For my love of fabric, I spent 6 hours taking out all my fabric. Yes, ALL my fabric. It looked like a tornado had run through my studio. I arranged piles of fabric by color all throughout the small studio space. I cut swatches of them ALL. Cuttin out the swatches was tedious work and sitting on the floor, my leg kept falling asleep. Most of my fabric stash consists of fabrics I cannot bring myself to cut into. So cutting a swatch out of them forced me to get over that phobia and hopefully I can give myself permission to use them now in upcoming projects.

Then I refolded and restored my stash not only by color, I also arranged by my favorites. I put the ones that I love the MOST in the armoir I keep my supplies in. THEN arranged the swatches in a binder after ironing them all.

The swatch binder is filled with baseball card sleeves I bought from the local hobby store. Then I filled the sheets with my swatches by color (ROYGBIV kids…ROYGBIV!). I used a playing card as a template to cut out a swatch from each piece of fabric but the card was too slippery. So I decided to cut the template out of stiff craft felt. It was flexible enough but stayed in place because it was felt.

Now I have a catalog of all my fabrics. It is a great reference and good place to go for inspriation. Don’t ask how many reds I have, they are so much alike but different enough to be justify so many…at least that is what I am telling myself to justify them all.