Getting Organized in the Fall

There's something about fall that makes me want to straighten up.   Maybe it's having to switch wardrobes around, and I'm getting tired of the summer clothes or something.  Although this year what has passed for summer in Wisconsin is not what I'd call a good example of warmth!

My pal Suzi and I took over the church quilt group when our previous leader had to step aside for health reasons.  Last year someone purchased for us a nice cabinet so we could store our fabrics in an accessible fashion where previously we had only boxes and bins.

With the addition of a few stashes that have been donated recently, we have the cabinet filled.  Not to bursting, but it really needed organizing.

We meet one Saturday a month.  During the summer lots of folks take off, so one Saturday when we met the ladies who do the actually quilting were both gone.  That meant we had no pins!!  So no sandwiching work was to be done.

I thought we could make good use of the time by organizing the cabinet.  We unloaded the shelves, unfolded and inspected each piece, and refolded each piece that we were keeping, organizing the pieces by size and color or theme.

Top shelf--less than a yard on the left, a yard or more of solids or what reads as solids in the other three stacks.  Second shelf left to right -- kid prints, a yard or more of our florals/other prints.

This is the bottom half -- the upper shelf has bundles we tied together for potential kits, and some large pieces potentially for backing.  The bottom shelf is also backing pieces, sheets, and pieces of polyester blends we sometimes use for specific charity items.

a close up of our 'kit potential' stack.

All these florals!!  And you'd think we would have more pink...

I sorted our solids by color to see what we need.  I think we need more green!!

We also have a bin where we keep pieces of muslin and our light neutrals like white and cream.  A small bin holds our notions (we use a ton of masking tape!) and another bin holds bundles of binding and our pattern library.

Then there's the strip bag -- or bags as the case may be!  I didn't take pictures of them because they're MESSY!  But they get put to good use in string blocks.  I think string blocks are like butterflies.  The strings and the foundations don't look like much.  Sometimes even the blocks don't appear to be very impressive.  But when they're sewn together in a quilt, they just sing -- or I guess fly if you want to stay with the simile.

 

Sew on!!