Long time no blog.
Going through my
collection of photos, I realize I have made lots of things in the last year, I
just didn’t blog about them, though I have posted many of them on
Facebook. I have been trying to
re-create a life for myself and hit a lot of dead ends. Something has to turn
around soon, right?
In the meantime, I have
been trying to get my space organized. I
have a fabric stash that has its origins in my days after college when I worked
for So-Fro fabrics. Thanks to input from
Pinterest, I managed to develop a system to get control over my fabric stash and
am really happy with the process I put together. The origins of this system can be found on my
Pinterest board, hoard-ganizing ,
but I haven’t seen anyone put these elements together in quite this way.
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| EXPEDIT Before |
I have had my
beloved 4 x 4 EXPEDIT shelving unit for a number of years.
This picture will give you an idea of the “before” way I had been using it.
Much as I love looking at all the craft and sewing stuff, I found that there was
something cluttered about this display, not to mention the exposure to light
and dust.
I decided I needed to re-think this chaos and went out to find containers that would fit both the EXPEDIT and my budget.
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| EXPEDIT After |
I bought a few hot
pink DRÖNA boxes from IKEA. They fit the cubbies of the EXPEDIT perfectly
and were just 5 bucks each. (Though they are up to $6 now) By the time I decided to get some more DRÖNAs,
they were no longer carrying the pink ones, so I got a couple of green ones
along with a pair of matching inserts with doors
that were on clearance. Of course when I went back to get more green
ones, they were discontinued, so I picked up the blue boxes. These colors are all part of my personal
palette, and I actually like the variety of colors in the white unit.
Now IKEA has
brought out a high-gloss 2 x 4 hot pink
EXPEDIT. I want to line every wall of my
house with them. (Either that or the teal one.) But I settled for another door insert and a set of
drawers in the pink. (The DRÖNAs are very useful for storing the
fabric stash, but some of my crafting materials and reference books are better stored in drawers
and behind doors.)
Of course anyone
can fill the EXPEDIT with DRÖNAs, but my breakthrough was developing a system
to organize, inventory and label the contents of the boxes.
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| Binder clip, 1' binder ring holding swatches of contents |
As you can see, I attached a binder clip to the top of the DRÖNA to hold a small binder ring which holds a set of punched cards
with swatches of the contents. Already
this process thrills me because it makes use of office supplies.
What is it
about school supplies and office supplies that bring me to the edge of ecstasy?
With these rings
indicating the contents of each box, it is so much easier to find a particular
piece of fabric by checking the cards rather than pawing through the boxes to
find it.
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| Fabric details |
|
I initially made these tags
from the leftover business cards I had from my last job. Eventually I ran out of those. I tried to buy blank business cards from my
local Staples, but found a much better deal getting them from Vistaprint.
I had them made up with a list of content details so I can just cut a swatch
and glue it to one side of the card and fill out the card with pertinent
information like yardage, where and when I bought it and fiber content.
Yes, it took a lot of time to cut a swatch,
glue it (with either a glue stick or glue runner) measure the fabric, fold it
neatly and document it. But it has saved
so much time and money to be able to find out what I already have before going
on a fabric store bender. I have been able to combine fabrics from the stash
that were bought 20 years apart, but meant to be together. It was a great project to work on while
catching up on Doctor Who.
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| Swatches ready for a shopping trip |
|
The beauty of this
system is that as I use up fabrics, I can just discard or file the associated
card. I can update the yardage if I only
use part of it. I can use the swatches
to figure out what combination of fabrics will work for a project. And most helpful of all, I can clip a group
of swatches to a binder ring and take it with me to shop for coordinating
fabrics, and notions. I have brought my
swatch ring with me to the fabric store and been asked about it by fellow
shoppers as well as the sales people.
After I made these
up, I came across this Swatch Buddy system on line. If you are in no mood to DIY a set, they
might be a good solution, but I figure if you are DIYing in fabric, you are
probably a dyed-in-the-wool DIYer who wants to make her own individualized
swatch cards anyhow. (Especially if you have old business cards lying around
which brings the cost down significantly while keeping the cards out of the
landfill)
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| Swatches make contents easy to find. |
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The other difference between the Swatch Buddy system and mine is that I am
using them as a way to label the boxes of my collection, in addition to just
having a portable set of swatches.
So just what is in
those DRÖNA boxes? Mostly fabric. One box contains my crafting toaster
oven along with polymer clay, clay tools and shrinky dink paper. One box contains my scrapbooking stuff.
Another holds patterns. I have to get a
few more hot pink binder clips and binder rings to finish labeling the blue boxes
that don’t have fabric in them.
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| Fat Quarters and 1 or 2 yard pieces folded and filed. |
|
Here is what it
looks like inside a couple of the fabric boxes.
I am especially pleased with this large collection of fat quarters and
one-yard pieces that I have collected to make patchwork. I used this tutorial as inspiration for how
to get all of these odd pieces of fabric folded uniformly. Using a 6” wide quilting ruler to
fold the fabric makes it exactly the right width to make two stacks of
fabrics that fit the DRÖNA.
I got so
many fabrics into this box, I had too many cards to fit the 1” binder ring and
needed a big 2” one to hold them all.
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| Rolled 2-4 yard pieces |
With
yardages over a yard or two, I found that rolling the fabric allowed me to tip
out the box and get a quick view of the contents.
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| Bulky fabrics filed |
Bulkier fabrics like flannel
and corduroy are folded and stacked in the DRÖNA. It looks so orderly to me that I just want to
start into a new project.
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| 6-yard dress-length cottons |
|
Of course that
EXPEDIT is nowhere near big enough to hold my entire stash. Here’s the 2" binder ring of swatches for the
fabrics stored in this dresser. :)
I hope this
inspires you to get some control over a stash gone wild at your place. J
Still, I hear my niece
liked the skirt very much and loves to wear it with leggings. Here she is modeling it. She looks pretty happy. And I hear her geek-girl friends are jealous. 
