Bonus Post for the Week

I actually had quite a bit of time to sew today for a nice change! I'm still working on sewing up scrap blocks.

This is where I was sewing today, at least when I stopped for the day. I had a nice pile of orange/yellow blocks to show for my time, and I sewed the second neutral colored log onto my log cabin blocks. I've already grabbed the black logs to work on tomorrow, and you can see them in the lower right hand corner. I've still got a pretty big pile of orange/yellow blocks to sew up to the left of the machine. I have the pieces for each block clipped together. Right behind the machine you can see my tin of clips from the blocks I sewed up today. I just toss the clips in the tin as I make each block because I don't need them holding block pieces anymore. It's a good thing I'm freeing some up, because I also use the clips to hold the blocks in sets of ten, and I was out of clips!

I opened up a log cabin block so you could see the first two logs are on. I got all the orange/yellow blocks in that stack pressed, but I never press these types of blocks until the block is done, finger pressing during construction works fine for me. 

My last blog post got a question for a comment, and although I normally only blog once a week, I'm doing this post to answer that question, so Elle, here is your answer!

Elle asked if I liked my way of storing some of my fabrics, could I show it, so here you go. 

It's not a great photo and my studio is a mess, but I hadn't planned on taking photos in there. These fabric cabinets hold all my quilting fabrics over 1 yard and up. I sort by color, because that's how I choose fabric. I'm not big on holiday prints, so the few I have are just mixed in. All my novelty prints are just in their color family. I do have some 1930's prints and Civil War prints stored elsewhere, but I've only ever bought those in fat quarters or fat eighths, so they wouldn't be stored here anyway. It's the same for Asian Inspired fabrics, I only buy them in fat quarters or smaller. Those three collections I keep separate from the stash, but, again, they wouldn't be stored here anyway. 

Since I tend to either make scrap quilts or at least multi-fabric style quilts, my yardage takes the biggest hits when I'm piecing backings. The quilt you can see laid out on the table is going to have the all of one fabric from stash, and a chunk of another fabric for it's backing.  I also use yardage for backgrounds, and I like using colored backgrounds (like the purple background in the quilt on the table) In my yardage stash I have a lot of solids and blenders to use as backgrounds. 

My fabric stays stored nicely vertical because I wrap it around corrugated plastic. Yes, I know a lot of people use comic book boards, but for some of my yardage, especially solids, it's not unusual for me to buy it by the bolt. As soon as I get it home, I take it off the bolt, fold it one more time matching the selvages to the fold, and wrap it around one of my mini-bolt forms made from corrugated plastic. I use a LOT of fabric every year, and I've stored my stash like this for several years, and I've never had any damage to the fabric from the plastic. 

Why was I willing to pay more for corrugated plastic? Because I can do things like this, have it halfway off the shelf and it's completely steady, whether there's one yard on it or 15 yards. Why would I ever want it off the shelf partway? Let's say I'm trying to choose a sashing fabric. I could grab every fabric that might work off the shelf, and audition them all, then after thinking about it for a couple days, I have a huge stack of fabric to put away. Yeah, no thanks. Instead, I open all my glass doors, pull each possibility partway off the shelf, and after I've done that, I grab some of my blocks, walk past the shelves and compare the blocks to the fabrics partially out. Whatever I immediately reject gets pushed back in, until I only have two or three options left. Oftentimes I can narrow it down to my final choice with this method, but if I'm still on the fence about it, I take out my two or three fabrics, unwind them a bit and even if I have to let them sit out a couple days to decide, I've got far less fabric to put away, which keeps my studio tidier. 

I switched to this system of organizing my yardage this way years ago, and I'll never change it. I had tried storing it in totes, and I could never find anything. I tried stacking it after wrapping it around a quilt ruler so it was all the same width, what a disaster for me! It seemed like every time I needed a fabric, it was on the bottom, and my stacks were always falling over. I tried using a quilt ruler to hold up the stack while I slid the fabric I wanted out, but honestly, when you are stacking drastically different amount of fabric, they just don't stack well. You can't see the one yard pieces, and the 10 or 15 yard pieces make everything fall. If I had further divided them by how much fabric there was I would have just had even more stacks to deal with! By storing the fabric vertically, around something firm, the fabrics are as easy to take out and put back as books on a bookcase. I haven't had a fabric avalanche since I switched to this method, and I don't miss the mess. 

In case you are interested in this method, I bought poster sized corrugated plastic from ebay by the case, and my husband cut several sheets at a time to the size I wanted with a jigsaw. He could cut up a case of corrugated plastic to size in less than an hour. I've been reusing the mini-bolt forms for years now. I have a stack of empty ones in the studio now, but I haven't been buying any yardage lately so empty they'll stay for a while.

Downside to this method? It was expensive to implement, but once you have the shelves and mini-bolts forms, you are good to go for years. My shelves are the Ikea Billy bookshelves in the narrower width. Fabric is heavy, and I didn't want bowing shelves.  Comic book boards get all bent up, especially if you are storing large amounts of fabric on it. I've never had a corrugated plastic form need to be replaced.  

I also mentioned in my last post that my scrap user system was organized. 

I have drawers for each size strip I save, and the strips are sorted by color, again, that's how I choose fabric, it may not be how you do. By the time it gets to the scrap user system all types of cottons are mixed together, I don't keep batiks, reproductions or themed fabric separately. I will use everything together for a scrap quilt, including fabric I've gotten from men's shirts. 

Sorting my scrap user system this way is completely functional. It stays organized, If I'm doing Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt I almost always have whatever I need in my scrap user system, and rarely go into any type of yardage. 

Downside to this method? My husband really hates the look of plastic drawers, so I'm trying to find other options. I may look for a used dresser to store these instead. Also, these drawers are the larger size, which means I can store a lot, but it also means I can go quite a while before I make a quilt from the scrap strips. I think I'd actually use scraps faster if I had less room to store them. That said, scrap quilts are my favorite, and I do actually use my scraps. My 2" cut strip drawer is almost empty because I've been concentrating on busting that size. 

How about squares? Do you save those? If a scrap strip is pretty short, I tend to cut it into squares. I have several go to scrap patterns that use squares. This cutlery organizer was almost empty six months ago, but since I was busting my 2" strips, I also cut a bunch of 2" squares. 

Here is a better view of the organizer. I have organizers that hold 1.5" squares, 2" squares, and 2.5" squares. I bought all of these at Goodwill or some other thrift shop. They are all different brands, and different brands are a good thing, because each brand is a slightly different size, and will hold a different size square better. When I am cutting scrap novelty fabrics, I will cut 4.5 or 6.5 inch squares if the scrap is big enough. Most of the kids quilts I make with novelty fabrics use those sized squares for the focus fabrics like an I Spy quilt. I only save those sizes in novelty fabrics, and the larger squares I currently have on hand are in plastic drawers. 

Downside to this method? The cutlery organizers don't have lids, so it you drop it you've got quite a mess to deal with. That said, most of the ones I have will fit inside of one of the plastic project bins I have, so I have taken them on the go and had it work out just fine. Some of the cutlery organizers would even fit in a 2 gallon zip bag. You can buy divided containers with lids, but they are pricy, most of the organizers I've bought for under $2 at thrift stores. 

Now, my fat quarter to 1 yard pieces are what I am unhappy with. Mostly because of the plastic drawer thing. 

When I first put my yardage on corrugated plastic, I also wrapped my fat quarters to one yards pieces around ...comic book boards, cut down. With the smaller fabrics I had no issues using a more flexible material. In this photo you can see the two sets of media shelves I stored them on years ago. I liked them stored vertically, I liked being able to see them. What I didn't like was the dust and dog fur all over my fabric. Remember, my yardage shelves have glass doors, doors = no fur + no dust. Southern Arizona is a dusty place. 

When I couldn't stand the dust and fur anymore, I went and got more plastic drawers. 

My husband doesn't like purple plastic drawers any better than clear. Still, the fabrics are sorted by color, they are organized, and in drawers I don't even need the cards anymore, So I gave them to my sister to use for fabric postcards. Aside from the fact I am trying to find an alternative to plastic drawers, this method works fine. I think if I had fewer plastic drawers I'd like it better. I realized if I made a bunch of pillowcases from the novelty fabrics in these drawers, I could drastically reduce the number the drawers I need really quickly, so I may be doing that at some point. I have a lot of novelty fabrics from my scrub top making days, and I've bought more for I Spy quilts, but I'm ready to whittle the novelty fabrics down. I've been using lots of novelty fabrics as backings, if I have yardage of it, but pillowcases would really make a dent in the  under 1 yard pieces. I'm not at the point where I want to give away the novelty prints, I actually think they are fun to sew up, and novelty pillowcases are great add ons to gifts, or even instead of wrapping paper on a gift. I'm just ready to reduce the number of novelty fabrics in my stash by using them. 

Downside to this method- plastic drawers?

In case anyone is wondering because I've been asked before, I got the purple plastic drawers at Target, I think they were a seasonal item, but I do occasionally see other colors around. I do know I got them on clearance really inexpensively. 

So there you go, overall, I really like the way my fabric is organized, I'm just trying to find an alternative to plastic drawers. I'm not looking to buy anything right now since we are hoping to buy a new house. I do have an idea that could replace plastic drawers in the new house, but wouldn't work here, so we'll see what happens. I've got all kinds of ideas for the new studio space I'd have. It would be a completely different configuration than my current studio, so I'd need to do a few changes but pretty much everything in my studio will either work in the new studio, or be repurposed elsewhere in the new house. I would need a couple new pieces (plastic drawer alternatives???), but we'd be repurposing so much of what we have, it would even out in the end. Where my studio would be in the new house it will be very visible, and I want it to not only be functional but also look nice since it will be one of the first things everyone would see when walking in. I've already started clearing out some things that I don't want to move. If I don't care enough about it to move it, I don't need it.