Organization of the fabric closet or ONE HOT MESS!

Ever wonder how you got so much fabric? Me too!

  How does one little fat quarter turn into so many little pieces??

This Spring I decided to clean out the FABRIC CLOSET. It hurts to even say the words. I would cringe every time I thought about doing it and put it off for years. Enough was enough.

Here is what it looked like when I pulled it all off the shelves:

One Hot MESS—and there were over 20 large buckets!

What to do with it?  I decided to separate it into piles—oh goody piles and piles of fabric to trip over for the next week. I sorted all the fabrics into these groups:

·         Keep

·         Give away

·         Sell

·         Fat Quarters

·         Large pieces

·         Over  2 yard pieces

·         Small pieces

·         Throw away -- What in the heck was I saving these for anyway?

KEEP-

I organized the large 2+ yard pieces by clipping them onto skirt hangers. Brilliant! My neighbor thought of this and I copied her.  Look how easy it is to find backings now and larger pieces that I might want to use.  It is Wonderful!

FAT QUARTERS

Fat quarters and those pieces that were close to that size were sorted, folded and put in to storage bin and LABELED by color. I can grab the color I want/need and find it instantly. Imagine that?  

Large yardages that didn’t fit on the hanging wall went into bins well as FQ bundles, selvedges, scraps and small/medium pieces of fabrics. I leave the scrap bin open and every time I sew and have extra it goes into that bin.

I keep all my scraps that are 2” or larger. The scraps go into a bag like this and when I have a bunch I make a scrap quilt—   Like this one!!

So get yourself organized. You will find you can work more efficiently and with confidence since you know where everything is …until it gets messed up again. But keep it up and you will a happy sewer! I promise.