Confessions of a Fabric-holic

Several years ago, I had a cookie business (because I am also a sugar-holic). I made those really yummy cake-like cookies (using an old-fashioned sour cream cookie recipe that was truly melt-in-your-mouth!) and decorated them with royal icing. The business actually started to grow too big for me to handle on my own, plus I had a toddler who had begun finding the cookies as the icing dried - usually the morning I had to wrap and deliver them. Since I didn't want to become the next Sara Lee or Mrs. Fields, it was time for a new hobby.

I found a pattern for a tote bag in some magazine and decided that sewing bags could be fun, and since my little boy couldn't EAT the bags, it seemed like a good plan. I went fabric shopping with my mom and she helped me make my first bag (orange bag below).

First tote bag

Custom tote

Custom Tiffany's-inspiried handbag

 

Thus, the obsession began. I began collecting fabric for my latest interest and I got a sewing machine for Christmas that year. I'm a stay-at-home mom and I wanted to use my newfound skill to make a little extra pocket money. I began "Pursonally Yours", a business I created and started out by making custom bags. And the fabric stash grew. JoAnn's was a stop I made about once a week when I was out, or at the very least, once a month.

Making custom bags gave way to branching out and making all kinds of things - various kinds of bags such as wristlets, cosmetic bags, as well as aprons, potholders, tea wallets, coffee sleeves, table runners and wall hangings. Thanks to Google and the blogosphere, I could easily find a tutorial for anything I wanted to make. It was kind of a bummer though thinking I had come up with something all on my own only to discover there were 100 tutorials on how to make it. With more projects to make, and hundreds of tutorials yet to be discovered, that meant more fabric to have on hand. I love reading tutorials and remembering I have the perfect fabric for that project! Since I couldn't just have fabric laying around all over the place now that I was a mother of 3, storage became a necessity.

As we all know, there are good storage solutions, and not so good storage solutions. Shoving all your fabric into a giant box is likely a not so great storage solution - unless you enjoy jumbled messes. I found a bookcase with glass doors and decided it would be so much prettier if my fabrics were folded nicely on the shelves for me to peer at through the glass. Sometimes I just sit and stare at my beautiful fabrics. Anyway, folded pieces of fabric end up looking sloppy after rifling through them several times for various projects, and tossing in whatever new fabrics I'd recently bought. (I recently added to my fabric collection when I found a beautiful fabric piece I just HAD to have that I found in the markets when I was on a mission trip in Kenya and it needs a safe place to be stored!)

Thanks to Pinterest, I've come across some great fabric storage solutions using comic boards as mini-bolts to maximize space and make it way easier to see what you've got and organize however you like - color, pattern, designer, etc. If you want to get these boards for your own stash organization, check them out HERE. This link takes you to just one kind - amazon has a plethora of viable comic boards for you to use - or check out your local comic book store!

I also found a great tutorial via Cut to Pieces Fabric Folding Tutorial. Not only does she give a tutorial on how to fold these mini-bolts, but she also shows how to fold fat quarters like the stores do as well as storage for these little pretties and how to fold fabrics you've already cut up so they're not awkward on the shelves. Her final display looks like this; (The folded fabrics on the left have yet to be "bolted"):

So now I'm off to grab my comic boards and attempt to conquer the beast that is my fabric stash. I doubt it will happen all in one night, but if I do a little every day, it should only take a couple days. Before, during and after pics to come, so stay tuned!

Fanciful Sojourner,
Sarah