WWQP Bulletin Board

Sunday, February 4, 2007

Stash organization

I don't know what I like more, the photos of the quilts or the sewing rooms! Well...the quilts I guess but it's so great to see how others work. I'm in the midst of reorganizing a bit and am wondering how people store their stashes. Do you sort and store by color only, by motifs (floral, plaid, Asian, etc.) or some other method? I often find fat quarters after a top is made that I wish I had used but couldn't put my fingers on the piece at the time I was planning the top. Maybe I just have too much fabric. A happy dilemma. But, I'm curious about how you store your fabric.

Thanks so much for the new BB home!

Gini B. in No. Calif.

posted by Gini B. @ 3:34 PM  

3 Comments:

  • At February 4, 2007 at 5:33 PM , Blogger Judy in Ohio said...

    Gini, you have the method, you just have to have the shelf space. LOL First you sort out the obvious categories based on the fabric's printed design (i.e. Christmas, juveniles, geometrics, garden subdivided into floral or veggies, Asian, etc. etc. etc.) and the rest need to be sorted by their colors.

    IMHO there is no sensible reason to store a fabric printed with brown and black dogs in with your earth-tone or neutral fabrics ... the dog print gets stored in the "Critters" category (or at least it would in my house) and the Neutrals basket holds browns, beiges, taupes and such.

    Fabric is worthless if you cannot find it when you need it. Keep telling yourself that and that little motto will motivate you to keep sorting and organizing until the job is done and you are queen of your domain.

    Judy

     

  • At February 4, 2007 at 7:17 PM , Blogger judy in ar said...

    I use 7 drawer carts that I get from Sam's for about $20. They have 3 big drawers on the bottom, 4 on the top, flat tops and wheels. Each cart holds one type of fabrics: batiks, homespuns, Christmas, 30's, Oriental, florals etc and then each drawer by color. I also have categories of favorites like water fabrics, cardinals, beach, butterflies, southwest etc. Sometimes a piece of fabric suitable for one quilts still gets passed by, but if I'm looking for a color I can go to any style.

    I prewash and iron EVERYTHING and having the labeled drawers helps it to find a proper place instead of piling up all around the room. There are still lots of piles when I'm putting a project together & auditioning things.

    Hope this helps. Fondling the fabric is part of the process!!

    Judy in AR

     

  • At February 4, 2007 at 9:19 PM , Blogger Shelley: the Dread Pirate Rodgers said...

    Gini B in No. Cal ... I'm in No. Cal too! :-)

    Here's a blurb from my website"
    Is your stash a mess? Do you have trouble finding the fabric you want? You do realize, don't you, that if you only organized your stash, your quilting world would be a little more perfect? :-)

    I'm sure I'm not the inventor of the "book" technique, but here's the way I fold my fabric into books that fit nicely into translucent storage boxes. This method standardizes the size of my fabric, makes stacking the books in the storage boxes easy and lets me put a LOT of fabric in the boxes. The books also allow me to easily estimate how much (approximate) yardage is there without needing to unfold it, measure it and find out that it was too little for my needs.

    The URL is organizing your stash

     

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