Organizing…it’s a good thing!

While in the process of making my granny squares quilt recently, I ran out of pure white Kona cotton.  Horrors!  I was sure that I had lots more but when I searched through my stash, I had every shade of ‘white’ imaginable, except for pure white.

So a gal’s gotta do what a gal’s gotta do and that is to head to her local quilt shop…which for me happens to be about 65 miles away…to buy some pure white Kona cotton.

Five yards should do it to bulk up my stash, right?

But heavens, a gal can’t drive all that way just for five yards of boring white fabric…right?

This collection of Civil War and reproduction prints…the most expensive one priced at $5.99/meter (1 meter = 39”)…just begged me to take them home.  In a moment of weakness,  I caved.   *wink*

Did you notice the ‘real’ turkey red fabric on the bottom left?  Be still my heart!

I really didn’t need any more fabric.  After all, I bought yards and yards of gorgeous fabric on our recent trip to Maine which, I’m embarrassed to say, was still sitting in bags on the floor of my studio because I had no where to put it!

My choices were to either  reorganize or downsize.  The latter was entirely out of the question!

I recall reading somewhere about folding fabric a certain way, using a 24” x 6” plastic quilting ruler so that all the fabric would end up being a uniform size thereby taking up less space.  I went on line and googled ‘folding fabric’ and found exactly what I was looking for.

Here’s what I did and how it’s done.

Leave the fabric folded as it comes off the bolt, wrong sides together and folded selvage to selvage.   Lay the fabric out on a flat surface with the selvage edge to the right.

Take your 24” x 6” ruler and lay it on top of the fabric about 4” up from the bottom edge with the top or left edge of the ruler lined up with the folded edge of the fabric.  The right edge of the ruler will be hanging off the selvage edge side of the fabric.

Fold up the bottom edge of the fabric and lay it on top of the ruler.  Make sure that the left hand side of the ruler is  and continues to be lined up flush with the folded edge of the fabric as you proceed through the next steps.

Holding both ends of the fabric in place, start to turn the ruler and fabric away from you, winding the fabric around the ruler as you go.

Continue to do this until to get to about 6” from the end of the length of fabric.

Fold the raw edge end of the fabric over onto itself…

and then lay it on top of the ruler.

Slide the ruler out leaving the fabric in place.

Then fold the fabric in half.

Here’s what you end up with…neatly folded stacks of fabric…all the same width and oh so manageable!

Why ever did I wait so long to do this?   *sigh*

I wish I had taken a ‘before’ picture but I forgot to.  What you see below are some of my more recent fabric purchases.  The rest of my stash is stored in clear plastic bins.  Some of the bins are labeled but for the most part, they aren’t and are buried stacked in the cupboard in my studio.

I am going to buy a few additional crates like those shown below and my plans are to fill them with similar fabric which is hiding in the bins in the cupboard.  My goal is to be able to shop from my stash with ease whenever possible.

Just by doing this exercise I found fabric that was already stuffed stacked in no particular order in these crates that I couldn’t see and forgot I had.

I also have plans for the fat quarters that you see in the open plastic bins but I’ll save that for a future post.

If I were to leave fat quarters like these in pretty rolls and folded bundles they would never be used!  They too will be integrated with the rest of my fat quarter stash.

It doesn’t  look like a whole lot but each piece of fabric stacked in the bottom crate measures between 3-5 yards in length which I purchased specifically to be used as backing for quilts.  It’s actually surprising how small they look and how much less room they take when folded this way.

I feel so organized now and I don’t know about you but I personally can’t function or create when my ‘space’ is in a state disarray which is exactly the way it was. 

It should take me a couple of days to complete the job and then? 

Let the creative juices flow!