The Fabric Stash

Inspired by my cramped storage space lovely assortment of fabrics stashed away in my closet, I decided to organize it all!
That is the one problem with being a quilter......quilters are actually fabric addicts. We buy fabric just because we like it and because we "plan" to make something eventually with that fabric. It can spend years stored away in a "fabric stash."
I have spent the last couple of weekends using up my larger pieces of fabric to make bags and totes and such, but what to do with all of the small pieces can be overwhelming.
Most of the time I throw it all on a couple of shelves or in a box and wait for the inspiration to sew with it all.
Truth is, it can be too difficult a task when you are not even really sure what pieces of fabric are in the bottom of that stash box.

I started by cranking some Fleetwood Mac up on Pandora and sorting all the stash fabrics by color. I have blues, pinks, greens, purples, oranges, and brown and blacks.

Being that I am feeling frugal and I did not want to put appropriate store shopping clothes on this weekend, I found what boxes I had and stacked the fabrics in said boxes. I plan to hit a store some time this week and buy plastic boxes with lids that will stack neatly on the shelves.

Something that is important (I think) when you store and organize your fabric stash and scraps is to fold the pieces as neatly as possible. It will save you time down the road when you do not have to spend so much time ironing out a billion wrinkles. Also, I had a stash of Christmas fabrics and decided to make a separate box just for those. Sometimes it is difficult to decide which color category a piece falls within so it's perfectly fine to have a "pattern" category or whatever fits your groove.

Now that I can see what I have, I can create something with all of these strips, scraps, and tid bits of fabrics!
The time I spent this weekend will pay off down the road when I decide to sew something with some scraps.

In fact, I found a stash of coordinating fabric and made a special little game for the kids.

Tic Tac To, anyone? This was very simple to put together and the kids have played and played all afternoon.

There was no need to sew anything fancy, just some squares with a little sashing between.

You could use more subtle colors too, but I prefer the bright, playful ones.
Wouldn't this make a great gift for a child? It would also be a nice game to take along in the car.

Now that this fun project is finished, I have another set of fabrics that I am cutting to make a quilt.

It will be a bright one! It is amazing what I found crammed on my shelves this weekend!
So these are my new projects for the next few weeks.

What projects do you have going?

Have a fabulous, productive week!