Sewing Room tips -Fabric storage

 

After coming clean about the condition of my sewing room, I promised some tips for organization.  So let’s start with our fabric or our stash or resource center or just our yards and yards of raw material for the sewing projects we love to make.

When Terri Click told me about using comic book boards for wrapping fabric, I was intrigued.  Several years ago, my sewing room and the bedrooms above were all but destroyed when a huge oak fell on the house during a hurricane.  While the storm was still raging but before the water seeped down through the plaster ceiling, everything from my sewing room was quickly thrown into storage bins.  And there it remained until Terri clued me in about the comic book boards.

It took me forever sorting through those bins to find a particular piece of fabric.  So I ordered the comic book boards on eBay and I love them.

Right now the going rate is $12.34 for 100 with free shipping.  There are probably others and you might buy them at a comic book store.  But our little town comic shop had none.

 

 

Fabric is folded lengthwise, usually into quarters, in order to fit on the 10″ boards.   Then it is rolled on, just like the bolts at the fabric store.

I thought this was great until I tried putting them on my shelves.  Something had to be done about the loose ends.  So I bought boxes and boxes of glass head silk pins and stuck three in each bolt.  Surely they would not rust.   WRONG!

In Florida’s humidity, it didn’t take long to discover that those pins were corroding.   So I raided my ribbon bin.  But there were just too many fabric ends to secure.  Hmmmmmm……I had to find another way to keep those bolts tidy.

A friend from church was having a huge family party in the fellowship hall and asked me to shorten 12 round tablecloths by 5″.  The diameter was 132″.  Whew!  That’s miles and miles of serging.  But when I was finished, I looked at those highways of 5″ strips and thought they could be my ties, instead of ribbon.  Hurrah!

So I roughly rotary cut each hem  into three long strips. I wrapped the ties on an old lace card.

Then I realized that every time I straightened fabric by tearing the width, there was a 40-45″ strip, just the right size.  Now I could wrap every bolt in JoAnn’s.

 

 

This really does work well.  Now what am I to do with 1000 glass head pins?

But for this post I needed to show more order and organization.  Isn’t that what I promised?

 

 

The last aha! came when I realized that by packaging at least two mini bolts  together with the loose side to the center, the result was a compact fabric rectangle with no loose ends. You probably figured that out long ago, but I’m a slow organizer.

 

 

 

It is so handy to choose fabric from a row on a shelf rather than sorting through a bin in the garage.

 

Florida sunshine, however, is unrelenting.  Soon  some fabric was fading.  So my dear husband installed window shades over each fabric shelf.  They aren’t heavy duty black-out shades, but offer good protection.

But what about all those small pieces of fabrics?  Scraps good for applique’ or pockets or trim?  Storage units with shallow drawers are perfect.  Pieces can be sorted by color.

 

 

Folding the does not keep them neat.  So each scrap is rolled and bound with a rubber band.

 

 

There are still fabric bins in the garage, but I am out of shelf space.  So I’ve been on a buying diet for some time now, trying very hard to use only what I have on hand.  Of course, there have been moments of weakness.  Children on Parade caused serious back sliding.

Please let me know if these tips are helpful.  If you have any tips to share, please do.

Until my next post, keep sewing, keep smiling.