Fabric Organization

For the next few blogs, I will be focusing on organizing your fabric collection and all your cosplay items. Today, we'll start off with fabric organization! This is something I struggled with for quite a while. I kept some fabrics on bolts/rolls against a wall, some in totes, and some stacked in bags. Some are in my sewing room, some are in a closet and some are in the basement. Anytime I wanted to find a fabric, it would take hours to find.

I've come up with a solution to help me find fabrics quicker. It's in no way perfect, but it's at least a start.

Bolts and Rolls
You think it would make things easier to keep fabric on bolts or on rolls instead of folded and into totes. The good thing about leaving them on a bolt (or roll) is you will have less creases to deal with when its time to use the fabric. If you have the proper shelving to hold bolts of fabric, then by all means, keep them on it! But I (and most cosplayers I know) have very limited space. So the fabrics I decided to keep on a bolt are either more fragile materials (ones that crease/damage easily and such) or ones that I have a whole bolt worth (8+ yards). Everything else, I took off a bolt and placed in a tote. I left any fabrics on rolls as is but only because I don't have many of them. Most of them are vinyls, leather/pleathers, or velvets that could get damaged if folded up. I also made sure to place them in plastic sleeves to help protect them as well. My sewing table is really wide so my bolts of fabrics are all stored underneath it (with plenty of room for my machine petal and my feet). My rolls of fabrics are stored in the back corner of the closet in my sewing room or on a shelf in the same closet. This shelf is really high up where you have to physically look up into the closet to see. So it's a perfect place for each access while keeping it off the floor! You can see how my stuff is store in the pictures below.

Totes, totes, and more totes
So how do you make it easier to find what you're looking for? First off, I organize all my totes by type of fabrics. I have one for knits, one for cottons, one for fleece, and so forth. I also have a separate tote for fabrics that I bought for specific cosplays (aka the never ending future cosplay list).

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't go through my fabrics that often. And I have fabric back from when I first started sewing (over 15 years ago). I don't always remember what I have (which can be troublesome if you constantly buy more of something you already own). You could make a list of what fabrics you have in each tote. Or, what I do, is cut a small corner off each piece of fabric and place it in a small container (or Ziploc bag). Once done, you just place it directly in the tote. So next time you need to look for a fabric, or remind yourself of what you have, you'll have a small collection of each piece in one convenient spot. I personally used Ziploc bags and wrote on the outside which tote it belongs to just in case it gets separated from the tote. I've also debating on taping it to the outside of the tote so I don't even have to open the tote to see what's inside. Alternatively, you can also buy clear totes so you can see through, which was my original intention, but you don't always see each piece of fabric that way.

So that's how I store and locate all my fabrics. I spent a few weeks going through each tote and organizing them by type and clipping off a corner of each piece. It's not something that can be done overnight (unless you have one to two totes). I have at least four or five more totes of fabrics not shown. And there are the new fabrics I just purchased which are in bags in the sewing room. It's a never ending process but if you keep up with it, it'll stay neat and easy to find!

Some upcoming organization blogs I will be doing are:

• Trims
• Notions
• Sample ordering
• Cosplays
• Armors and props
• Wigs

So keep an eye out for some more organization tips! What kind of methods do you use to keep track of your fabrics? Let me know in the comment section below! I love seeing other peoples methods!

~Serenity