In your opinion!!!
 

We just moved last year and I have two bookcases for my stash. I have organized them several ways by folding them :) According to color: black, black &white, white/ cream, gold, brown, green, blues, red, pink, purple, yellow, orange. I also have a stack of large florals, novelty, striped fabric for striped tablerunners, Christmas, Fall/Halloween, Asian, over 6yd cuts (stack and whack and backing). I also keep fabrics for certain projects together with the pattern. All my fabric in my bookcases are 1 yd or above. I keep fat quarters and 1 yd and below in drawers. Hope this helps.

I do it by color, but if you have florals I put them in another place. I guess its whatever works for you. LOL

First of all ... you need to do what works for you!

Your stash may be totally different than what others have, and your quilting interests in a different way too.



I have my stash sorted by colour.
Then I also have bins sorted with florals, Christmas, Seasonal, and Novelty.
Not done, but I would like to sort the Novelties into sub groups (eg. cats, cows, wheels, food, etc.)

If I'm saving fabric for a specific project or starting a grouping, they go into a separate bin.

I have considered starting separate sorts of just batiks and all metallics.
For now they are colour sorted.
Unless of course they fit one of the other special groups.

Then I have bins with not-quilting fabric, flannelette, and battings.


My fabrics are all washed as they come into my home.
Anything over a metre is measured and labelled with painter's tape.
Over a metre are folded one way. Under a different way.
So a quick glance gives me a first read on the length awaiting when I am stash shopping.

Mine is sorted by color. I do have all my specialty (matalic, lace,ect,), oriental , baby, and kids sorted seperatly.

I do theme first - Christmas, fall/halloween, and floral. Then I do the colors. So my Christmas greens are altogether, Christmas red, etc. Same with kids fabric.

You will have a pretty good idea what is in your stash - and you start out with some theme in mind - so might as well start there. My favorites are Christmas, Kids and Halloween - so figure out where do you start?

Well, here is what I have gleaned from my experience of doing it over several times.

If you are going to use plastic containers, don't get the biggest ones! They get too heavy to move around easily. My favorites for fabric stash are about 8"x12"x6" high, plus some that are the same size but only 3" high. The smaller ones are great for single project UFOs (big enough to hold the magazine with the pattern for the UFO) and for smaller categories of fabric or scrappy cuts (such as 3" squares). All of the containers should stack on each other, and preferably all should be see-thru including the tops. I like to use notecards for labeling, and I tape the notecard *inside* the box. This makes it easy to change labels if I decide to re-arrange my stash. (Gummed labels on the outside can become difficult to remove.)

With the smaller plastic boxes you can afford to divide your stash into more individualized categories. For example, I have a box for black prints, Asian fabrics, Walmart sparkles, Christmas reds, etc. I don't tend to buy fabric lines by designer but, if I did, I would have a box for each designer line too. I have a box of flannels, a box of plaids. Still have some too-huge boxes that need to be divided up. I would probably have a box of florals (because I want to make a floral log cabin one day). I have a box of sky fabrics, boxes for light/medium/dark batiks, a box for blues. I have a box of large scraps and another of small scraps. I have a box of "trees" -- small amounts of green and brown fabrics. If I had solids, I would have a box of just solids.

In other words, I don't use just one way to categorize fabrics. I tend to organize them by how they might be used in a quilt.

I use larger boxes only for batting (which is light in weight).

Edit: Oh, and I have just recently started to put together boxes of coordinating fabric for future projects. For example, I have some snowmen panels and their coordinating fabric together in a project box for Christmas.

I think I have a larger stash than what is being described. I have several large drawers each of red, blue, green, white and purple, one each of black , brown and one of yellow and orange. I have drawers of batiks, of "kid fabrics", backings, corderoy, Japanese prints, prints on white and 'naturals' (scenic, rocks, fall leaves, foods etc) I also have way too many drawers of scrap. I have a friend whose scraps are organized by color AND width. A couple of years ago, when snowed in, I took 6 large boxes of scraps and sliced them into 'trash', 2.5, 3.5, 4, 5, 6.5" squares, and 'long skinny'. I found that my friends and I used almost all of those scraps within the next 6 months. BTW, 'trash' turned out to be the largest category, to my DH's delight. Next winter, I plan to do that again.

PS I also have a drawer of "current" projects, a couple of UFOs and a stack of flimsies on a bookcase. My threads live in 3 drawers, regular, variagated and other and a small drawer of threads I need to return to another room.

By category and by color and by length of the piece.

Cat prints are more or less together, the cat print 30 repros are together, black and white are together

Where I get hung up at times is when a particular print is appropriate for several categories - such as a black and white cat print!