How I organize fabric, and you can too!
The way I organize fabric has developed over many years. I started, like my mom did, by stacking fabrics is pseudo-organized stacks that usually fell over with any usage, or looked awful after a while. Is it the dust that makes those stacks crumble?? Additionally, like my yarn collection (you can read about that here), my fabric stash was becoming a “collection”.
I was a fabric scouter-outer — meaning I would scout out great deals on fabric and buy it. Joann’s, Hancock Fabrics, Hobby Lobby, pretty much anywhere that sold it by the bolt, I was scouting out. I’m the type of person that when I walk through a fabric shop, I’m touching, touching, and forever touching the fabrics. I need to know the “feel” of them. The softness, the density, the lay of the fabric. Does the design on it feel stiff? It’s a tactile experience for me.
I do less scouting now that I have a pretty sizeable collection, but during those scouting days I would pick up just about anything –- cottons, knits, corduroys, denims, batiks, fleece, you name it. I tried to keep it under a certain price per yard. Again, tried to.
As part of this handmade business idea I’ve mentioned in other posts, I thought I could stock up on supplies and better absorb the costs over time. Once I got several stacks of fabric though, it was tough to keep it straight, literally, straight in stacks, but also straight in knowing what I actually had. If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist….anybody with me on that one?
Organize Fabric into Stacks
My organizing brain went into action. I used some scrap cardboard and requested empty bolts (free!) from the craft stores and used them to roll my fabrics. Many times I had more than just a yard of fabric. So I would cut down the bolts/cardboard into about 12” lengths and would wrap the fabric around it, sometimes pinning it to hold it in place. I stacked them back on my metal shelving units. Ahhh.
Organize fabric by type
One of my troubles was the sheer mix of different types of fabrics. I organized the fabrics by type – cottons, denim, corduroy, fleece, suiting, etc. Because I had so much cotton fabric, I also organized it by color too. I wrapped much of my cotton onto cardboard as it stacked easier and stayed looking nicer for longer….but I wasn’t compulsive about it. You can see there are still neatly folded fabrics in the picture that are not on cardboard. It was a start.
Stack them where you can see them
I used the shelving units to separate the fabric types and colors. On 2 shelves I housed all of my cottons, sorted and stacked by color. Keep in mind, these were not Pinterest-worthy displays. They were more functional than pretty, but they were organized and my brain liked that a lot. I stacked the rest of my fabrics in like-sections — all denim in a stack, all fleece in another stack, etc.
Organize fabrics for easy project prep
This system to organize fabric has helped me better focus on the particular fabric I need for a project. If I need a knit fabric, then I’m not pawing through a gazillion pieces of cotton or fleece because I have a knit fabric section (kind of like the craft store!) and can select from there.
When I’m on a fleece project marathon, I can pull it out quite easily because it’s all together. One of my fleece project marathons involved cutting the fleece into squares, “holing” the edges, crocheting around the edges and then joining the squares into a blanket. You can read about that here.
Another project I worked on was for Operation Christmas Shoebox. I cut two 1-1 ½ yard sections of cotton, rolled them into Ziploc bags and then filled a second baggie full of coordinating threads, buttons, embroidery floss, scissors, pins, a needle, instructions for a couple of easy projects, among other things. Having the fabric together, I could pull out a pink design and coordinate it with say, a green print. It was nice having the colors in different sections.
So, how do you organize fabric….what’s your method? What works for you? Do I think I might make a few friends out there over…..fabric??? I mean, I have yarn friends. And I have work friends. Why not fabric friends?! Where y’all at??! Drop me a note in the comments!
