A recent international move allowed me to reunite with my "stash" that had been living in storage for over a year. But, in this same time frame I bought fabric in South Korea, Japan, and Bali (I am sooo completely in love with batiks). So a blended fabric family was created and new storage solutions needed to be found.
I tend to be organized and cannot create in chaos. But at the same time I like my fabric to be visible. It is so pretty that it fuels my creativity and makes it easy to plan for my next project. My fabric storage consists of three different shelves. These shelves are tucked into the corner of my sewing room with easy access from my cutting table. Since I enjoy my fabric out in the open I have it around the corner from the window so that is has a little bit of shelter from direct sunlight.
Yardage
My yardage is all newly folded to fit on this Ikea Billy shelf. I ruler folded it all (more on this below) and then folded the larger pieces in half (the two piles at the bottom left that are just a smidge too deep for the shelf). I folded the smaller pieces in thirds, put a piece of scrap cardboard in the middle to help them stand upright and stood them on the shelf like books. I like my fabric yardage to stand upright because I find it easier to get single pieces in and out without having to fight a whole pile of fabric.
What is ruler folding?
I fold my yardage selvage to selvage (just like it comes off the bold), then fold it around and around a 6"x24" ruler (just like I am wrapping it on a bolt). Then pull the ruler out of the center to get a folded piece about 6"x 22". I then folded my fabric lengthwise into either halves or thirds and placed it on my shelf with the smooth folded side facing out.
What about sorting by color?
While I love to see a fabric stash all organized and pretty, I find storing by color to be too much work to maintain. When I am picking fabric for a quilt I don't always have a specific color in mind, so I don't mind just perusing all my fabrics to see what catches my eye. But I don't like putting fabric away by color. If I pull 15 fabrics to see what works for a quilt that I only need 5 colors for, now I have 10 fabrics that need to be put away. I would rather take the whole stack of 10 and just shove it back on the shelf rather than having to put each color back where it belongs.
Smaller Cuts
All of my smaller, awkward cuts, get folded kind of uniform and stacked on a small, second-hand shelf. I have a cardboard template that is about 4.75"x5.25" that I use to fold the fabric pieces around. I don't get too persnickety about it being perfect. As long as it stacks kind of nice I am okay with it. I also put cardboard (think cereal box thickness) in the middle of these folds to help keep them stiff. I ran out of cardboard and started stacking them up without it and they still stacked pretty nice, so in the future I might not use cardboard in these smaller cuts.
Fat Quarters
Fat quarters are the only pre-cuts I use on a regular basis, so I have a lot. I fold them uniformly and stack them into neat little piles. I fold each fat quarter in half twice each direction with the raw edges folded to the inside. I found more fat quarters after this picture was taken, so I don't quite fit on these two shelves anymore, oops.
Scrap Storage
I love working with scraps. I store all my scraps in small wooden crates from Ikea, on a custom made shelf. The thing I love about these crates is how flexible they are, they allow me to grow and rearrange as needed. For example, I have 3 crates of blue scraps (can you tell which color I use most often?), but I have all my orange and yellow scraps together in a single crate.
I love being able to dump a crate out and dig through the pile until I find the perfect pieces. Then I just scoop it all back into the crate and back on the shelf it goes, making clean up super easy.
I also use one crate for selvage cuts I am saving for a project, one crate for precuts (not including my fat quarters), and two crates for orphan blocks.
The pretty little details
Dandelions have a special place in my heart. Did you ever blow them for wishes as a kid? So I was pretty excited to find this inexpensive dandelion decal at a local store. It makes me smile every time I look at it. The lemon tree is a new addition that also makes me smile. It is currently covered in flowers, so my whole sewing room smells like citrus blooms, and it has one tiny little lemon on it. I can't wait to be able to make some lemonade with a fresh lemon that I grew myself.
I would love to hear from you. How do you store your fabric? Do you sort by color, cut size, something else? Comment below.