Organizing Fabric

Hello, again!  Tonight I have another organizational post for you.  I originally had all of my fabric in one of the pink Ikea bins in my craft room that I showed you this month.  But since I've been sewing a lot more lately, I've accumulated more fabric/scraps and not everything fit in the one bin anymore.  This is what the bin originally looked like - I just folded up the fabric and stacked them inside the bin.

I was at Joann's about a week ago and happened to come across 2 fabric storage bins that were on sale for only $5.99 each!  I thought this was a great deal because usually for this size, the are at least $10 or more.  I would have liked to just get more of the same pink bins from Ikea, but the closest one is about a 2 hour round trip, so I figured these would do.  The ones I bought are on the left in the below picture.  As you can see, they aren't as tall as the pink bins, but they are a bit longer AND they also have the little window on the front for labeling.  Perfect!

I had also pinned this great idea I got from this All Things Homie post.

Via All Things Homie

So, I cut a piece of cardboard (ok, ok!  I used a soda box!) to the size that would fit in the bin.

Using this template, I folded the fabric to fit the template size.

Once I folded up the fabric completely, I took the template out (and reused them for each fabric piece) and used a safety pin to pin it together so it would stay nice and tidy.

And then I just stacked them all in the bin like a filing system.  Doing it this way makes it so much easier to see all the fabric I have and it also makes it much easier to take the piece of fabric I want out.  This bin holds all of the thicker fabrics: fur, mohair, felt and fleece.

The other bin holds all of my other fabric, leftover scraps, and leftover felt squares.

I knew exactly where I was going to put these two fabric bins - on top of my Ikea Expedit shelf.

As you can see in the picture, the air vent is right above the shelf, so I figured that it would get very dusty up there.  So, I shopped my house and found this roll of color wax paper that I had gotten with a Martha Stewart craft kit I ordered ages ago (see?  Sometimes it's good to be a hoarder).  I cut the pieces to fit on top of the bin and just tucked them in the sides.  It will do for now until I collect bigger pieces of cardboard to fit.

Since the bins had a place for a label, I decided to finally use one of the label templates that I found on the Better Homes & Gardens website. 

Here's the original label.  The new ones are much better (and prettier!).  The original labels were fine, but they would always flip around when I moved the boxes, so these worked better.

And while I was at it, I also replaced the labels on all of the other bins in the craft room.

So, there you have it (or should I say, "I" have it).  Fabric that is nicely organized and easy to get to now.