Stashin’

Made a little headway on organizing my fabric today. Didn’t actually organize any of the fabric, but got a step closer. When we decorated the office/sewing room this year, we chose the Expedit bookshelves from Ikea for my main storage units. I put my books, projects and fabrics in the available 24 spaces. The problem is that fabric shouldn’t be exposed to light because that has a tendency to fade it. I’ve looked for drawers or doors or anything that I could install on the shelves that would help with hiding the stash, but nothing seemed to fit.

Finally, though, I found the Itso fabric drawers from Target. They are the perfect size—exactly the dimensions I needed. The colors matched the room decor we set up and look really nice. For Christmas, I told Robert that I wanted eight drawers—enough to hold my entire fabric stash and box up some projects. He got them and now I’m in the process of putting my fabric in them.

I spent today working on the sample cards that I intend to keep in a box or perhaps on a flip ring. I made a template in Word that has space for width, length, prewashed status, fabric content, care instructions, where and when purchased and price paid, after discounts if any. Most importantly, I included a spot for box number. I intend to number all eight boxes and as I fill them, I’ll make a card out for each fabric. I will cut out a 3”x3” swatch to glue to the back so I can see what I have at hand easily. At this point, it won’t matter if a fabric is for me, the kids or Robert (my current system—we all have shelves, more or less) because I can just look in the specific box and find what I’m looking for. I also intend to try to keep the stash to just these eight boxes, so I won’t be getting the itch to go out and buy stuff when I don’t have any place for it.

In all, I’m pretty excited about it. I need to get to work measuring and describing the stash I have, but as soon as I’ve got it all labeled and boxed, it will all be smooth sailing. When I get new fabric after I get it organized, it will be a matter of minutes to get them into the system and put away neatly.