Thinking Outside the Box (storage solutions)!

 While I am sharing shopping tips in this post, I am not earning anything from this.

Hey!

This post could have the alternate title of “Thinking Inside the Box” as well.  I was looking for a better way to store my myriad Kreinik spools and I ended up at…Cabela’s!  Definitely outside the normal place for shopping for needlework anything!

I had both sizes of spools with me (blending filaments & larger braids).  The smaller spools fit perfectly in boxes meant for 20 gauge shotgun shells:

The larger spools will fit in 12 gauge shells boxes, but it’s a tight fit, as in I had to push them in:

Thankfully, I don’t have many of the larger (new style) spools.  The older spools fit fine.  Here’s the labels from the boxes if you want to find them:

The bottom one is the one for the smaller spools.

Happy Stitching!

Stacy

Quilting Stencil Storage

Disclosure:  Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, that at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

I was having issues storing my quilting stencils.  I had them on two nails in the wall of my sewing room.  This really didn't work well.  It seemed every time I wanted a specific stencil, it was at the back!

After searching the internet and Pinterest (love me some Pins!), I saw where someone had used a lamp shade to hang their scrapbook embellishments.  They had basically made a stand with a lamp shade at the top so the whole thing looked like a floor lamp.  I don't have that much floor space but was still intrigued by the lamp shade part.

Thanks to hubby's brain and other help, I was able to achieve what I wanted.  Really, love my hubby!  He acquired the shade for me from a local junk shoppe - no charge (the owner's a friend).  I had given him the minimum dimensions that I needed:  6" (15.24cm) diameter at the top, at least 6" from the top ring to the bottom ring, at least 13" (33.02cm) diameter for the bottom ring.  These dimensions allowed enough room for the stencils to be hanging opposite each other on the shade without overlapping across the diameter.

I didn't take photos of the process, but I'll tell you what I did.

• Removed all the fabric from the shade
• Cleaned off all the glue on the rings with a Sheffield knife * (see below)
• Did a light rubdown with steel wool
• Did a cleaning pass with a rag and window cleaner
• Spray painted the frame silver (actually, hubby did this - he's better at spray painting)

That's all it took to prep the shade!

Since I didn't want it to be a floor stand, I decided I wanted to hang it from the ceiling (I have a low 7' ceiling).  I didn't know how to achieve this, so hubby's brain helped.  We went to Home Depot and got a hanging bolt (about 4" long overall).  I knew what I had in mind, but would never have been able to explain it to anyone else.  For those, like me, who don't know what a hanging bolt is, it's a combination of a bolt and a screw.  One end is pointed like a screw and the other is threaded to take nuts.  It doesn't have a head on either end so it's perfect!

I'd never used one before, so hubby showed me what to do.  He took a nut and put it on the bolt end, high enough to get a second nut on it.  He then put the 2nd nut on until it made contact with the 1st one.  Basically, this "locks" the 2nd nut in place so that you can use it as a handle.  After that, I was on my own for installation.  This is fine because I do know my way around tools...just not hanging bolts.  :-)

For installation, I held the lamp shade frame where I wanted it, making sure to allow enough room all around for the stencils.  I used a pencil to mark the center of the frame on the ceiling.  Next, I took a drill fitted with a bit just a hair smaller than my hanging bolt and pre-drilled a hole for the bolt.  Using a ratcheting socket wrench, I fit the socket over the lower nut on the hanging bolt and screwed the bolt into the ceiling.  I did have to move both nuts a little further up the bolt so that only the lower nut (the "handle") was in the socket. 

My new contraption doesn't weigh much but I did make sure that I was screwing it into a stud, just to be safe.

I then removed the lower nut but left the upper one on.  I don't want my shade to rock back and forth so the upper one acts as a stop.  I then fit the shade onto the bolt and replaced the bottom nut.  There is a tiny bit of room between the nut/shade/nut so that the shade can spin but it doesn't rock.

I then hung the stencils from the shade using S hooks with clamps. * (see below)  Here's my completed stencil storage:

 ..and here's a close-up.  You can see the hanging bolt and nuts plus the hooks I used.

...and here are the affiliate links that I mentioned at the start:

       

Happy Stitching!

Stacy

Storing Floss

I've written about this once before, but thought I'd do an updated post.
Please note, I do earn money if you buy through the links provided.  If this bothers you, just ignore them.

What might be hidden behind door #1:

This is the armoire that I finally painted.  The door is covered in chalkboard paint - I've just been too lazy to actually write anything on it.

And behind the door we find...

The top shelf holds my few paints and glues.  The next 3 shelves are the real treat:  floss!

The boxes are these:


I needed five of the thin ones to hold all my DMC floss.  If you click on the photo, you can see that I've added my own custom labels to show what numbers are in each box (engraved!  Ah the perks of owning your own trophy shop.).

The larger box holds my specialty flosses:  GAST, Wildflowers, Perle Cottons, etc.

The bobbins that I use are:

The smaller bobbins are for my DMC, the larger ones are for my specialty threads.

The DMC floss that I need for a project gets pulled from my master stash and put on rings.  I always store them in numerical order so that they are easy to find.

Here are the flosses that I'm using for La Belle Dame Sans Merci:

As you can see, I have 4 rings of floss for this project.  The first number I'm using is 154 which is on the leftmost ring and the last number is 3864 which is on the rightmost ring and all the other numbers are in order in between.

What I love about this way of doing it, apart from the fact that it works for me, is:

• They're organized
• Easy to find
• Take up very little room
• Easily accessible
• Easy to store with the project when it's not being worked on

Here are my projects that are being stored (photo is old, some of these are finished now):

I hope this helps you in your cross stitch endeavors!

Happy Stitching!

Stacy

This and That with Photos!

Hello Fellow Stitchers!

If you're like me, photos of stitchy stuff are almost as good as the actual thing.  Not quite, but close.  ;-)

First off, I forgot (hangs head in shame) to post my last page finish on QS Dragonflies.  This is page 4 done.  The fabric is from Picture This Plus and I purchased it from 123stitch.com.

Once I started on page 5, I realized I was one row too low on most of page 4.  In order to get everything to line up properly, I'm adding a row of stitches as I go.  As least I'm not frogging!

Next up, the pretties that arrived in today's mail from 123stitch.com:

The bunch on the right is part of what I need for an autumn-themed project in the future.  I figured I'd start buying a few each time I place an order.  That way my Paypal account isn't screaming.

The colors on the left are for a project of my own design.  These are all Gentle Art Sampler Threads (GAST).  There are 2 Forest Glade, 1 Acorn (brown), and 7 Weathered Barn.  The WB was a bit darker than I thought it was going to be but looking at it, I think it's going to be perfect!  No, I'm not telling what it's going to be.  No, there won't be any progress photos.  This is for a pattern that hopefully, I'm going to eventually offer for sale so no previews apart from the threads.

Last, but not least, is a photo of the cabinet where I store some of my supplies.  I've redone the look of it after browsing ideas on Pinterest.

Here it is before:

...and here it is now:

The top drawer has miscellaneous "stuff"; second drawer is all my tools (hammer, pliers, etc.); third drawer holds my collection of Mill Hill beads; fourth drawer has stock size frames and mats; fifth drawer is the few cross stitch kits I own; long drawer is stuffed with crochet thread (bedspread/doily type).   The door has been converted into a chalkboard.  Behind it I have a shelf of my glues and paints and the rest is my floss and Kreinik collection.

The bouquet on top is my wedding flowers.  So glad I opted for silk.  After all these years (21 this month), they'd look awful if they'd been real.

Happy Stitching!

Stacy

New-ish furniture in my stitching room!

I have a table next to my stitching chair to hold my stitching accessories and iPad while I'm stitching.  It's not the best setup so I've been looking for something else.

Here's the culprit:

The table is just one of those cheap round things with the screw-on legs.  The doily is fine - I made it!  There's not a lot of surface room and I have to have ALL my stuff that I might need out and in the way.  It also doesn't help that the cat loves to walk under it and  occasionally tries to pull the doily (and everything on top) off the table.

So, I've been looking for a small chest of drawers to replace this unfortunate thing.  Thanks to my hubby, I was able to get this for no money!  He swapped some stuff he'd gotten out of a storage unit (think Storage Hunters) for this at a local second-hand store:

Now it's not really easy to tell from this photograph but this needed some work.  Plus, it was a tad too traditional for my craft room.

Here are the rest of the before photos:

Now for the directions on the transformation.

Step 1:

Remove the hardware:

The hardware was, thankfully, easy to remove.  Two screws for each handle and they just came right off!  I had more trouble finding a screwdriver in my husband's toolbox than I did in taking the handles off.

Step 2:

Sanding

Now hubby was very helpful in letting me use his palm sander.  Since I'd never used it before, he put the first piece of sandpaper on for me but made sure that I knew how to do it so that I could change it when it wore out.  That bit was easy.

I was using 60 grit sandpaper.  If you've never used sandpaper, I'll tell you this:  the lower the grit number, the coarser the sandpaper.  I really should have been using 40 grit or lower.  The finish on this really didn't want to come off!  I ended up using the entire package of 60 grit.

The edges of the drawers and the bottom/feet of the piece I had to do by hand.  That was fun (heavy sarcasm here).  I actually still had to do the left side of the chest after I'd run out of the 60 grit.  I'd noticed that the finish seemed a bit gummy and I knew the 100 grit that I had available wasn't going to work so I improvised.  We always have a bunch of razor blades around our house (the kind you put in a utility knife, not the kind you shave with), so I grabbed one of them.  I used the razor blade like a scraper and took off quite a bit of the remaining finish that way.  It even worked on the curve of the foot area!  I then used a piece of the 100 grit to do the little bit of finish the blade didn't get.  Whew!  I'm tired just writing this!

All total, it took me about an hour each evening for 3 evenings.  Either my back would start to hurt or my hands would get too tired so I'd quite for the night.

Here it is all sanded.

On the side, near the top, you can probably see where I broke the rule:  "Go with the grain".  Seriously, that was the only way I could get in there!

Step 3:

Wipe down.

I didn't take photos of this 'cause it was rather boring.  Take a damp cloth and wipe the whole piece down.  You need to make sure you've gotten all the sawdust off the piece.  Let it dry before proceeding to paint.

Step 4:

Hardware prep.

First I needed to determine if the hardware was actual brass or something else.  With a handy dandy magnet, I discovered it was not brass.  The magnet stuck to it, so it wasn't brass.  Hallelujah!  (Brass is more difficult to paint.).   I gave the hardware a good cleaning with soap and water and a metal scouring pad.  Most directions I found said to use steel wool but I didn't have any.

Step 5:

Priming/Painting the hardware.

Ok, I kind of merged this step.  Priming and painting should have been separate steps.  I already had silver metallic spray paint which I was planning to use.  It turns out that it was paint and primer in one!  Yeah, me!  I took the pieces out to my carport to do this bit.  Since it was quite windy, I placed them in a cardboard box with the opening facing me (rather than facing the sky).  I sprayed them all, then using a toothpick, I swung the moving part of the handle to the other side and sprayed them again.

They were dry to the touch after 15 minutes so I brought them inside to finish "curing".

Step 6:

Priming/Painting the Drawers


I had thought about doing the finish where you spray paint through a lace curtain panel but I couldn't be bothered to go shopping for one.  Yes, I turned down the chance to shop.  I was tired.

I did want to have some sort of accent on the finished piece so I thought I'd paint part of the drawer fronts using the same silver paint that I used on the hardware.  Out came the painter's tape.  The drawer fronts have 3 distinct areas:  the center where the hardware was, a medium-sized border area, and a narrow border.  I chose to paint the medium-sized border with the silver.

I masked the center panel and the outer border to prevent getting paint on them.  Then I sprayed the silver paint on each drawer.  I then went back over each drawer immediately just to make sure I had enough paint on them.  After about 15 minutes, I took off all the painter's tape.  I wanted the paint to be dry to the touch but not necessarily completely dry.  If it was too dry, removing the tape might have taken some of the paint with it.

Here they are painted before I took the tape off:

You can see some of the blue from the tape showing through.


And here they are with the tape removed:

Step 7:

Prime/Paint the rest of the piece.

Again, I didn't want this to be a two-step process so I splurged a bit.  I purchased Behr Premium Plus Ultra (paint/primer in one - interior).  I bought a full gallon because I am going to use it on other projects - a quart would have been more than sufficient for this chest of drawers.  I chose a flat finish.  The color is called Starless Night. 

I started with the drawers.  I taped over the silver all the way to the edge so I could paint the center panel of each drawer.  I left the tape on for about 10-15 minutes which was a bit too long.  While the silver paint had dried overnight, a little bit of it did come off with the tape.

So to keep a nice line between the silver area and the outer edge of the drawer, I placed the tape, painted and immediately removed the tape.  No silver came off and I had a clean edge!  When I was painting the edges, I didn't paint toward the tape, I painted from a bit over the tape toward the edge.  That way, I wasn't "shoving" paint under the edge of the tape.

Here is one of the drawers all painted with the hardware reattached:

I did paint the interior of the drawers as well because they were a bit stained.

Next I painted the body of the piece.  I can recommend spending more money on a paint brush than I did.  I bought a 2in. wide brush that was under $5.  Spend more...really!  Here's what happens when you don't:

That's just a few of the bristles that I had to pick off the cabinet that were stuck in the paint.  I had to use a pair of tweezers to grab them.  The irony is that I finished painting the cabinet with a smaller brush by the same brand with no problems.  Go figure.

Here is the completed chest of drawers:

Here's roughly what it cost me to do this project.  I did try to list the prices with the sales tax included.

• Chest of drawers - $10 list price  free
• Sandpaper - $4.50 for 60 grit package (5 sheets) + .75 for1 sheet of 100 grit sandpaper
• Paintbrushes, one 1" and one 2" - $6
• Silver Spray paint/primer - $4.50
• Gallon of Behr Paint/Primer - $40 but I have about 80% still left.

 
The top drawer now holds the remotes for my tv and dvd player, nail clippers, chapstick, and nail file.

The middle drawer holds my binder with the keys, charts, photos for the WIPs in my rotation.

The bottom drawer is the "snack drawer".  Shhhh!  Right now, it has a package of coconut cookies.

Happy Stitching!

Stacy