In preparation for the Stashbusting Challenge, as well as keeping with my sewing goals for January 2013, I have made an effort to organize my fabric stash.  I sorted all my stash (except scraps) into piles by fabric type, then decided which ones I could actually see myself making something out of, or not. For example, it makes my eyes hurt just to look at that black and white striped chiffon. Unless I decide to make an optical illusion top, it's being donated.


After laying out all my fabrics, I kept out the ones that would be "in season" for the next few months of sewing.  I put these out where I could see them, as a constant reminder of my potential projects, and an encouragement to not buy more fabric!


On to fabric organization:

Ever since I started sewing, I have never really had a method to keep track of what fabrics I had purchased, how much yardage there was, or even the kind of fabric, which was easy to forget at the time, but could cause a lot of extra work and worry later.

For example, knowing when to pre-wash fabric - I actually just pre-washed fabric for the first time ever!  I know, I know, but no way was I spending handfuls of quarters on a load of laundry for fabric that may or may not shrink.  Now that I have my own washer and dryer (YAY!) I feel better about it. I went with a batch of mostly cotton fabrics, as I hear they can shrink a lot. I'm happy to report that nothing terrible happened!


In the past, I had attempted cataloging all my fabrics on little note-cards, but these got scattered all over the place, and most of them just had the swatch - I never remembered to write down the details when I purchased the fabric.  But that is all about to change...


In this adorable little sketch-book / journal from my excellent mom (gifted from etsy), I am going to keep track of all of the fabrics I purchase and use, especially for clothing.  Each page will have a swatch of the fabric, as well as:

Description
Yardage
Price
Used for...
Care
Notes

For example:


I have already started working on the fabrics I have recently purchased, (first time I remembered to snap pics of the bolt!) and I hope to have all of them in here soon!



So how about you? How do you keep track of all your fabrics?