As I have been thinking of making up scrap quilts and limiting fabric purchases for some time, this thinking has brought to my attention what creative solutions we as quilters and fabricaholics can find to manage these stashes and confiscate sewing space in our homes.

When asked how I sort my fabrics, I had to really think about the answer. If anyone came into my sewing space (not even a room) they would have no idea that there was actually a method to this madness. My sewing space is a corner 6' x 4' with an ironing board seperating the family room chairs from my corner. I have one built-in closet around the corner with shelves, and one stand up cupboard 24" wide x 48" tall and 10" deep which has drawers the size of a sock drawer and an open space at the bottom. I have a basket on my sewing machine stand (which takes up 2'x6' of my corner) overflowing with unsorted scraps too big to throw in the garbage. The wall beside the laundry room is covered with a piece of warm & natural batt that I use as a design wall. The lower right hand corner of this batt is missing a chunk 14" square as I needed it to make up a sample and couldn't get to the quilt shop during a snowstorm. All in all, a very professional work space (ha!ha!)

Because I like so many types of quilting, I don't sort by colour, but rather by the types of quilts that I will be making. My fabrics are stored in plastic buckets, wire baskets, computer boxes, and anything else that I get my hands on. Very few of the pieces are larger than 1/2 meter, most are fat quarters with pieces cut out, long strips of .2m or if they are really messy scraps I have them rolled up with an elastic around them standing on end in a box. I have a wire basket that holds all of my country prints, I have a printer paper box full of velvets and satins, lace and trims that I use for crazy quilts and silk ribbon embroidery. I have another box full of metallics and rich solids and tone-on-tone that I use for stain-glass. A dishtub holds all of my landscape prints, and another box holds the leftovers of kiddy prints from clothes that I made for my children in my pre-quilting days. An old suitcase sits on the floor full of wool and flanel pieces of various sizes waiting to be made into winter quilts. I have a stack of computer keyboard boxes that hold my watercolor 2" squares and another larger box that is full of watercolour fabrics to be cut into other shapes, or as backup if I run out of squares.

I also have a clipboard that I use as my watercolour index. Any suitable piece coming into the house gets 2" cut off the bottom and is added to the clipboard. I then know that somewhere in this mess I have more of that fabric if I need it. This also gives me pre-cut 2" strips that I can take a square from instead of rummaging through the big box. In the Kay Phillips workshop that I attended last fall she indicated much the same technique but she cuts off a 6" strip and cuts this into 6" squares later to make her scrap quilts. If I did this, I wouldn't have much of a piece left to stash away!

My pride and joy is my stand up cupboard with the little drawers that I had custom made to fit beside the doorway of my sewing space. In these little drawers I keep the special fabrics- the fat quarters that I loved but didn't have anything in particular to use them for, the jewel tone solids that I don't want to lose in the bottom of a basket and all of my star fabrics that I use for wallhanging backgrounds. I also keep stashed away here the special little pieces that people give me like the racing flag fabric from Pat, a square with funny frogs from a cousin, an angel print from my sister-in-law, quilts on a clothesline, and other little treats that I will use someday in a special way.

Although I sometimes feel that I would like a big sewing room with a cutting table and all of the storage space like the ones we see in the magazines, I don't see my space as a deterent to being creative or as an obstacle to producing beautiful designs. Rather each project becomes a challenge from finding the fabrics to finding room on the floor to lay out the graph paper and cutting board.

If you would like to share your quilting space with us, or would like to offer your solutions to space problems to the other guild members, we would be happy to pass them along in the newsletter.

Fall newsletter 1999