautiful storage rack.
To do it, you need two decorative corbels or door corners and some thin plyood. The plyeood should be cut to the width you want your box to be and the size of the corbels. Make sure everything is painted and sealed with polyurethane. Glue or screw the plywood as a corner. Then glue or screw the corbels to each side of the corner. It will be pretty enough to live on a tabletop instead of a shelf.
Customize Ready-made Storage
IKEA makes some great small wooden storage units, but they are unfinished wood (very dull). Why not customize yours in a style of your choosing? Go to the craft store and buy some scrapbook paper in styles and colors you like. Buy a pad or individual sheets. Make sure you have enough for each drawers, the top and both sides. Buy labels, embellishments (if you like), and Mod Podge.
Remove the drawers. Cut out the paper to fit each drawer, including the covering the opening to pull it. Brush surface with Mod Podge and put on paper. Write the contents on the label using a waterproof pen and let dry. Put it onto the drawer front and Mod Podge over everything. Let dry and add another coat.
When dry, add embellishments if you have them.
Repeat with all the drawers then with the top, front, if needed, and sides of the unit.
After everything is dry, reassemble and add your supplies. You can do something similar with an unfinished wood item.
Make Fabric Boxes & Baskets
Maybe you love those Atenti fabric Baskets but can’t afford them. Maybe you have a place for cubbies but hate the bins you can find. You can make your own fabric storage easily. The blog, Skip to my Lou, has a round-up of 10 great fabric storage tutorials. While most of them require sewing, some just need you to be handy with glue skills.
Buy some fabric you like, even use up scraps, and make your own storage.
Make your own “Sweet” Tool Storage
You’re see those tool storage pieces that are roses where you stick your tools into the spirals. This is a great free pattern from Just Another Button Company (pictured at the beginning of the article) that creates a swirl of ice cream using Weeks Dye Works felt.
Tools and scissors go between the swirls, counting pins, get stuck into the swirls.
Make Fabric Baskets
These great baskets are a craft first seen in the 80’s in “country” decorating magazines. Easy to make, and easy to customize with your fabric choice, fabric-wrapped baskets can be made in most any size and require no sewing skills because you assemble the basket as you wrap by wrapping the cords together every 1″ or so, or by using hot glue. You can also use a strong thread such as linen or pearl cotton to ties together cords every inch or so.
THe secret to making it is that giant cording. It’s the same stuff used to make fabric cording on pillows, just big. For thinner wraps (or smaller baskets) you can use cotton clothesline.
Using bias-cut fabric strips you wrap the cording then you wind it into a basket. You can make a more rustic look by tearing the fabric into 1″ strips.
Leave off the handle for thread storage that fits nicely on shelves.
You can make them any size. Wouldn’t these on some open shelves be a lovely way to display skeins of thread?
This tutorial shows you how.
About Janet M Perry
Janet Perry is the Internet's leading authority on needlepoint. She designs, teaches and writes, getting raves from her fans for her innovative techniques, extensive knowledge and generous teaching style. A leading writer of stitch guides, she blogs here and lives on an island in the northeast corner of the SF Bay with her family
[…] Janet M. Perry over at Nuts About Needlepoint has posted a wonderful blog that collects a number of tutorials from around the web that allow you to make or customize storage options for all your needlecraft items. Whether it is storing all your notions or your magazines, there’s a solution for it. And Janet has searched it out so you don’t have to do so. Check it out. […]