Hidden in plain sight

Behold, my new fabric storage system. Yes, I finally abandoned my mismatched collection of make-do plastic drawers and tubs in favor of a more elegant solution, the Granemo cabinet. Say what you will about IKEA, I have had nothing but the best of luck with the pieces I've purchased. Tory brought this particular lovely to my attention a year or so ago, but I convinced myself that it was too big and I would never need that much space. It turns out that not only can you never be too rich or too thin, you can also never have too much shelf space for fabric.

I was so inspired by the fresh look of my former sewing room, soon to be our sewing/music room (once we hang someone's Springsteen portrait), that I spent a couple of hours arranging my fabric by color. It was a revealing process; I had no idea how much I favor red and blue. And I've always thought I loved purple but I have fewer than six pieces of fabric from the violet end of the color spectrum. I feel like I should have learned something about myself from this process, but it hasn't come to me yet.

As an unexpected bonus, to get the cabinet through the door to the room we had to move the futon that was previously on the wall now occupied by the cabinet and it completely opened up the room. It feels twice as big and is so much prettier, I could stay down there all day. In fact, I just finished a couple of patchwork pillows that I'll show as soon as I manage to photograph them and have an Easy Lap Quilt waiting to be quilted with my new walking foot (there has been much shopping, but that's a whole other story).

The observant among you will notice that I hung one of the cabinet doors upside down. Although it is perfectly functional, it is driving me crazy and I see a return trip to IKEA in my future for some additional hardware so that I can fix it. So close, and yet, so far...