Hello, world! I’ve taken to doing videos lately on the great book of faces and I thought to add them here. This one happens to be on fabric storage and my organization solutions. This is one of many so stay tuned!
What follows is the video and the transcription (with related links) for those that need it!
Transcript
Okay, good morning everybody!
So I’ve been following a conversation on Facebook about fabric storage solutions. What’s the best way to store a large quantity of fabric because a lot of us tend to have those. Stashes or not, and how best to find all that stuff.
Good morning, girls! Ladies!
I’m talking about my favorite way to store things. So I’ve actually posted a link and what I do…I’m OCD, I am type-A personality about this sort of thing. I actually have swatch cards. These are fairly old. I keep them, they’re about the size of a…one of the little note cards, and I keep them in here. They look like this. I can staple a piece of fabric. They have the date, a store name, the price I paid for it, the width, the yards, the fiber content, the item it may be used for, and the customer. But in our case, on this particular one, I’ve switched it to projects because sometimes knowing which fabric you’ve used a project for, or if you want to earmark that fabric for a specific project. I know I don’t always remember. So this is how I do it.
I have… Let me pull out a selection here. So I have the fiber content. Sometimes it’s a best guess, depending on where you shop, and sometimes you can easily tell by doing a burn test or something like that.
[Laughter] Good morning Tammy!
Yeah, I have enough fabric now that I actually have those big, large bins. The really massive ones. I have one for cotton, linen, wool. Which I think I actually have one and a half of those because wool is rather bulky. And then I have the dead dinosaur bin, which is basically rayon, polyester, or anything like that.
Well, what happens if I have a blend? So do I have one that’s a blend in here? Nope, these are all my
Hi, Fiona!
I wrote it down that this is a cotton acrylic blend so I would probably find this one in my cotton bin. What I usually do is if I know the quantity, if it’s like 60% cotton and 40% acrylic then I would go under what the bulk of it is. Actually, this one is unknown, so this one would probably be under acrylic. If I don’t know, and it’s just a cotton acrylic blend and I can guess from a burn test…I can make an educated guess, from a burn test, then I would probably put it into the dead dinosaur bin under acrylic and that’s how I would sort that one out.
But yes, I have all of my lovely little cards. So this is a cotton poly. I have some lovely cotton corduroy that’s like a 21 wale corduroy. These are the cottons that I got…that I used for my pants, my middle eastern pants. 100% cotton, 44 inches wide and I have ⅛ of a yard.
What happens is as I go through and I use this, what I will do is I will scratch it out and perhaps write down, you know, how much I have left. On some of them…I don’t have them here, of course.
What happens is as I go through and I use this, what I will do is I will scratch it out and perhaps write down, you know, how much I have left. On some of them…I don’t have them here, of course. But! What I will do is if I use…if I have a large quantity of fabric, like I have some silk. Some of the lovely green silk that I have made…Here we go, that was a sari. I made a Byzantine dress out of the bulk of the sari. But the rest of that is now swatched on the card and I’ve put down as…you know, how many yards I have left. And on the back of the card, the back of the cards are blank, for the most part, some of them I’ve reprinted them. If the back of the card, even if the back of the card is not blank, I will write down, somewhere on the back of the card, how much I have left or what project it was used for and how much it was used for.
What happens is as I go through and I use this, what I will do is I will scratch it out and perhaps write down, you know, how much I have left. On some of them…I don’t have them here, of course. But! What I will do is if I use…if I have a large quantity of fabric, like I have some silk. Some of the lovely green silk that I have made…Here we go, that was a sari. I made a Byzantine dress out of the bulk of the sari. But the rest of that is now swatched on the card and I’ve put down as…you know, how many yards I have left. And on the back of the card, the back of the cards are blank, for the most part, some of them I’ve reprinted them. If the back of the card, even if the back of the card is not blank, I will write down, somewhere on the back of the card, how much I have left or what project it was used for and how much it was used for.
So that’s how I sort my stuff. That’s how I keep myself organized and that’s how I can find my fabrics. I am actually needing to get a new little box because my little box is quite full and keep going on that. But I have a lot of things in here, some of them, you know…and you come across stuff that you have.
So, here’s a really good instance of it: This was a teal coat weight wool, fairly thick piece of wool, the date I purchased it, the store (which was Sewfisticated), the price, the width, and then the yardage. But you’ll notice that I have….I bought three yards but then what happens is I updated it with a date. It’s now a scrap which means it’s going to be found in my scrap bin and not in the actual wool bins. The fiber content is 100% wool and my item that I made is an apron dress.
This is something that I stole completely off of my…out of costume design back in college because we had a lot of fabric. It wasn’t organized. It was done on a bookshelf. It didn’t stay organized for very long but at least you could see what you had when it was used last, or if it was gone.
So if you’re done with it and you don’t have any more of the fabric, then it’s important to update the card and get it out of there. On the upside, if you buy a fabric and you need more fabric, then you can always take a look and see where you bought your fabric and maybe go back there and see if they have more. This happens a lot when you’re costuming shows and sometimes you’re doing a project, making a dress, whatever. And you forget. Perhaps, when you’re in your buying of all the fabric, what store, or where you sourced your fabric from. So that’s how I store my stuff!
Then, you have…I have a few exceptions. So, if you come with me, let’s take a little walk. I have a few exceptions…Excuse me. Sorry! There you go, Mabel!
Okay, so I have a few exceptions. So you’ll see behind me a standing rack. This is the rack I used to bring with me to Pennsic, but I don’t anymore because it’s just not conducive in my tent and really stupid. So I actually will hang projects in progress, fabric, right here on the hangers. That way I can see what projects I have in progress, on a hanger, right here. If I stop in the middle of something I will usually take a sticky note, or a post-it or a scrap paper and I will safety pin a note right to the dress. This is…this is some of the pre-washed, a note for a pre-wash that I did on the stuff I’m working on now. But I will pin it right to the fabric. With maybe where I’ve stopped and my next steps. And that’s how I figure out “okay…,” especially if I’m working on multiple projects at a time, “what do I need to do?” As opposed to having to take everything out, lay it all out, kind of look at everything, and get an idea of where I was, in order to go back into my project. I find that just writing a quick note, “Okay nest up: facing the neckline.” “Next step: hemming the sleeves.” And then from there on I can kind of…I know where I am so I can keep going from there.
So! I hope that’s helpful. I’ve gone ahead and attached those swatch cards. It’s a google spreadsheet. Feel free to use them, modify them as you wish. If you use them. I always bring some with me when I go shopping. A lot of places will let you take swatches. There are some places that won’t but I find that’s kind of rare. But, if you can take a swatch and that way also if I go shopping and I’m like, “Hey I need a trim color for this!” I can bring my little swatch card with me when I go shopping and I can try and match the colors or find something that will work nicely with what I have.
So those are my swatch cards. My collection is ever growing. Like I said, I don’t throw away the swatch cards if I use up all my fabric. They stay in my little box…or boxes, actually. That’s box number 2. And I will keep them so that way if I’m looking to do a project I can rifle through and I can see, “Oh hey, this would be a really great material to do X with!” Do I have any left? If I don’t, where can I get it, and how much did it cost?
That’s pretty much it, so there you go. Those are my swatch cards, that’s how I store my fabric and hopefully, it’ll be useful to somebody. If not, meh, it’s useful to me. Swatch cards are a thing and they are fantastic. Yes, if you have a large collection, setting them up at the outset can be a pain. However! They are well worth it in the end. So! That’s my bit for today. I hope everybody has a very happy Wednesday and I hope everybody enjoyed the warm weather yesterday and the slightly warmer weather today. So now I’m going to get back to sewing and I’ll see you all later.