Organizing Your Fabrics

We’ve all experienced the frustration of knowing you have just the right fabric, but can’t find it! Or have bought pieces only to discover that we already had some! Plus consider how much time is wasted going through boxes looking for something—so organizing your stash and making it easy to retrieve or identify what you need can make things a lot easier. There are a number of ways to organize your fabrics, and what works best for you depends on how much you have and how you plan to use it. One method you would inventory a box and tape the list on the front of it. Another would glue squares of fabric samples to the front of the box. Or just separate by type of fabric into individual boxes and label, such as "Satin," "Velvet," etc.

Because I have so much fabric to merge, I enlisted my friend Barbara and we brain-stormed several of these ideas (this is a good project to do with a friend). Finally, I decided that a notebook or swatch book would fit my needs. It allows me to look through my entire inventory at a glance without getting boxes out. This is especially helpful, because my storage is in two places, one a large 3’ x 8’ work counter with storage underneath, the other, a storage closet with shelves.

To actually test this system I selected lining fabrics which were in several boxes plus some recent purchases. First, we sorted by color into piles on a table, then separated by fabric type: silky and batiste. After placing them in color order from white through black, we cut a small 1" square swatch of each. For the notebook, I used double-faced tape to secure to a heavy sheet of paper. (A glue stick might work, also, but mine was about used up.)

The silky linings were placed in a 20-gallon tub labeled "Silky Linings" and the batiste in a flat box that fits nicely on top of the tub, labeled "Batiste Linings."

Besides the convenience of seeing my fabrics at a glance, I can also remove the sheet out of the notebook and take it shopping with me if necessary. Fabric that is available only at a specific place, price paid or any other pertinent information may also be noted.

While this system may not work for everyone, it could be adapted on a smaller scale, perhaps by using 3 x 5 cards, also handy to take shopping. Taking this idea a step further, a swatch can be put in a pattern envelope along with any of the previously mentioned information. Are you using a different system altogether? Write and tell us about it—getting organized is something we can all use some help with!

Once this project is finished, it should be easy to maintain. I’ll find out in the months ahead!

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