Thursday, May 16, 2013

Sewing Tool Box and More!

Here is one of the greatest purchases I have ever made for my sewing classes:


 A sewing tool box! All of your notions in one portable container - perfection! Every one of the yellow compartments is removable, so you can lift one out to pass out safety pins, take one out to put in a slightly larger object (like the scissor sharpener in the lower left), move them around without emptying and refilling... or you can take the whole thing with you somewhere. At the end of class, just snap the lid shut, place on a shelf or in a cabinet, then pull it back out when needed. I seriously love this tool box! It also has a support for the top shelf when you open it all the way:


I wish I had purchased something like this years ago, it has been so beneficial. Under $30 at Lowe's, worth every penny.

And while we're on the subject of sewing, a few of you have asked if I have done away with machine sewing since I drilled shut the cabinets. I still do a machine sewing project, but I rotate the kids through only two at a time. Here's my little sewing station at the back of the room:


Life is sooooo much easier when only dealing with two early teen melt-downs at a time. I have a third machine ready to go on the filing cabinets in the background, so if there are any machine issues that arise that would take more than 30 seconds to fix I just swap 'em out on the spot and deal with it later - should've thought of that forever ago!

And speaking of the filing cabinets in the background, I did more makeover work. Have you seen the idea on Pinterest for turning file cabinets back to back and making them a magnetic bulletin board?


This was of course brilliant. I had two cabinets that I wasn't even using back in that corner, so I turned them back to back, covered them with patterned contact paper, threw on a border and added a few signs (measurements for our current project, and a few of my "famous" sayings - now I can just point instead of always repeating myself).



Looks a heck of a lot nicer, and comes in handy too!



3 comments:

  1. I recently pinned the double filing cabinet magnetic board idea and thought it was genius! How handy that you have 2 extra ones. :)
    I think we need to become pinterest buddies... I have 2 pinterest profiles: http://pinterest.com/facsideas/ and http://pinterest.com/shelleyjanae/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello! May I ask, if you only have two students sew at a time, what are the other students working on?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Felisha,
    Absolutely! My other students are working on a hand sewing project. I get the whole class off to a good start on that, then start rotating students through the machine area. I have all of steps for the hand sewing project on a YouTube playlist cued up on the projector, and 2-3 responsible students in charge of playing whatever tutorial people need to see again when I can't address questions immediately. It works out really well!

    ReplyDelete