The Great Fabric Reorganization, Part 1

Prepare for a lengthy ramble about fabric. Or skip it and just look at the pictures, whichever you prefer.

I learned to stitch from my mother when I was about five (yep, you can teach a five-year-old to stitch), but didn't really take it up as a hobby until I was about 15. Back in those days, pretty much everyone stitched on Aida and your neutral choices were limited to white, ecru (or off white, or antique white), an oatmeal color with little flecks in it called Fiddler's Light, and a few colors like light and navy blue, red, green, and black. It was the dark ages, in terms of fabric. At some point I learned about this new thing called hand-dyed fabric, but I was more focused on building my chart stash and fabric wasn't a priority. I don't remember exactly when that changed, but I do remember--and still have--my very first piece of hand-dyed fabric, a piece of crystal Da Vinci linen by PTP. I even kept it in the bag I brought it home in. It's more of a keepsake than anything, a reminder of a happy time, and an LNS I loved with an owner who was wonderful.

Anyway, somewhere along the way, I began to really focus on fabric over charts. I think it was because the American designers seemed to be really locked in on primitives, samplers, and quakers, and have been for many, many years. I don't have anything against these styles per se, and have stitched a few myself, but the overwhelming number of them just makes my eyes glaze over. My discovery of Etsy years ago definitely rekindled my chart buying, as I was able to find designers from all over the world with a wide variety of styles. But I still buy more fabric than charts.

So. I have a lot of fabric. Mind you, it's a collection about 20 years in the making (she says, in an attempt to justify how much fabric she has). And I also lived through the heady days of the annual PTP Christmas in July sale, and the days when you could find gorgeous hand-dyed fabric on clearance if you knew where to look. Sadly, those days are gone. But the stash remains.

When I decided to stitch a bunch of birds for summer, I decided instead of stitching them on neutrals (always a safe bet) or blues (like the sky!), I would really lean heavily into my hand-dyed stash and make my summer display as colorful as possible. I started thinking about choosing fabric colors, and digging through my stash trying to find the perfect one, and something dawned on me. To my great bewilderment, I had never bothered to sort my fabric by color, only dividing it by colors and neutrals. 

What?

I don't know why I've never done this. I think it's because that's how I had it organized in the beginning when my stash wasn't very big, and I just stuck with it. But probably more so because I usually just dive in looking for a fabric for one project at a time, and I always have a good idea of what I'm looking for. The idea of digging around trying to choose fabric for a lot of projects at a time made me realize I needed to update my organization. And off I went.

It took me quite a lot of browsing on Amazon and measuring and thinking to decide on my containers. I had fairly strict size requirements so they would fit on my cubby shelves, and I wanted the most storage in the smallest space possible. I went with some Rubbermaid 7.2 qt. containers (14"L x 10.5"W x 4"H). They come in a 6-pack. I always keep a supply of acid free tissue paper and silica gel packets on hand as I use them in all my stitching storage, so I lined the containers with paper and threw some packets in them.

I divided my fabric into six groupings:

Pink, Rose, Red

Orange, Yellow

Green

Blue

Lavender, Purple 

Grey, Brown, Black

I made the labels using a large round craft punch and card stock from my craft stash.

Remember all those times I told y'all I wasn't really a fan of blue? Yeah.

Somehow, Miss I'm Not Really a Fan of Blue managed to acquire *a lot* of blue fabric. As much as green, which is my favorite, and no, I don't know how that happened. I also have more orange than I would have guessed, which is also weird. Anyway, here's my fabric all organized by color, lighter shades on top, darker down the stack.

These containers hold quite a lot of fabric.

And that's all my colors organized! I can't believe it's taken me so long to do this, but I guess my stash has just slowly arrived at the size it needed doing. Neutrals are next, at some point. 

Next on the Stitchy Week to-do list is some finishing, and maybe a couple of framing projects. Back soon!