Have you ever followed Bonnie Hunter's blog, Quiltville? She is in the process of cleaning up her basement/sewing room-installing new carpet etc. On her blog for the past week, she's shown how she's reorganized and folded all of her fabrics to make it easy for her to find things. Although I don't organize like this, it's been interesting to see how she goes about it.
I organize by theme; i.e. Christmas, 1930s, Autumn, Halloween, Civil War, Baby, Batiks, etc. If I have complete fabric sets plus pattern for a specific quilts, those parts all go in one plastic storage container to keep everything together until I get to it. All books are kept together and the smaller patterns in their little plastic bags go into a container, standing up.