Fabric Organizing Idea

I’ve been keeping all of my material in a big bin for a while.  I kept the different fabrics separate by just tying a knot in the original bag from the place I got them from.  Well, last week as I was sorting through material looking for scraps to make a quilted pillow for Christian’s bed, Christian came in and announced “Mother, you’re making a giant mess!”  This was partially true though everything was organized by material type.  I guess he decided that he could help make my mess worse so he rolled around in all of my material just like a cat and started throwing rainbows of color and texture in the air and swatting at them.

I was pretty frustrated as I started re-bagging the material.  It was then that I realized there had to be a better way to keep my material easy to see and easy to get at without making a disaster every single time I looked through it. 

So, I decided to bag my material in clean zip-lock bags and placing a paper inside on top that has an explanation of what the bag contains such as fabric type, color as well as amount.  This way, I can see at a glance what is in each bag and how much I have so I’ll know if I have what I need or if it’s time for a shopping trip.  Another nice thing about the plastic bag idea is that it’s pretty compact and I can push all of the air out of the bag and so they fit a little better in my bin.  The largest amount of material I had was 4.5 yds which fit great into a 2.5 gallon bag for other sizes I used anything from lunch size, quart size and gallon sizes.  Safeway was doing a special this week so all of my bags together were under $5 and I have a clean

Here’s a grocery bag filled with all of the various satins that I have..it’s a mess I know and it used to take at least 5 minutes if not more to figure out how much of each material I had…if not more.

  

Here are all my satins sorted and in bags…I know what I have at a glance!

 

It did take some time to measure everything, fold it, label it, and push out the air, but it is so nice to now open my bin and find what I need very quickly.  I love it!