Since I’ve been on a bit of a sewing jag lately I’ve made a right mess of my fabric stash. Yesterday I cleaned up all my sewing projects and my office enough that I could vacuum the carpet (and you know, see some of the surfaces in my office). After that, I got the boy to help me pull all of my fabric bins out of the craft closet and deposit them in the guest bedroom.
I am aware that I have more than just a little bit of fabric but until my recent spell of quilting I didn’t realize how far fabric goes. My goal is to find some way over the next week to add some semblance of order to my fabric stash so that I can easily find the fabrics I need when I find a project I want to make. One of the biggest problem areas for me are the scraps. I’ve started getting rid of anything <1″ but I am still unsure sometimes what a reasonable size scrap is for future sewing / quilting. 🙂
I also have a few storage bins taken up by projects that I’ve been meaning to work on for some time now. It’s hard to rationalize running out to the store to get more storage containers when I know that with a bit of effort on my part I could free up some of these bins.
As for the fabric organizing bit I made a list of possible organizing criteria:
- size of fabric cut
- color
- print appropriateness – me, the boy, baby quilts, anybody
- material / fiber content
- project scraps
- seasonal / holiday
- projects ready to go (with pattern or at least notes)
I think some combination of the above criteria should help me put together projects quickly and knock out several things in the near future. I’d also like to see how I am doing on the low volume front. I have all sorts of materials that will make for great quilt tops but I don’t have a lot of neutrals or near neutrals for the negative space that makes piecing pop or for the backs of quilts.
After seeing my yarn stash and my fabric stash you may have an understanding of why I feel the need to knock out lots of projects. It seems my craft stashes have grown exponentially while my back was turned. And we still haven’t gotten to the fiber stash…
How do you keep your stash organized? Do you have any ideas for other ways to organize fabric?
