Getting Organized

Before

Well, I did say I wasn't sure how frequently I'd be able to blog over the summer. There is some sewing happening, but it's infrequent and late in the evenings. C'est la vie! That said, I have been slowly reorganizing my sewing studio/guest room.

I love getting organized. Yep, I do. I love finding a great system for putting things in their place. Getting organized and staying organized are two different things though, aren't they? As such, I'm regularly in the 'getting organized' phase. Sigh!

Two years ago, I organized my stash by colour and value into these bookcases. Seeing the fabric all tidy and organized was quite a juxtaposition against the rest of my sewing space and, frankly, sometimes the rest of the house. I loved it and was able to keep it like this for the most part too...if I didn't touch it. Trying to find fabric though was not so easy and often resulted in having to refold the pile. Not a great incentive for using the stash.

Before - That empty cubby is where my solids
don't fit anymore. They were all over the guest bed.

Then I started seeing other bloggers' studio spaces like Elizabeth and Angela, where they organized the fabric on the vertical like a library. Oooooh -- yes, I actually drooled. It looked like a mini quilt store! When I read Patti from Retired to Quilt's post about getting organized too, it finally kicked me into gear. Thank you, Patti!

The next day I went to my local comic book store and picked up some comic book boards (FYI: They are the Magazine Book Boards - 8.5" by 10.5") and started folding...and folding....and folding. And then I had to go back to the comic book store to get more boards. And kept folding. I was actually shocked at just how many boards I needed. Thankfully, they are inexpensive, but still.

As I was folding, it felt like I was rediscovering my stash and I fell back in love with so many of my fabrics. It made me think of a game to play for exploring my stash more regularly, but I'll share that another day.

I organized my stash into these sections:  solids, white and black prints, stripes, prints and tone on tones, botanicals, landscape/texture fabric, holiday, batiks, novelty. I'm still trying to figure out how to store my fat quarters in with the yardage because I've found that if I store them separately, then I forget about them.

Soooo loving this!

I thought I'd also share a couple of things that I love about my space with you besides my now yummily organized fabric stash. The first is the peg board that I painted a few years above with some leaves to give the room some more colour. It holds my rulers, scissors, stencils, rotary cutter, pens and pencils and colour wheel.

Also, I repurposed this match holder for my safety pins. I keep it beside my sewing machine while I'm machine quilting so I can just drop the safety pins in the top, then I hang it on my peg board out of little people's reach when I don't need it. When I'm pin basting, I can just pull the pins from the lower opening. 

To keep things real though, here's what I'll be sorting out next...

and this...

and this...

I've got my work cut out for me, eh?

I'm not the only one trying to get some of the creative chaos under control. Pink Chalk Fabrics is doing a linky party for sewing spaces and I'm hoping to get some more ideas on how to better organize my stash: