KalamaQuilts

I think I kept buying fabric because I hadn't a clue what to do with what I had. So I quit buying fabric in 2001 and became a scrappy quilter.

Around 2006 I figured out sorting by color, photo is the result from then,in two closets. Believe it or not it has stayed fairly neat. I ruler folded mine. A fat quarter only folds once but can still be seen when stacked.

I had a shelf fail a few weeks ago which resulted with me taking it all out and straightening for the stash. It only took me about two hours and it was perfect again. And there was still too much I'm thankful I found my brain and quit buying.

This spring some of the wonderful quilters here sent me some great scraps, just for the cost of shipping. It allowed me to add in fresh fabrics without particularly adding to my stash.

The right hand side now has four clear bins with my own precut squares in 4 sizes. Happy happy happy! And all that remains of folded stash fits in the left closet, which is still to big

upper left neutral was feedsack muslin which I traded to a member here for used shirts another win win

Faintly Artistic

A few months ago I folded all my fabric and stacked them by color on shelves. Found that every time I had to pull one out (of course, the one I needed would be on the bottom!), the rest would slide around and get untidy. I finally broke down and bought the comic boards. I cut most of them in half, since my stash is mainly 1/2 yards or smaller and organized by color. The first pic is before, the 2nd is midway to show the shelf things my hubby made, the 3rd pic is after. I like it much better! I can see every fabric and it's easier to get one out when needed. The bottom shelves are vintage sheets.
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zozee

Faintly, you did a great job on folding and organizing your stash. What an improvement. Did you put a clip on each one to hold the fabric in place? I found that metal barrettes about 1.5 " long helps keep the ends tidy. Of course, your stash is pretty big. That'd be a lot of barrettes.

Faintly Artistic

I use plastic coated paper clips, but the barretts are a good idea. My stash seems big, but it's mostly FQ's and 1/2 yards. I've been building it this past year, trying to get more colors than my old muted blues and greens.

toverly

I'm a clear tote gal since my sewing room doubles as a guest room. I keep mine in categories, Christmas, 30s, prints, batiks. Once they number too many for one tote, I divide them by colors. My batiks I have blues/greens and orange/red/yellow then off white's/browns. I'm a batiks girl. When guests come they are stacked up usually under the sewing table and in my bedroom.

KenmoreGal2

This is exactly what I do with my cottons, that's what I have the most of. It's all sorted by color except for "kids", "holiday" and "multi color".

My home dec fabrics are just stored on a shelf willy nilly because there is much less of them. My "other" fabrics are in a box since I rarely use them.

Claire123

What's important is to come up with a method of organization that works for you. As long as you can quickly and easily find what you're looking for it works. For me I have a few things organized by project (BOM's), some by type (Kaffes, batiks, flannels) sometimes it's color.

Mitty

I think the only answer to this is whether your system works for you. Some people work well with spotless desks and everything filed away while others can find what they need in a large, disorganized pile. No one system works for everyone!

I wrap my fabric on the comic boards. If I have specific plans for a quilt, I'll keep those fabrics next to one another. Other than that there's no particular organization, because I don't have so much that it needs it. If I had more I'd do it by color.

Snooze2978

Mine is a bit of mish mash I guess. I try to keep them in color groups but then I keep my batiks together too. Then if I have collections such a the "mirage" blenders from Connecting Threads, etc. I keep them together and the list goes on. I keep all the bolts together too but in color groups. Right now I've ran out of room so its starting to get disorganized again. And we won't talk about the scrap bucket(s) as they're overflowing right now. I keep my scraps by size in shoe box size containers under the cutting table.