How to organize my stash?
 

I have been following the mission organization threads and have searched for information and trying to get my sewing space organized but I can not find out how to get started organizing my stash of fabrics. Right now they are in lots of assorted totes. I tried to organize my FQ's by color in an under the bed tote so I can see what I have and have them on hand, it works okay but not great, too many different sizes of FQs as I usually do not wash and iron them until I am ready to use them. I do not have much room, I have 1 dresser that I can use. Does any one have ideas for the larger sizes and batting?

I am having the same difficulty ... tooo much fabric and tooo little space. But I keep acquiring more fabric. I'm trying to organize but the stash expands the more I work with it, as if having a life of its own. I look forward to see what others have to say.

I'm sure that you'll get lots of suggestions on this topic. Try ones that you think might work for you and see how it works. I have my fabrics in big drawers by background colors. All fabrics are ruler folded with a 4x12 inch ruler, then is put in the drawer on the edge so that I can see what I have in the drawer without going through piles of fabrics. I don't have a lot of FQ's since I tend to buy yardage. I have 2 drawers full of fabrics and the fabrics to go with the focus fabric and the pattern I'm going to make with it, this way I don't mistakenly cut up fabrics that I had intentions of using for a different quilt. Batting storage can be a problem, but what I'm going to do(when I have the money to buy a full roll) is to put 2 U shaped hangers and a HD rod of some kind on the wall directly above my cutting table, then when I need batting I just "roll" off what I need.

Trial and error. That's not much help I know but it seems to be the best way for me. I've tried several different ways, and sure I'll change it again someday.
Good Luck,
Penny

I ruler fold and put in cabinet keeps getting fuller and fuller. Not sure what I will do next!

I bought a full roll (two actually, one is under my quilting frame on a pole that is meant for it but I don't have a place for the other and thought of hanging it from the ceiling as well. But explain the U shaped hangers and a HD rod please.

Old cd racks work well for fat quarters. If you have closet space you can hang yardage on hangers.

GREAT idea!!!

I have my yardage folded as if it was on a bolt in colors. Then for material less than an eighth of a yard I place in see through bins with the color labeled on the outside. Right now I have my fat quarters in see through bins but I love the CD rack idea.

I use plastic three drawer shelves, stacked two high. Each drawer has a color, except white, off-white and green have two drawers. I have a drawer for Christmas, one for floral, one for panels and two for novelty prints. I have all sizes in the drawer. Eventually, I will have some boxes for 2.5" squares, 5" squares and 2.5" strips.

Thank you every one for the suggestions, can't get out of the house this morning the driveway is a solid sheet of ice so I may have time to try some of them.

This is pretty much what I did for several years, and it worked great. I used a 6 x 12 ruler to roll my fabric, as that worked well in my drawers. For batting, I put 2 eye bolts in beams in the ceiling and used nylon cord to hang a "mini" bolt. I bought batting by the yard and had them roll it onto an empty bolt so I had a roller to run the cord through. I left enough cord on one end that I could lower the bolt to refill it, or to set it on the cutting table.

We moved into a new-to-us house and I don't have room for the dresser in my sewing room, so all the fabric (folded the same way) is on shelves in the closet. I now have a full bolt of batting hanging on my wall. I bought 2 closet shelf/rod brackets at the hardware store, along with a wooden closet rod. They are mounted just above my cutting table so I can unroll as much of little batting as I need.

love to sew-I don't remember where I bought the U shaped hangers but check out your local hardware stores, for the rod, I have an old wood curtain rod that I'll cut down to the length I need.

Oh, by the way I have 27 drawers full of fabric, not 2 like my original post sounded like. LOL

I think you have to start at the beginning, as I did. I thought about how I would look for fabric when I wanted to make a quilt. For me, a student of color, that was by color. I distinguish between orange, yellow-orange, and red-orange, for instance, so I had banker's boxes for each. I also have several boxes by theme, for instance, country or kid's or outdoor themes. I have a small collection of reds, whites, blues and those are set aside as a patriotic collection. So it's either by color or by theme, but mostly by color. I know that I will be consulting a color wheel when planning a quilt.

I stand the fabric up in the box so I can see everything at a glance. That's easy to do if the box is on it's end when loaded.

I have shelves on which the boxes live, and those have labels by color.

Fat quarters and everything but scraps go into the boxes. It's easy to find what I need.

I make clothing also, and that fabric has it's own storage area. For that, I store fabrics that will work together, color wise and by fabric content.

The above is for my own fabrics. I make a lot of quilts for homeless families, and have donated fabric. That is also in boxes on another set of shelves, but not as finely sorted. For instance, a box of reds might have red-orange, reds, pinks, red-violets, etc.

I keep in the sewing room only those things I am currently working on (multiple projects at any time) or plan to work on within 3 months.

Love the batting suggestion. That is cool. I usually have four rolls of a batting at a time since I do longarm quilting for others and my quest to do 120 ufos last year. I only have two left and love this idea of how to store them. Would get them off the floor and out of the way, now to have wall space to do that with. I will find it I am sure.

I'm short on wall space too. So I started putting fqs on their sides, in a clear tote, under the bed. DO NOT DO THAT! They breed under there!! I ended up with totes under 3 beds.I had to start all over with a new plan.So now, I have bookcases full of fqs, and yardage that I have rolled up on those comic book boards. Much easier to see what they are up to that way. :thumbup: I did learn that I must cover the bookcases tho....to keep the fabric dust & light free. If you are hanging yardage on hangers in the closet, don't forget to cover them (maybe with those dry-cleaning bags or something) otherwise, they can turn yellow at the fold. & If you don't refold them once in a while, or use them up, they can develop permanent hanger creases.:thumbdown:

My biggest issue is smaller pieces of batting...I don't want to waste them because they can be used for smaller projects. But they take up so much space!

I use those bags that you vacuum the air out of for batting scraps. When I need some, I'll open the bag, get enough to piece together to do my project, then vacuum it shot again. The batting pieces puff right up and the sealed bags don't take much space at all.

what a good idea!

I cut and use these (Mini-Bolts) to store my fabrics. http://www.quiltingboard.com/items-s...g-t200145.html
I have them in my pantry in the laundry room and in the two bookcases along side of the TV in the living room. I don't have any stored in my sewing room. I keep the scraps on a bakers rack in clear plastic shoe boxes by color. The ones wrapped on Easy Cores, I organize by style first, (novelty, blenders, etc) then by color. I have some plastic drawers in my office/sewing room that stores cutters, threads, ribbons, projects in the works, I have a lateral file that's just used for office stuff except one drawer that has my stabilizers and fusibles. My quilting books and magazines are stored on top of the lateral file and templates, rulers etc are either in a hoop hanging on the side of the bakers rack or a letter holder behind my printer. So far, so good! Good luck with your project. If you need some Easy Cores cut for you - just send me a PM.
Hugs,
Gayle

So many great ideas that I never thought to do. I went back to my FQ's, resorted by color and some by type children's etc and they seem be better than my first attempt. At the beginning, I said I would never have more than 1 tote of stash now I am way past that ,of course when my mom died I received her 3 totes, some I look at and have no idea what I will use them for. I think I'd like to make them for nursing homes and other charities as others have done on this site and will look into that soon. I found something like M.I.Late easy cores that we were trashing at work along with a box that held paperback books for a endcap display at the book store, will see what I can do with them. THANK YOU every one is so helpful and I am learning so much! Love the site.

I have been cleaning and organizing my fabric. I bought 10 plastic shoe boxes (not using lids) and I fold my fabric to fit the shoe boxes and put most of them in by colors. I also have one with 30's print and I have my Thimbleberries separate but also by color.

Just what are comic book cardboards???? I Have been reading about putting your fabric on these, thanx ahead of time.:)

I use clear shoe box size containers too....for scraps & fqs. I found a canvas shoe 'rack' that holds 26 pairs of shoes or 26 shoe boxes. It's canvas, so it's sturdy. I went back & got 1 more & stacked them. (It's sad that I can fill all 52 boxes with stuff) Whats great about the shoe holder, is that I can stack up my boxes, & still get at the ones on the bottom without having to move any off the top of the stack first. (I always hated doing that) AND I can see everything that I have in them (love that)

I used to buy batting by the roll--had it hung from a large rod that I could just roll off what I needed. Unfortunately, mice also loved the batting. I kept finding tugs and pulls along the top of the roll; they must have really nice nests someplace!! Now, I buy it as I need it until I can figure out how to keep mice out of my sewing room!! They even ripped open packaged batting!

If you look on the top of the cupboard you will see one of the two giant bags I made to keep my batting dust free. I made these before I moved into my quilt room and they stood in a corner of my bedroom. I prefer them laying on their side as the batting doesn't slide down the roll.
Each bag fits 2 rolls of batting side by side and they just have drawstring closure.

I'm going to get more of the 15 quart sterility boxes to sort my fabric with. They have nice locking lids and are clear. I want to sort by themes and color. I truly hope to get all of my fabric into the closet in my space and start getting more done with the precious leftover time I have to sew. Right now, my space is so cluttered and messy. When I've accomplished the sorting, I'm planning on banning all plastic shopping bags from the room. So much can hide in those. As Momma used to say, "everything in its place"! Wish me luck.

I had a bedroom renovated 2 years ago, to convert into a craft/sewing room. I just have too much crafts (I'm also a scrapbooker!) and sewing stuff lying around and needed a more organised space. Out of this, I custom made a cabinet just for my fabrics. I'm fond of buying FQs, and I sort the loose ones according to colours neatly in my cabinet. Those FQs and yardages which I buy as a set/collection get stacked together, as I like to work with fabrics from similar collections, so they mix and match well together.

I'm not even sure why I keep buying fabrics when I don't have much time to quilt nowadays. I only see the volume increase, but never decrease. LOL.

We put shelves in a rarely used closet - put the material on magazine boards and stacked it on end like a fabric store so all is easy to see.

I would suggest taking a look at Jeni Baker's blog "In Color Order". She has a header called The Art of Choosing in which she includes a video on folding fabric. From fat quarters to 1-2 yards, they all end up the same size just fatter for the bigger pieces. She also talks about choosing fabrics using combos from the color wheel. Excellent information. I keep my scraps in one of those big plastic zipper totes that comforters come in. If I get much more I may have to start dividing them up by color. At least I can see what is in there without dumping them out. I also cut squares 1.5" to 5" and keep them in labeled mayonnaise jars on a shelf along with scraps of binding and selvages. Sometimes a scrappy binding is just right.

This afternoon I puttered in my sewing room rearranging my scraps by color. I went from the tinited plastic boxes with covers for my precuts with all colors mixed together for the size to boxes by color.. I can tell at a glance that the colored boxes are precuts: 1.5 inch strips, 2.5 inch(light and dark), neutrals. In flat 12x12 inch colored boxes I corraled the cut pieces by color: 6 inch squares, 4.5 inch squares, various short strips and triangles. Example: blues in one box; purple, green and teal share another box. My flat 12x12 inch clear boxes hold WIPs.

I am happy to accept scraps, launder them and cut them up for scrappy quilts. Yes, there is a special recepticle to receive these scraps until I cut them down. Scraps that I don't want to cut down at this time are in tinted shoe boxes by color grouping. I am finally at the stage where I wanted easier access to colors for design purposes. This is just one of the ways in which I have changed and "refined" my system at different stages.

You will find your style and work out your own system. IMHO keeping up with putting things away will be the trick to being pleased with storage/access. Good luck!

I bought a bunch of plastic containers at the Dollar Store. Hubby put up shelves for me and I have it organized by shades of colors. I also found a shelf at Target that is designed for putting shoes, hats, things like that. It has about eight squares and I am using it for storing FQs and charm packs. Works great!

I get signage board from a local sign shop. I cut the board to fit my fabric when folded in 4ths selvage to selvage with a little space on each end. Then I wrap the fabric onto the board. I store it on book shelves. I store them by theme or color. I can instantly see if something is out of place. Make sure you cut the board with the groves going across the board for stability.

I've never worried too much about organizing my stash. I kind of have a system of putting similar sized pieces together and sorting them by color. I also keep all the fabrics I'm collecting for a specific project together in zip locs along with the pattern. I have one drawer for neutral backgrounds. And I'm not real particular about folding as long as they end up approximately the same size and will fit on the shelf. My stash probably isn't as big as some but this seems to work for me. You need to decide what will work best for you.