Practical Tips to Organize your Fabric:
Do you ever find yourself pinning pictures of how
professional quilters have organized their collections of fabrics on shelves in
pretty little piles? If you’re
like me, you mouth begins to drool and visions of organized sewing rooms start
dancing in your head. Sounds
beautiful, right? Yes it
does! But is it practical? No!
When pulling together fabrics for a new project I am
constantly interchanging pieces until I get the right feel. Can you imagine if everything was
organized in little piles, stacked neatly on a book shelf? I would go crazy trying to keep those
piles in order. My solution: a set
of drawers.
Use a set of clear plastic drawers
Use clear drawers so that you can see what you have without
opening drawers. I love that I can
see what each drawer contains; first, because I can admire my collection and
second, so that when I need a certain color, I can see which drawer to
open. Saves time and frustration!
Organize by project, then color
It’s as simple as it sounds. I like to keep fabrics that I have paired together so that I
don’t accidentally steal from it for another project. I designated one of my clear drawers to works-in-progress,
or future projects. The rest of
the drawers are organized by colors: reds, blues, greens, browns, … with a
category for those fabrics that just don’t seem to fit into any one color
group.
My future projects (ahem... or works in progress) are in the prime top drawer for easy access
Here you can see my green stash and my brown stash sharing a drawer
Be disciplined with your system
Whatever system you choose to use, be dedicated to it. What’s the use of spending all of the
time and effort into implementing a new system, if you do not maintain it? Return a red colored piece to your red
section, return the work-in-progress to your designated place. An organized stash is a happy stash
(and happy spouses, too!).
Optional Extra Step:
This extra step takes some more time, but can be quite
helpful when pulling together fabrics for a new project. Label each piece of fabric with its
measurements, i.e. 1 yard cut, or 3/8 yard, etc. One of the easiest ways to label is to write the measurement
on a post-it note and then use a pin to secure to the fabric.
