Different doesn't necessarily mean better

As you know, I have been spiffing up my den/office/work space. I have most things like I want them, but I have been pondering a better storage solution for my fabric. I looked online to see what other people were doing, and strangely enough, most people are just doing what I have already done. That both impressed me that I had a solution that was normal good enough for other people too, and depressed me because I was looking for something cooler. I wanted some sort of specifically designed thing that was awesome yet simple enough that I could rip it off and create my own. I have a plan for the future, but I'm still working out the details... I should also mention that most of what I saw when I googled "fabric organization" was other people's blogs. Again, disappointing.

So here we have what I had originally on the left, compared to what I found online on the right. Pretty similar really...



Photo on the right courtesty of http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/chicago/flickr-finds/craft-room-fabric-organization-flickr-find-105839

I also found a few pieces online about managing the individual pieces of fabric.

Courtesy of the following website:

http://funnyfarm-maywehelpyou.blogspot.com/2008/10/wfmw-fabric-organization.html

Her article was very good and you should go check it out.

I also found some similar information on this website:

http://featheredfibers.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/fabric-stash-organization-and-tutorial/

and though I did not follow it (but thought really hard about it), the idea has merit. You just have to see the website to appreciate it. I believe that one of them (or both) made mention of using comic book boards whatever those are. I found that cut up cardboard boxes worked well, but I thought about getting a stack of 8x11 chipboard sheets. I used what I had on hand and it was free and I needed to do something with the boxes anyway. Whatever you use just has to be sturdy enough to stand up when wrapped with fabric.

So after visiting those websites, I came up with this:

I found fabric that I didn't remember I had because it was folded neatly in a box that was on the shelf. Needing this shelf also forced me to sort and cull other things that I had hanging around. Think back to what I said about not needing every single scrap... Doh! Anyway, several handfuls of scraps went into the trash, and all those coardboard boxes that I emptied (and there were alot)? Well, they got cut up to make mini bolt boards to roll the fabric on. I was also able to use up some of my excess of straight pins by using them to secure said fabric to the newly created mini bolts. Since I already had all this organization basically going on already, I have to say that I don't really find that I have much more space. This is where different doesn't necessarily mean better. The space that I freed up was due mostly to the culling and reorganization of things other than fabric. I will say that most things are more visible now, and the fabric on the shelf looks better than the diaper and girl scount cookie boxes that lived on the shelf previously. I even got rid of some of the stuff that was living under my craft table and discovered that once Kinsley is using the big car seat that lives on top of my storage cabinet, I will be able to put almost all of the the remaining items under the table on top of the cabinet.