It’s a short week this week with the Thanksgiving vacation thrown in, so I thought I would review some of my fabric storage tips for keeping your stash organized and ready to use. Whether you pre-wash your fabric or not, it’s a good idea to have your fabric neatly folded and pressed after returning from a trip to the fabric store. Also, once you have cut out a project, reorganize what’s left and get that stored in the appropriate places. I know I’ve fallen down on that job at times as you can see …..
This is a basket of strips that resides next to my cutting table. I really need to sort them out and get them stored for future projects!
So I will start with my largest cuts of fabric first. I often buy tans, creams, greys, blacks and browns for backgrounds of quilts. Because of that, I usually need at least a yard to 2 yards of those. I don’t buy larger than that since as a scrap quilter, I like scrappy backgrounds too! I fold my larger cuts and store them by color family in a cupboard:
For my smaller cuts of fabric, I have tubs labeled for 1/2 yards and 1/4 yards (and fat quarters).
For 1/8 yards and fat 1/8s, I roll them and store them in drawers. I like using antiques in my office and I have them stored there:
I wrote a blog post earlier on why I do this and how I do this. You can find that post here: Taming your Fat Eighth Storage!
If I have some of my background fabric left over after cutting out a project, those pieces eventually trickle down to these other storage areas.
If a piece of fabric does not fit into the size category for these storage tubs and drawers above, I will then cut strips from that leftover fabric for future projects. I use 1 1/2″ and 2 1/2″ strips the most so those are the strip sizes I cut and store. Here’s one of my tubs of strips:
I like to keep these tubs small so the pile does not get too high and the strips don’t turn into a jumbled mess.
Finally, I have pieces of fabric leftover that don’t fit into any of the above categories. These are fabrics I put into tubs by color family (and once again I combine some colors if there is enough room in the tub). These fabrics are for my future applique projects. If I need a piece of blue or purple for a flower, I don’t have to cut into a big piece of fabric. I just dig into my applique fabric tubs!
I was looking around on Pinterest for how others handle left over fabric and I found this charming video from The Gourmet Quilter on what she does with her left overs. She has some really great tips. Especially if you are a scrap quilter and like to have all your small pieces organized:
How to Organize and Utilize Your Fabric Leftovers
So, those are my fabric organization tips and some tips from The Gourmet Quilter, Susan Claire. Enjoy your quilting more by having your fabric organized by size and ready to use! Share with me your favorite fabric organizing tips and you will be in a drawing for a free pattern for Country Dance! Drawing will be on December 3rd. **Since no one commented to enter this drawing, it’s been extended to the blog post for 12/3/18 and the drawing will happen on 12/10!**
Happy Quilting!
Deanne
Hi! I just discovered your website. I’m new to this sort of sewing/craft. So hope to learn something here. I signed up for your newsletter too. Not 100% confident in my abilities to make mine look as nice as yours but I’m going to try the 2018 BOM over my Christmas break and see how it goes!
I love your method of storage. Will be trying this as I muddle through my sewing room after Christmas.