Storing canvas for me has never been something where I had a happy solution.
In our old house I stored my canvases, grouped loosely by subject or how much I had to do, in wire baskets, above, in my closet. I had to reorganize this regularly and the canvases tended to get scrunched.
Before moving I had a huge clean-out of my stash, so my canvases mostly fit into two cloth totes. I only had a few larger canvases that wouldn’t fit. This was a mess to go through, so I switched to cardboard storage boxes, similar to those above. These were only marginally better and not very sturdy.
I also started buying more canvases.
My husband convinced me that having a chest of drawers would be perfect storage. I bought this lovely one from IKEA, above. In many ways it is perfect. It’s pretty, it’s wide, and it’s low enough that I can put the card catalogues on top of it. For quite awhile the canvases shared drawer space with threads, but I repurposed another IKEA cabinet to do that and split up my canvases.
I’d probably still by using that, except that we went to Hobby Lobby to buy a Christmas tree a couple of weeks ago. My son, who is so good at organizing, had seen a tall thin cabinet there a few months ago and thought it would be perfect for storing threads and canvases. Of course when I got there it was gone. But that day it was back. You can see it above.
The piece has one cabinet, and 13 shallow drawers. The cabinet has two photo boxes that have silk in them. About half the drawers have canvas, half threads. Because the drawers are narrow, 7-8 inches, you must like small canvases for this to work. Because I do, I could easily split things up to fit. I have not yet changed out the knobs, but I love this idea.
Canvases that are too big, plus some displaced threads are back in the big chest of drawers. It took me a couple of hours with a helper and another hour by myself to get things organized well.
The lovely thing about this is that it is making more sense of my stash. The bad things are that this corner is very dark and the tall cabinet (it’s about 5 feet tall) has displaced some pictures. I still need to do something about those things.
Yes, my studio is pretty much furnished in bits and bobs, mostly cast-offs and stuff from IKEA. It will never win awards for beauty. But if I need stuff for a project, I can find everything.
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
Oh Janet, you made me laugh out loud when I read your statement about buying more canvases. I can relate to that statement! Why is it that we buy so many canvases???? I am 65 and I am sure I have more canvases that I can stitch in the remainder of my life. I to can relate to the constant reorganization of my threads, tools and canvases. I think in some weird way the reorganization process makes me feel better about having so much needlepoint stuff!
As it should. You never know when reorganizing will cause a great idea to pop up!
Keep stitching,
Janet
Are you worried about moisture from the shower?
That’s a picture of the same cabinet belonging to someone else because Hobby Lobby doesn’t picture furniture on their site. My cabinet is not in the bathroom, it’s in my studio, but there wasn’t enough light yesterday to photograph it.
Keep stitching,
Janet
LOL — I too feared bathroom !steam, humidity, and moisture! Breathing a huge sigh of relief that the new cabinet’s not in your bathroom!