This has been my day today.
And I have loved every minute of it!
Last night I installed a new desktop computer – and while programs were reinstalling, and things were uploading, downloading and otherwise being transferred to the new computer, I was nearby –folding fabric.
Folding, organizing, deciding which ones to keep as fat quarters, and which ones to sort into the “cut it down and use it up” Scrap Users System…
Which really DOES work for having strips on hand.
I’ve made several quilts this year. My strip stash has been a bit depleted in some areas, and I am excited about pulling in some new blood!
I started with the blues….
Moved on to the browns.
Who knew I had SO MANY browns?!
And then on to the greens.
I’m going to need MORE containers. These are shoe boxes with lids from Lowes. And I fold the fat quarters to fit their height.
I have bought 3 Lowes stores in my area clear out of them – and I’m going to need MORE!
Maybe there really IS too much of a good thing!!
And then I find fabric by my friend Pepper Cory!
And then I realize, fabric is more than fabric. We acquire fabric not just for its beauty – there are many beautiful things out there that we don’t feel compelled to stash –fabric comes with POSSIBILTIES. Dreams. Visions. It has the potential to spark our creativity, it’s a seed planted to grow into something wonderful.
Quilts are much more than the sum of their parts –when we grow a quilt, we grow ourselves.
A quilt may last on this earth longer than we will.
Something I have discovered about greens though ---they don’t like to play well together. So I have separated them into 3 categories each with their own bins. Yellow green. Blue green. Browny-olive greens.
They are all beautiful..but some I just have a real hard time combining with others – I don’t care if it is all out there in nature..there are just some greens that do not look good together in my quilts! I think green is the one color I can be fairly picky about.
So now they are happy – and I learned something about myself in the process….
The bins fit great –3 bins high!
I’m probably going to run out of shelf space too!
I love how clean and organized this looks…but be glad you are not seeing the chaos it has created in the process.
Things ALWAYS get messier before they get better!
That empty spot between the red and the blue is saved for purples -- but I'm not there yet.
This evening as the sun drifts to the west, I am waving bye-bye to June 2015. I’m not sure how it went so fast, but tings do seem to ramp up faster and faster anymore.
That means – tomorrow we welcome in JULY!
You won’t want to miss tomorrow morning’s post. I have something special in store for you!
I’ll be headed up to the cabin – Jason comes in tomorrow evening, so Sadie and I will go up, get all of the groceries to stock us up for the long weekend.
Quilt Villa, here I come!
I'll be stopping at the Lowes in Wilkesboro to pick up more boxes on my way.
27 comments:
This is an inspiration for me! I have so much cloth that I don't know what I have because it's all stuffed in boxes, stuffed in bags, stuffed any where it can go. I have two of those wire shelves that you have and several shoe boxes already. I'm going to work on this project this summer. Thanks for showing this!
One word.... jealous!!! Ok maybe another one word.... awesome!
I applaud your commitment to organizing those fat quarters! What do you do when you have a fabric with equal amounts of say, 3 different colors? I try to put it with one color and it sticks out, put it with another and it doesn't play well either, nor with the other. I get so confused! Help!
Mandy
gloobermom@hotmail.com
Have you thought of taking the duplicate bins up to the cabin for your Stash there? That would free up some space at home on that shelf unit. Have a great and restful week at Quiltvilla! I'll check back tomorrow to see what's up for sure!
Be still my heart - the BLUES!! I have the same problem with greens - they are so hard to work into the color mix.
You can go to Lowe's online, perhaps select a different store as "your store" and order more boxes. They ship free when you hit $49.
You mentioned Wilkesboro and happy memories came to mind. My Grandmother once lived there with her hand full of chickens and a brown jersey cow. Made her own butter, buttermilk, jarred all kinds of vegetables, fruit, and always quilting. Such a simple life she had and loved it. I miss her!
Thanks for your comments about your greens. I had a hard time mixing and matching my greens for the GI mystery. I thought it was just me and what I had on hand. Enjoy your family and cabin time. Lisa, AK
Thanks for your comments about your greens. I had a hard time mixing and matching my greens for the GI mystery. I thought it was just me and what I had on hand. Enjoy your family and cabin time. Lisa, AK
Great, hi Bonnie.
Hi! I have found a few series one Netflix I thought you might like. Death in Paradise, Once (Once Upon a Time, but an adult twist), Last Tango in Halifax, also British, also PBS, Jack Tanner, also British, love, love the Netflix original about the man who became US President without running for office, can't remember the name, darn, and just found out new season of Cedar Cove starts next week on the Women's Channel! Enjoy your time at Quilt Villa! Take care, Leslie
I love having a chance to "browse" through your fabrics. I'm not sure if it is the colours on my monitor, but some of those browns I probably would have put in with my dark reds. Now I'm going to back and check my bins (that are just like yours!)
I love your organizational method! So easy to keep organized and to be able to find what you need quickly! It's such a wonderful feeling of accomplishment to look at this shelving system and see everything neat and orderly!
KarenP3720@aol.com
Your FQs storage is looking fabulous. How many shoe boxes have you already bought? The mind boggles. Yes, I agree with your comment about greens needing to be in 'families'. I have noticed that there are some pinks which don't look good together as well. Enjoy a well-earned trip to your cabin.
Hi Bonnie. What fun! I can spend days sorting out my fabrics. I know you are an Ikea lover and for those of us not so lucky to have room for tall shelves - check out the unfortunately named 'Pysslingar' underbed storage box in the kids department. It is the perfect depth for FQs, weighs nothing and costs only £7. Hope the pc is behaving itself. Janet
I really love this system! I'm wondering what your plans are for larger pieces of yardage?
Still chuckling over the fact that "green fabrics don't play well together"..
Also, that you are going to the first Lowes in Wilksboro. Yes, was the first Lowes..
My neighbor who moved away a couple yrs ago, her brother was one employee of the two founders. E Nemeth
Its nice to have a stash when making a quilt. Just finished a top and everything came from stash! Still more to use!
I've learned never to buy green unless I have all the other fabrics along from the project I'm buying for. Green is a hard color and you are right, they don't mix well. The rack with the organized fat quarters look wonderful.
A full and organized stash...every quilter's dream. You don't know how uplifting it was to look at your stash pictures today. Just seeing all that fabric & imagining the possibilities... My day got happy. If your blog was nothing more than pictures of your fabric each day, that would be plenty for me. :)
I think that anyone who reads this post will be drooling by the end of it! Awesome!!
Where did you get the shelving unit? My sewing room is being remodeled. I have most of my fabric in bins this size and larger. The shelving I have is not sturdy enough for all the weight. This would be perfect.
I have recently overhauled my fabríc stash and I think I'm really going to love my new system. Well, not mine. I used this nice blog's instructions - In Color Order, The Art of Choosing: A Fabríc Folding Tutorial. She shows how to fold all cuts of fabríc, from a yard down to a fat quarter, into the same shape. I love it. This means all my blues are together, or pinks, or whatever. I can tell if I have more of one fabríc or another by how fat it is, but they are all in one happy container together. No more running around from one area to the next, no more trying to remember how much I bought to figure out which stack to look in. I'm basically a scrappy loving girl who can't get enough variety, so I buy lots of small cuts. I don't really need them arranged or sorted by the size of the cut, so now that I can put all of one color all into the same container, I'm a happy camper, or sewer, it's too hot to camp right now!
Last year I had to move all fabric from one of my Studio rooms for the carpet to be replaced - It took me over a week but it was worth it. I did not do mine by color, but I did put batiks, and fabric lines in order - They were not fat quarters. What a job. I then moved to my scrap bins.... and cleaned out the ones I knew I would never use, gave them away to another quilter, and now have things organized according to colors in my Elfa draw systems. If I purchase a fat quarter bundle of a fabric line they are put in another area with the tag with them so I do not forget where they are and who they are (LOL).
Now the only thing I need is a room 20 x 20 so I can have more room.............Have fun this 4th Bonnie and enjoy going through and organizing - it is really worth it to see what you have and be able to put your hands on it when you need it.
When I make a quilt, I put the scraps in a bag and keep them together "just in case" One day I will pull those bags and make a scrappy Bonnie Hunter quilt. May not be this year, as I am trying to get 2014 going.... LOL
HAPPY 4TH EVERYONE.
I love your perspective on fabric and it's POTENTIAL...
I borrowed a quote from your post with attribution and a link to this post to my quilt group's blog.
newfriendsquiltcircle.blogspot.com
If you would prefer I remove it I will if you let me know.
About greens...I have a different thought...if you look in nature there are all kinds of greens mixed together and they, to me, always look wonderful. I love adding yellow greens together with blue greens etc. My problems are the warm colors...for example reds. To me orange reds just clash with blued reds! LOL
I guess we all see color in a different way and that's as it should be. Enjoy your Carolina mt time...I have plenty of mts here in Utah but I miss the beachy part of NC
this is in response to the question coolmamma asked where she bought the shelving unit and that was at Sam's Club.
StorageManiac Foldable Canvas Storage Box from Bizarkdeal
These foldables storage boxes really comes in handy. They are very lightweight, easy to assemble, basically all you need to do is pull by the handle part and put the base in and you'll have yourself a box~ This is not a sturdy box, I would say these boxes are perfect to store clothing or bathroom items. There is no zipper, Velcro, or button, it's just the lid. This doesn't bother me because I'm going to use these boxes to store my summer clothing.
I have the large ones, you can see the dimension in the pictures. A very decent size, I was able to fit 16 of my husband's t-shirts and there's still room to fit more, a few wife beaters or boxers. Great for college students since they might move from dorm to dorm quite often, these boxes will be perfect. When they are not in used, simply fold them up and store away, look at the last pic, it doesn't take up that much space.
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