Fabric Storage Cubbies

 I've always loved Pottery Barn's cubbies.  

I've planned on making some rustic ones for a while, but really never had a specific place for them in mind.  I had a bunch of 3/4" MDF that I had cut in 6" strips to build the closet door organizers.  So I decided to use these extra strips to make some cubbies I'd have to paint, rather than real wood I could stain.

Ana White has a plan on her blog to make the Pottery Barn 5 cubbies x 5 cubby design.  

Her plan here.

I decided since this would be out of MDF and would need paint, to use it in my craft room to store fabric.  So I changed the dimensions from the plan to fit the hole in the wall where I would hang it (mine's a little wider), and the 5" squares seemed small.  So I made staggered rows to be wider and to make it easier to build.

Because the rows are staggered, so the vertical boards aren't meant to look like continuous pieces, I could nail each divider from the top and bottom.  I also didn't put a back on it knowing it would be full of fabric and you couldn't see it anyway.

So once it was built, I just painted 2 coats of satin latex paint I had from my entry bench, I didn't prime it.

  Before and After

This is the corner of our craft room/ office before.  I just had a wire shelf with the majority of my fabric and TV.  It was pretty bulky and crowded even on the rare occasions when the fabric was nicely organized.

So I took the shelf apart, keeping the bottom half.  In the space above I hung my cubbies.  Being only 6" deep rather than the 18" deep shelf makes the whole room seem more open and accessible.

The main reason I chose to make cubbies for my fabric was to help me use and find smaller fabric pieces.  I just organized my fabric in folded stacks, and you can imagine certain folds were small enough I could loose them in a big stack.

So the cubbies are only for fabric one yard or less.  I organized them by color for the most part and I hope this will make things more organized and help me use the remnants easily.

I love being able to see everything rather than digging through stacks.

I had a few cotton prints that were 2-4 yards that I folded wide to sit on the shelf on top.

On the wire shelving below, the top shelf is fabric that I have specific projects planned.  The rest of the fabric in the shelves below are just stash sorted by fabric type.  

It's always a big chore to go through and reorganize all your fabric, but it's good for me because I find fabric I had totally forgot about, so all night projects and ideas were popping in my head as I was folding and organizing.

I think the cubbies not only help with function, but it looks cool with the colors on the wall.

Here's the whole side of this room, basically my craft side, leaving the opposite corner the little "office" space. You can see the crate of patterns on the top shelf and the owl pattern case to the left of my sewing machine both used the same blue paint.

Sorry about the pile of junk on my cutting table I still need to organize and put away.

So for me, this cubby system cost around $20.  The MDF was half of a 4x8 sheet I had cut in long 8 foot strips 6" wide, so the "wood" was around $15.00

Then it was around $2.50 for D-ring hangers to screw into the cubby (I used 3)

Then a few dollars for the plastic sheetrock anchors.  I bought the self screwing kind and each had max weight of 96 lb,  I used three because this was pretty heavy even without anything in it.

It's pretty easy to build, I do have a miter saw to make all the cuts, and it was nice to have tons of little 12" clamps while I was making it.  My husband also got an air compressor for his birthday, and it came with a nail gun!!  I was excited for that.  Made the whole thing a lot faster, I usually have to countersink screws for every joint and that takes forever, where I loved using the nail gun.  

I thought about adding the labels beneath like Pottery Barn, but for now she's just plain.  I thought it might be too much with all the colors, textures, and prints already mashed together from the fabric.  Also, my style in here is also pretty minimalistic as far as decorating goes.  Everything has a function and purpose, no useless pretty accessories to look nice.  Just don't have room for merely decorative stuff.  So maybe the lack of labels matches everything else better.   Not a big deal, but what do you think?  To label or not to label?