Managing a Large Fabric Stash

 Are you like me and read all the blog posts talking about scrap management, or how people store their stash of fabric? I watch all the YouTube videos on those subjects as well. YouTube quilt studio tours, I watch every one I can find! 

At this point, I've been a serious quilter for almost 20 years, and I've tried a lot of different methods for sorting my stash. Over those 20 years, I've not always had a dedicated sewing room. In fact, over those 20 years my sewing room has been in six different rooms in our house, with multiple times where I had no sewing room at all. It always depended on how many people were living with us at the time. Before I started seriously quilting, I was sewing on commision, and I never had a sewing room at that time, I didn't even have a sewing table, I had to do everything on the kitchen table, then move it all for meals and homeschooling. 

The times I didn't have a sewing room, my fabric was always in totes, usually stuffed into a closet somewhere. At one point, all the totes were under a bed. I think totes are one of the worst ways to store fabric to keep it usable, but you do what you have to do at the time. The reason I don't like totes is even if you are diligent about keeping you fabrics divided, say knits in one tote, and wovens in another, you have to dig through the tote every time you need fabric, and when it's hard to find, and hard to look through, you forget what you have. 

Now that we are empty nesters, I actually have a fabric room, that has my fabric, a huge cutting table and an ironing station, and I have a sewing room, where I have three sewing machines set up at all times. The sewing room is where my design wall is. I'm spoiled, and I know it. I also know that someday we are likely to move and I'll have to downsize my sewing area again, but being the planner I am, I'm already considering how I would do that. We have a tri-level house, so eventually, we are likely to move to single story. 

For those of you who are interesting in stash management, this post is for you, and I'm not only going to go over how I store each stage of fabric in my stash, but I'm also going to tell you why. What I do may not work for you, but my stash management absolutely works for me. 

If you are new to the blog, know that I am a dedicated pre-cutter when it comes to scraps. I can totally understand why someone with a small stash or someone who does a lot of applique may prefer to sort scraps by color and not pre-cut, but with a large stash if I don't pre-cut, there is always a larger piece of fabric that is easier to use than digging through a bin of misc scraps. If I'm going to actually use my my scraps, they need to be easy to grab and use. 

I'm going to start with the scraps first. Why? Because when I am starting a new quilt, my rule is to always use the smallest piece of fabric that will work. If I need a bunch of 2" squares, I'm going to go to my 2" squares, If I need a bunch of 2.5" strips, I'm going to go to my 2.5" strips. 

Since my cutting table is made from cube storage pieces, I've found these type of containers work well for storing strips and squares. 

I store both strips and squares sorted by color, and I store them on end their end so I can flip through them like an index file. Stacks don't work as well for me, because stacks fall over, and pulling something out of a stack messes up the whole stack. By storing the strips like this, I can easily flip through them all, and pull out the strips I want. My squares are stored similarly, but I have them in rows in the same style container. If we ever downsize, my scraps come with me, because my scraps give me the greatest variety of fabrics to play with. 

My next category of fabric is fat quarters. If I cut into a fat quarter for a quilt, anything left gets cut into my Scrap User System sizes, so I have nothing between fat quarters and pre-cut scraps. Fat quarters are my favorite pre-cut, hands down. Now that my goal is to reduce stash, if I find a fabric I really love at a quilt shop, and I just can't pass it by, I usually ask if they'll cut me a fat quarter, and most shops will. My fat quarters are stored in drawers by color. 

I lucked out and found these drawer kitchen cabinets at a building supply resale shop. I love that the drawers pull all the way out. I have a couple drawers full of fat quarters, all sorted by color. Again, if we were to downsize, most of the fat quarters would go with me, for the same reason as the scraps, variety. 

My next category of fabric is one I rarely see people use. I keep fabrics larger than a fat quarter (or 12" WOF) to 1 yard pieces separate. If a fabric is under 12" WOF, I cut it for my Scrap User System. Now I'm going to tell you why this category makes sense to me. Fat quarters are great for variety, and I like my quilts to have a lot of variety, but unless it's a really small project, one fat quarter isn't usually enough to make something. It might be large enough to provide cornerstones for sashing, but probably not enough for the sashing. It's not enough for binding, it's not enough to be a focus of a quilt. But, when we start dealing with half yard to one yard pieces, now we are talking enough fabric for a pillowcase, enough for sashing, enough for a focus fabric on a throw sized quilt, enough for binding. These are the drawers I go to when I need to make a backing just a bit wider, and I need a couple 10" WOF pieced to piece into a strip in the middle of a length of fabric. I store the fat quarter+ to one yard pieces separately, because to me, they are used differently. If I need a backing for a table runner, this is the category, if I'm making pillowcases, this is where I look. Sashing? I look here to see if something here will work. Remember, my cardinal rule on fabric management is to always use the smallest piece that will work. 

The drawers I keep the fat quarter-one yard pieces in aren't as nice as my fat quarter drawers, but they work. Since I fold all the fabric the same, it's pretty easy to see which pieces are likely one yard pieces, by the thickness of the bit you can see. Just like with my fat quarters, and even my scrap strips and squares, there are no stacks here, I can easily flip through the fabrics and see what I've got. If we were to downsize, I'd likely try to reduce this part of my stash by at least 50%, only keeping what I really love. 

Anything over 1 yard I consider yardage and that goes on my IKEA Billy bookcases.

All of this is normal width yardage, anything over 1 yard. All my mini-bolts are wrapped on corrugated plastic DH cut to size for me. I joke with DH that yardage is for backings. Of course, yardage is also for backgrounds and borders, and on the rare occasion I'm only using a few fabrics in a quilt top. Again, no stacks, I can easily find and grab any fabric I've got. This is where I'd be ruthless if we downsized, I'd try to get it down by 75%. I'd hope to keep half the bookshelves, but if we downsized, I'd need to get rid of more than half of this fabric so I could move the solids I have on bolts to minibolts, as well as have space for the widebacks I have. 

I'm in no hurry to downsize. We are debating a move to the midwest, the region most of our kids live in, but as long as DD#2 lives here in town, we'll likely stay here. If she and her family were to move, we would definitely move. If we are all still in town ten years from now, we'll likely move to to a single story house, but for now, I'll enjoy the space I have, and the stash I have. At today's prices I'd never be able to have what I've got, even after inheriting several people's stashes. 

Now, why do I think my stash management system works for me? 

1) I can find what I'm looking for easily.

2) My fabric is stored in categories that work for the way I think and quilt. 

3) By always using the smallest piece of fabric that works, I am keeping the smaller pieces moving out, so when I'm under a yard from the yardage shelves, I have space in the drawers for the smaller piece, or when I'm cutting for the Scrap User System, I can put things away immediately. Everything may have looked full, but there is squishing room. 😉

4) I've successfully kept my system going for years. I currently have a stack of empty mini-bolt plastics that are available for any new yardage. This morning I cut a piece of yardage I needed, the remainder was less than one yard, so it went into the fat quarter-one yard drawers. Yesterday I used a piece from those drawers, had less than 12" WOF left, so I cut it into strips and put it into the strip containers. My stash is moving through the system, working for me, not against me. 

I do have a few more categories. I keep my fabric panels together, I have a bin of 1930's repro fabrics, precuts are together, and my steampunk fabrics are together. My 6.5" novelty squares are in their own drawer. I usually break up fat quarter bundles as soon as I get them. I plan by color, not designer, and I don't like quilts that are too matchy. I do have a few quilt kits, stored in bins in my cube storage cutting table. I have strings sorted by color in a 9" cube storage unit, and I have crumbs sorted by color in color coded small bins. I think everyone has those misc. things that they want separate. I know most people do that with holiday fabric, but I don't really buy that, the little I have was likely given to me and it's just mixed in the stash by color. Of course, most people probably don't have a steampunk fabric collection, but I love it so....

Hopefully this post helps someone. If anyone would like a post on how I store other quilting items, just ask and I'll see what I can do. 

Revisiting the Poly Batting Scraps

 Normally when I am making Frankenbatting, I am very careful to only use very similar weights of batting together. Of course I sort by fiber content as well, but I like to use low loft with low loft, and high loft with high loft as well. 

When I finished basting the last poly Frankenbatt that had been matched with a quilt top, I went through the remaining poly batting scraps again. I had the baby sized batting I had pieced but had no quilt top for, could I make it a bit larger and match it with a quilt top? I dug out every poly batting scrap I still had, including the pieces I had cut off from the Frankenbatts I had made after the quilts were basted, and a scrap left from the last piece of my poly batting roll. Did you catch that? The LAST piece from my poly batting roll! I am in no way short on batting right now, I have a full roll of Warm and Natural, along with a partial roll of the same (almost gone). I also have a mostly full roll of Hobbs 80/20, but as far as 100% poly is concerned, aside from a couple of prepackaged battings, I am out of poly batting. 

The fact that I'm not going to be having a steady stream of poly batting scraps coming in for a while, made me feel like keeping any poly batting scraps right now would be silly. With the decision to not save any poly batting scraps right now, I looked at what I had left differently. If I ignored loft, I could not only make the baby batting into a throw, I could also make a second throw sized batting. Sure, it was more piecing than I normally like to do with poly batting, but to get two more donation quilts finished with batting scraps? It's a win in my book.

I basted one of those, and, yes, I could feel the difference in loft while basting. I'm hoping it's less noticeable once its quilted. Would I mix lofts from now on? Probably not, but for right now, when I have no plans to buy more poly batting, and I just want to use what I have, finishing two more quilts is worth the variance. 

The last poly Frankenbatt turned out larger than I expected, but these scraps are going to be tossed after I baste it and trim the edges. I like to only have about an inch of the backing and batting hanging past the quilt top when it comes time to quilt it. I'll trim it exactly after quilting. Those batting scraps will be tossed, guilt free. Since I just opened a roll of Hobbs 80/20, I'll use the hamper I had been using for poly batting scraps for the 80/20 scraps instead. 

The to-be-quilted pile is growing, but so far the quilt top stash doesn't seem to be going down much. I have WAY too many quilt tops right now, so finishing needs to be my focus for a long while. 

Basting Spree with Frankenbatting

 Before I tackle my cotton batting scraps, I wanted to baste all the poly Frankenbattings I had matched up with quilt tops. As you can see, I have one quilt laid out ready to baste. The pile under the window holds nine basted quilts. Next to the big pile of basted quilts is one more quilt to be basted, after I piece a backing for it, and I have yet another quilt that I basted in the sewing room on my quilting table. I've been quilting too, so I am repurposing pins as soon as I take them out of whatever I'm quilting at the time. 

I think I have enough larger pieces of batting scraps that I might be able to make the batting that I hadn't matched up with a top large enough to match a quilt top. The smallest poly batting scraps I'm saving for a pillow form, the heavily pieced scraps I'm tossing guilt free. At some point it needs to hit the end of the line. 

One thing I did before I tackled the poly batting scraps at all, was to go through my fabric shelves and pull out any yardage I wanted out of my stash. A lot of those are novelty fabrics left from the scrub top days, when I was making them on commission. I'm at the point where if no one in my immediate family is interested in whatever is on the novelty fabric, and I don't like it well enough to make a quilt based on it, even for donation, I want it out of the house. I knew I could make a bunch of pillowcases from those fabrics and donate those, and that still may happen, but right now, I've been using as many as those fabrics as I can in the quilt backings I've been piecing. 

A lot of my donation quilts are scrappy, most are color controlled in some manner. For example, the one on the table to be basted is autumn colors. If there is a fabric in my stack of unwanted fabrics that matches the front at all, I'm using it for a backing. I'm still having to add more fabric to make the backings wide enough, so I'm going into my under 1 yard drawers looking for anything I can add to the main fabric to add a center strip of contrasting fabric to the backing. All in all, it's stashbusting at it's finest. Scrap quilt tops, frankenbatting, and fabrics I want out of the stash for the backings. The fabrics I'm using aren't ugly or sub-par in quality, they just aren't fabrics I'm excited about making a focus. When I was buying fabrics for scrub tops, I usually purchased 2.5 yards, so if it's a small throw, I can sometimes piece the whole backing from the fabric, but mostly I'm adding to them. 

My pile of scraps from the new backings is piling up, so I'll have to tackle cutting scraps again, but it's definitely manageable right now. I'd like to baste until I'm out of pins, so once that happens, I'll tackle the backing scraps. I'm not using any widebacks for these quilts, my personal rule of thumb is that if the quilt top isn't at least a twin sized, I would prefer piecing yardage rather than wasting wideback on it. I have more than enough pins to baste these two poly Frankenbatt quilts, so perhaps I'll be basting things made with cotton Frankenbatts soon, I'll be on my last jar of pins by then, so we'll see. Out of my four jars of pins, I've got one full jar left, and less than half of another. Depending on how it works out with quilting new quilts and reclaiming pins, and when I actually start with the cotton batting, could go several ways. 

Baby Sunflower Quilt- Finish #10

 I am actually keeping up with my goal of finishing two quilts per month!  This is my latest finish.

I had leftover bits from the big sunflower quilt I made. I managed to use them up in this baby quilt. I've got a great niece or nephew on the way, and I already had a baby boy quilt set aside for that baby, then I started thinking girl, so I finished this one. Now when they have the gender reveal, I'll be ready either way! 

I quilted the same freeform sunflowers I quilted on the larger quilt. I even used the same thread color because I was happy with how it looked on the big quilt. 

I sewed a crochet hook roll for one of my granddaughters, but I was in such a hurry to get it in the mail for her birthday, I completely forgot to take a photo. If you are in need of one of those, I used this tutorial, which was easy to follow. 

Civil War Progress

 All of my Civil War reproduction fabrics are now cut into strips, for the patterns I'm currently cutting. Most of the strips are normal sizes, only the 1.25" strips are odd for me. If this is too much fabric for what I am making, no worries, with these sizes of strips I have a lot of options. Since my goal is to bust all of this fabric this year, I may as well cut it into strips. 

The 1.25" strips were turned into four patches.

For the Trail Mix quilt, one of the blocks needed these tiny four patches, and another needed the tiny four patches plus 3" nine patches.

I lost count and have a few extra of both of those, but I never worry about extra units, they all get used eventually, and I already know I need to make a table runner from these fabrics, so extra units will likely end up there. 

As I'm cutting for the second two quilts, I'm clipping everything for each block together, and putting the fabrics in the tote bag. Trail Mix uses five different blocks, but the third quilt I'm making is repeats of one of those blocks, I'm almost done cutting Trail Mix, then I'll just be cutting the last block until I'm out of the correct sized strips for it. 

I've already put my 2.5" and 1.5" strips downstairs for now. I've used all I needed from them for now, so these will become another project. These strip sizes play together nicely, so no worries on that front. When I decide what I want to do with them, I may go ahead and cut the project, or I might just make notes and cut it later. I've got several leader/ender projects cut right now. so until I make progress on those, these strips can wait. 

As far as the Civil War Sampler quilt for DD#1 goes, I've finished sewing the scrappy sashing and scrappy cornerstones. The purple in the bottom of that basket will be the setting triangles. The pattern shows scrappy setting triangles, but I usually prefer them to match, so I bought some yardage.

I've got ten of the sampler blocks done now. I'd like to have this done for Christmas, but we'll see. It's not my main project, I'm doing it as leader/enders as much as possible. 

Now that I've used the 1.25" strips, and I put aside the remaining 2.5" and 1.5" strips, I'm only working with 2" and 3.5" strips. I'll keep cutting until I'm out of these strips. I'm sure I'll have a stack of squares of each size leftover, but I plan on cutting as efficiently as I can to get the most blocks as I can. Not all of the Sampler quilt blocks will be good leader/enders, but the blocks I'm cutting now will all work quite well in that role. 

Even if I don't show this project for a bit, know that it's being sewn in the background.