How to Organize Your Quilting Fabric
Tips for Storing Scraps, Strips, Fat Quarters, and Larger Yardage
Sep 7, 2008
The typical quilter’s fabric stash includes everything from tiny scraps trimmed from the corners and edges of blocks, to fat quarters, strips in various sizes, individual patches in a variety of shapes and sizes, and multi-yard cuts intended for borders and quilt backs. Here are some tips for taming your stash and transforming it into a resource you can really use.
Weed Quilting Fabric to Fit the Available Space
If you have piles of fabric falling off every chair, table top, and bookshelf in your sewing space, it’s worth taking some time to go through your stash and weed out the fabric you don’t really like, or haven’t touched in years, or know in your heart of hearts that you’re never going to use. Be ruthless! If you haven’t used that particular print in the last couple of years, how likely are you to use it in the future? (Hint: not very likely.) Donate your extras to a charity or thrift guild, and feel glad that some other quilter will put that fabric to good use.
Divide Quilting Fabric by Size, then Color
Many quilters divide their fabric into the following categories:
Fabric Scraps
Get control over your scrap pile by taking a few steps to organize it:
- Set a minimum size for the scraps you are willing to keep. Throw away or compost scraps that are smaller than your minimum size. (Yes, you can compost fabric!) Paper piecers can use up even the tiniest scraps, but not everyone has a use for those little trimmed-off triangles and odd-shaped pieces that seem to litter every quilting room.
- Make the scraps you keep easier to use by subdividing them. Cut larger pieces into rectangles, squares, and strips, then sort them into bins or bags by shape, so you can go directly to the right place the next time you need a 6” x 8” rectangle or a 4” x 4” square.
- Use up scraps on fun little projects. D’Arcy Jean Milne’s book, Fabric Leftovers [C&T Publishing, 2007], has lots of clever ideas for using up extra little bits and pieces.
Fabric Strips
Scrap quilter Bonnie Hunt of Quiltville.com recommends cutting your strips into 1½”, 2 ½”, or 3 ½” widths, because those are the most useful sizes to keep on hand. Separate the strips by width, and store them in boxes, bins, or bags. Use them to make string quilts, borders, or scrappy bindings.
Fat Eighths or Fat Quarters
These should be subdivided by color, then folded and stored so you can look at a whole color grouping all at once – all the yellows, for instance, or all the purples. That makes it easier to choose the right fabric for a project that calls for a particular color. If you have a very large stash, you may want to subdivide your fat quarters by subject first, then by color: all Christmas fabrics together or children’s fabrics together, and so on. You can either stack your folded fabrics or wrap them around something stiff, like Polar Notions’ acid-free plastic sheets, and shelve them like books.
Larger Cuts of Fabric
Like fat quarters, cuts of ½ yard or more should be folded and arranged on shelves or in bins or drawers so you can see a whole color grouping at once. You can stack folded pieces, or wrap them around a stiff insert and shelve them vertically, as described in the paragraph above.
Learn more about getting organized for quilting:
Setting up your quilting space
Choosing the right chair for sewing or quilting
How to make a quilt design wall
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