[quote=Karyn]
Originally Posted by AUQuilter
You are making some terrific progress! Keep us posted.
I cleaned up my sewing room and put something away and now for the life of me I can't find it. I am so mad at myself. Am I the only one that does this? Congrats on a great job Deb.[/qu
The point of this hopefully is to help you find things.
The secret is to put all the same things together!
I know, I know, there are so many different aspects of quilting!
OK..Notions= sort them into a drawer or two -or three as you find them (you can dump now ) just a rough sorting first. This gives you a place to put all the misc. stuff.
and for now, you know you can find it if you really need it.
Then after you have them all together, sort them into lots of little open top boxes, or divider strips. Things like needles, together - bobbins together ( That can be dangerous because suddenly and by themselves mine all tangled together) anyway - scissors, cutters, glue, oil, cleaning toothbrush, bodkins, extra sewing feet and attachments, all that and more stuff get put in there as you find it. Rulers can be their own group because they are all thin...and maybe all can hang.
Fat quarters all go together - eventually you might want to colorsort them too, I have a couple of hundred of them piled neatly into eight color families on top of the chest of drawers that I put my notions and thread into.
You have fabric and projects categories left.
If you can, possibly, sort your fabrics into color families eventually, at least try to keep them on adjacent shelves sorta like the quiltshop does, so that you can easily find that one special blue piece- without having to go through your entire stash! and only have to look in the blues section.
I think unfinished projects are the hardest part of a stash to store...because they might not have categories that describe them. I do have mine jumbled all together - each in its own plastic envelope - lined up like books on the top shelf, because I can't think of a better way to have them where I can see them. and collections of bags of fabric reserved to be given away are in this grouping too.
Books, patterns, and machines, you know.
I learned this by working in a museum. They HAVE to be able to find any object - well - almost instantly!
Would it make you feel better if I told you this, some of their collections hold thousands and thousands - even millions - of things like fish in glass jars ! Want to look at fish ears? or dried botanical specimens? or rocks and mineral specimens?
Perhaps that thought will make our problems of arranging our complicated stash of sewing stuff seem easier?
Bless us all!