BLC Day 22: Stash Inventory

Hey everyone!  It's the beginning of a busy holiday week, so I thought I'd share a quick tip on how I inventory my fabric stash. I recently shared with you that I reorganized how my fabric is stored, affording the benefit of using all the shelf space in my Sewing Room closet.

BLC Day 12: Out, Damned Spot! Out, I Say!

If you read some of my past blog posts, you'll find that I'm often reevaluating the organization in my Sewing Room to improve its efficiency, which prompted me to recently reorganize my fabric stash.  As most sewing enthusiasts can attest, we often buy a length of fabric - or many lengths - with the plan to do "something" with it, and we then add it to the stash.  Additionally, we may be gifted or inherit, others - as was the case with this cotton print.

Taming of the Stash

The Sewing Room...the space in my home which serves as the center for almost all of my creative activities.  The thing is there is more than sewing that goes on in there.  I dabble in various "crafty" activities - sewing, jewelry making, yarn crafts, candle making, glass cutting, etc.  Additionally, my Sewing Room serves as the hub for managing the affairs of my home. To achieve maximum efficiency, I often re-examine the zones of this room to see if I can make better use of the space.

The closet in my Sewing Room once had sliding doors which I found to be inhibiting when trying to see the contents stored within.  Several years ago, I removed the doors and used them to construct shelving in the closet to store my fabric collection.  At the time, I decided to use Steralite storage drawers to contain, categorize and protect the various lengths of fabric in my stash.  While it did a great job of protecting them from dust and light, I did find the drawers to be somewhat limiting in capacity.

The Remnant Repository

Am I the only sewing enthusiast who has a difficult time tossing out fabric remnants from completed projects?  I shared with you that I learned how to sew by watching my mother, and how she would use leftover fabric scraps from her clients' garments for other projects, including helping me augment the wardrobe of my Barbie dolls.  So, I recognize holding on to fabric scraps as a learned behavior from Mommy.

I have found storing my scraps to be a challenge, partly due to the amount of space they required, but also because I wasn't always sure of the amount of usable "yardage" I had on hand.

Remnants were once stored at the bottom of my Sewing Room closet in a small plastic bin, which proved to be woefully inadequate capacity.

Fabric scraps would then find a temporary "home" in the storage drawers I used to categorize and store uncut fabric yardages.