Organising Your Sewing Kit - A Tutorial

As a start towards Christmas 2012 preparations, I thought perhaps some hand-made gifts would be appropriate. However, I needed to seriously get my sewing kit organised. I can happily say that I now have it looking more organised, and I know what I have, so I won't be doubling up on supplies that I don't need or already have. I organised my very expensive quilting tools and templates into the kit, so now everything will be accessible in my "new" craft cupboard that I have brought into the house beside my desk. 

When my eldest son was a baby we were living in a small flat, and we bought a pantry cupboard second hand, and we have been carrying it around for a number of years. It ended up out in the shed, but since we have cleaned out our garage to become a rumpus room, I have brought it inside, cleaned it up and re-purposed it for use as my craft cupboard. 

I had to seriously go through my things, throw some old worn things out, clean it up, and I purchased a new sewing box. My old sewing box had a busted lid and it was time for it to go. I also had an old cutlery tray in it that I was using as an organiser for the top, but it was split and wrecked too. Spotlight had a sale on sewing containers, for VIP members they had 30 percent off during their January sale, so I put my pocket money towards purchasing a new clear sewing box with a cute design. As you can see from the before - it is no wonder I had not been enthusiastic about sewing anymore, I had let my lovely things and things I had spent good money on get disorganised and scattered. 

My sewing kit prior to being sorted

I knew I wanted to sort out my sewing kit so that I could get organised for Christmas, and handmade goods and to make clothes and different things. I motivated myself to do it by getting a nice sturdy unbroken sewing kit organiser with a cute design on it. Sometimes it does become time to part with the old, and bring in the new. If you do have a lot of sewing tools and items that you have spent money on, it makes sense to store it properly and organise it so that you end up saving money in the long run, and time because you're not doubling up on things, or hunting around for things that you knew you had but were not sure of their whereabouts.

The new sewing box I bought on sale

The first thing I did was to put everything out of the old box, and put it into a big empty cleared space about me. I had a rubbish bag, and designated a place for where to put things that don't belong. There were some spare boot laces that obviously didn't belong there, and some old bits of fabric offcuts which were of no use for any projects. The bits that were large enough for some small craft projects I put aside and neatly folded up. 

I then placed like items with like items. As you can see from below, I have a large variety of things - I had sewing needles, including embroidery needles, and put these together, I had some little craft bells and embroidery floss, and a whole lot of buttons. I put like with like. A number of years ago I had made myself a sewing envelope, and I put into it my sewing machine screwdrivers, and tweezers. I put all my rotary cutting blades together, and also grouped all my threads. I put all the attachments for my sewing machine into a packet, and also had a bobbin container which I placed some empty bobbins into.

I had a spare sewing box that I had bought a few years ago, but it was not large enough to keep all my sewing items in. This annoyed me when I tried to put everything into it, so subsequently I shoved it aside, and it got dusty and neglected. So today when I was organising my sewing kit, I gave it the proper respect it deserved (because I had parted with good money for it) and cleaned the internal and external parts of it. This is it below with my threads on the top tray. Below is the lower part of the box, showing my quilting templates, and some of my other sewing accessories placed into separate containers. Zip-lock bags make excellent storage pouches because you can see what is in them.

For my large sewing threads that go onto my overlocker, I salvaged an old plastic sewing kit container, and have placed them all into there. So, as you can see from the very first image, my sewing kit is now organised into three separate containers, and I have thrown out all of the old worn out things, and put like things with like. I feel better organised, now I know what I have. I will now be able to go to the fabric store and purchase only what I need for a project, not what I already have. I won't be frustrated anymore either trying to find things! Bring on the handmade Christmas gifts now - I am prepared to make them!

My red satin sewing box inner tray with all my thread collection

My sewing accessories - like is packaged together with like