Folding My Fabric Stash

Because I'm ALWAYS curious about how other people organize and keep their fabric stash, today I'm going to show you mine (and because my friend Caroline asked :).  A couple of months ago I got fed up with my system or lack there of. I knew I had certain fabrics but I couldn't find them when I needed them.   And I pretty much ripped apart any shred of fabric organization I had when I made this pillow.  And this is what it looked like.


Something had to be done!!

I'd love to own a fabric store simply so I could look at all the pretty fabrics, so I decided to fold my fabric all the same size and sort it a bit so it might look a little like a fabric store.  And here's what I came up with. 

I read somewhere that sometimes people fold their fabrics over cardboard to make it nice and uniform and so I tried it.  I love my Expedit shelf from IKEA, and I wanted to utilize it's deep shelves a little better, I cut out a piece of cereal cardboard to the size of about half of one of it's cubbies.

Then I tucked the scrappy ends into the center and folded each of my large fabrics uniformly around the cardboard and then removed it.

 

And here's what you get...pretty fabric stacks.

 
I also somewhat sorted my fabrics into cool colors, warm colors, nuetrals, and heavy weight solids.  I had no idea I had that many blues and greens.

For the smaller sized pieces. I folded them over a smaller cardboard piece that I measured to fit into these boxes. 

Not entirely sorted but kind of.

The rest of my fabric is upholstery remnants that I house in bins in the closet, which is not so picture worthy right now. 

 Now I'll be the first to admit that my sewing stuff is not always tidy, in fact it almost never is...creativity is messy right?.  I wondered if I could maintain these tidy fabric stacks but so far so good.  Yes I still end up with a mess on the floor because that is basically my workspace, but I have been good about refolding my fabrics so the stack sits there looking pretty, and that makes me happy.  The best thing is that I can find what I need and it makes it way easier to match it with other fabrics when I need to.  I will tell you that it took me 4 or 5 nights to fold it like this to begin with.  But I think it has been worth it.  Try it, you'll love it too!