Do You Know Where Your Fabric Is?

We sing a song in church about building bigger barns, the point being that if you have to build a bigger barn to hold your stuff, you’re doing it wrong. I think about that song as I am trying to downsize, consolidate, and move stuff out of my house, although much of what has arrived on the incoming tide over the past couple of years has come from family members. There definitely exists a tension between “enough” and “too much” and I try to be cognizant of that tension. I am making a real effort not to buy any more fabric until I use up some of what I have.

I started organizing my stash yesterday, after obtaining additional clear plastic bins and labels last week. (The bins are clear, yes, but they are stored in a room that doesn’t get any outside light to prevent fading.) This organization is helpful on several fronts.

• I see that I have plenty of fabric.

• I see that I have an abundance of blues and should not buy any more.

• Seeing my fabric sparks creative ideas.

• I can find specific fabrics quickly.

• My kids will know what to do with it after I’m gone.

I have a system. Fabrics is first organized by fiber. I have a bin for linens, a bin for flannels, and a bin for knits. Quilting cottons make up the bulk of my stash. Anything that is mostly of one color family goes into a bin, although blues get subcategorized into light blues, dark blues, and turquoise blues because I have a lot of them. Same with light brown and dark brown. Multi-color prints get divided into florals and geometrics. Novelty prints are divided into bins for Tim Holtz fabric, farm animal prints, music prints, food-themed prints, sewing prints, and everything else.

And all of the bins are labelled:

I cannot work efficiently if I cannot find things. I was pleased to uncover the bin of chiffons and other fancy fabrics, because I am going to use some of them in a decorative edge serger class.

I’ll finish organizing the stash this week, and then any leftover bins will be used to corral stuff in the laundry room. And now that I have the station wagon back, I’ll be taking a few loads in to donate to the thrift stores.

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I am pleased with the garden’s progress thus far, although I think the corn could do with an application of some hot chicken manure. That’s on the to-do list for this week. We are supposed to be close to 90 by next weekend. Things should start to take off then, and the garden will look really nice around the second week of July. I need to make a decision about an herb garden out there. We have the space. I just need to decide how to arrange it.