Fabric Organization

Hi

As I mentioned in my last blog I have been working on organizing my fabric.   A couple of years ago  I decided that my fabric needed some organizing.   It was a mess.  It was all over the place.   What I decided to do was put it in different size boxes by color.   Here is a picture of my previous organization

It looked like I had found a good system.   If the quilts I made were done in one of two colors this system would have been great, BUT I love to do multicolored quilts.   So when I got ready to do a quilt I needed to go through many boxes of fabric to find all the fabrics I needed.  Also because they were crammed into the boxes they needed to be pressed before I could use them.    I was getting frustrated again.

Fast forward to this summer.   I was reading through the Quilters Board ( http://www.quiltingboard.com/forum.php)  When I came upon this method of organizing your fabric.   It was just what I needed, so here is what I did.

1.  I bought foam board and poster board.   I cut the foam board into 11 X  8  inch. pieces  and the poster board into 4 X 6 inch pieces.   The size you make your boards are up to you.   I tried the poster board for the larger pieces but it was too flimsy and it bent.   I worked well for the smaller pieces and took up less space.

2. I took one box and divided it into 3 piles.  One pile were large pieces that fit around the width (8 inch) of the larger pieces, the second pile pieces that would fit the 4 X 6 boards and the third pile scraps that were too small.

3. I  took the pile with the largest pieces.  The first thing I did was iron them.   This step is optional, but my fabric was so wrinkled that I wanted it more ready for use.

4.  I folded the fabric lengthwise so that it would fit on the board.   I then wrapped the fabric around the board and held it together with a large paper clip

If the fabric was wide enough to go around the board, but not much length I put more than one piece on a board.  I did make sure that if I put more than one fabric on a board that it was the same color.

5.  I took the pile that would fit the smaller board and did the same thing as I did with the larger boards.

6.  With the remaining pieces I put into shoe boxes.  I organized these by size not color.   I looked to see what shapes I had.   I had a lot of strips, so I put them in one box.   The other two boxes were squares & rectangles and odd shapes.   You will need to see what you have to how you want to organize them.   If do more pieced quilts than applique you might want to cut your smaller pieces into different size squares and rectangles so that they are ready for use.

7.  I repeated this process with the remaining boxes.

8.  After I had all the fabric wrapped, I put the larger pieces by color on the shelves.   I put the smaller wrapped pieces into clear boxes that I had used previously and also put them onto the shelf.

So that is the way I have organized my fabric.   I finished it a few weeks ago and it seems to be working well.   Here is a picture of the shelves.