Organizing your Sewing Space: Is Rainbow Order Here to Stay?

Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin, co-founders of The Home Edit, love a good rainbow. As a hallmark of not only their extremely popular Instagram page and the hit Netflix series, “Get Organized with The Home Edit,” it has sparked a rainbow craze in home organization. And I like it. I didn’t want to like it — rainbows seem rather juvenile in many ways — plus I’m not one to drop everything and reorganize based on an internet trend. But besides being pretty, organizing your sewing space with rainbow order makes thread, fabric, and notions easy to find. So here we are.

Rainbow Order in Action

I first dipped my toe into rainbow-land when I was staging my house for sale. I organized my then two-year old’s books in rainbow order for the listing photos and they looked nice. And, to my great surprise, she found it easier to find books! Now, Clea and Joanna had said this might be so, and I was excited to extrapolate that orderliness in an adult space.

How to Start Organizing your Sewing Space

Several areas in sewing and quilting spaces lend themselves to beautiful swaths of Roy G. Biv color. Thread is a great place to start. There are several wall mounted thread organizers available for sale, where rainbow order thread doubles as an art piece. This is an easy change — mount the thread hanger on a blank wall and pop each spool in order. Voila!

Fat quarter storage (or other neatly folded cuts) are an obvious place to turn. Consider clear bins to easily see what each holds, and they also are a lovely display. I find a bin for each color really helps me compare tones and tints when picking the perfect colors for a project.

Bins can be expensive. Big box retailers have dizzying selections, so make sure to measure what you are storing and the shelf where you are planning to display them. I find bins meant for fridge storage hold fat quarters wonderfully and can usually be found at discounted prices at stores like Home Goods.

Get Scrappy With It

Fabric scraps can also be fun in clear bins—no need to sort extensively, but artfully piled color is sure to inspire.

I also have a fondness for color organized notions. I do prefer my binding clips sorted neatly by color (this serves no purpose other than aesthetics for me, although could be useful in certain projects). If you use a peg board or other open storage for scissors, rotary cutters and the like, these can also be arranged in a beautiful rainbow.

Just Have Fun!

Is rainbow order a bit silly? Perhaps. However, it can be done artfully, and a creative space brimming with color is nothing shy of inspirational. So embrace the color!

Go through your forgotten fabric and find joy in it. Do you remember purchasing it with your sister? Are there piles of fat quarters to be passed onto a friend’s sewist child? Break out the bins, empty fiber everywhere, then contain to rainbow heaven!

About the Author

Katie Chicarello sews in rural Connecticut with her two young daughters, husband, and a cat who has a fondness for thread biting. As an art quilt enthusiast, she is always looking for ways to showcase this art form.