Get Organized - Day 1 - Fabric

Welcome to Day 1 of

Today I thought I'd start with something that regularly overwhelms my craft area.

FABRIC - 

So I told you a little while back that I was seriously needing to reorganize my sewing area. As in, it was so bad, I am not even going to show you pictures of it. It's highly likely if you sew and craft, yours looks very similar anyway.  Here's a very small sample of the fabric I pulled off the shelves.

I went through all my fabric, and pulled out the stuff I have had forever and will never use, and stored the fabrics and batting that were too thick to be nicely folded.  I made a pile of the sizable scraps, fat quarter size and over, and trashed anything under that.  I just don't have the storage space or the memory to keep those on hand in case I both remember them and come up with a project using them.

Nicely folded, you ask?  What's that?  Here's how I fold my fabric:

Start with your fabric folded so the selvedges meet.  If you have a really wide fabric, fold it over again towards the selvedge.  I use my 6 inch wide ruler, overlap some fabric, and fold the whole mess over the ruler until I get to the edge of the fabric.  Fold any excess into the fabric you folded already.

From there I fold it into thirds.

Isn't it pretty?
I turned that pile of fabric at the top of the post into these piles:

And once I set them up in my shelves, I organized them according to type - knits, pants materials, home dec, costume satin, and cotton wovens.  Some people organize their fabric by color.  I think it looks much prettier, but I don't often sew with different fabric types together, and I visually need to see what I can use together.

That big white blob is Minky. It's going to go live with the fleece in the Rubbermaid bin. You can see why it doesn't belong with the others.   The tulle and satin fabric is a little tougher to fold - just don't fold too tightly or you can't pull out the ruler without it catching on the tulle netting. It's also handy to pin the folded piece together when you're done.

 And you can see that I've already been fabric shopping in there for knits, and didn't fold it back right.  Oops.  I'm bad about sticking to a system.  But I find that keeping it organized helps me remember what I have, and makes the whole pile look smaller to Mr. Tupelo. Double bonus.

He enabled me though - he built that shelf over my sewing table which holds my fabric.

Come back tomorrow for more of this series!