FOLDING FABRIC FOR STORAGE

FOLDING FABRIC AND MORE ORGANIZING

O.K.  We’ve gone through how to cut fabric, how to store fabric. Now we will go over just a couple of ways to fold your fabric.

When you get your fabric from the quilt shop or other fabric store, or even a fabric department you really never know how it will be folded.  Each employee folds it up a different way, and even the same person can fold the same length of fabric in different ways.  When we get our fabric home we have to refold it to fit the way we store it.  Some quilters prewash all their fabrics before they even get into the quilt room, others just fold it and store it or ‘hide’ it.

To fold your fabric onto a bolt board or a comic book board is one of the easier ways to store your fabric if you have the room.  If you don’t have the room or the boards you can still put a nice smooth even and equal fold in your fabrics.

One of the easiest ways to fold your fabric that is by the yard vs fat quarters etc, is to use your 6” x 24” ruler. Start by laying out at least one end of your fabric. Place your ruler on top with the ends at the selvedge and the folded edge.  

  

 Wrap a fold around the ruler and pull it taut. 

 

Wrap the fabric around the ruler all the way to the end of the fabric.

 

When you have it all wrapped around the ruler. Gently pull the ruler out the one end.

Fold your fabric over the width of the ruler.   

 

 

And then fold over the other end to make a perfect square.

Then attach a label to the fabric. These can be hand written or made into a form that you can print out and attach or tuck into each piece of fabric you have.   You can include any and all the information that you want or think you will need to know about the fabric.  This picture below is one that I use on my own fabric.  It helps me to know so much about the fabric without even unfolding it. 

I normally pin the label onto the fabric, but you can also just insert it in the fold so it is still easy to find.

 

 When you have smaller pieces of fabric you can fold it the same way by using a more narrow ruler such as the 3" x 18".

Once you just have smaller pieces you may only want to include general information and writing it onto a sticky note works great for this.

This way of folding your fabric makes it easy to store in bins, on shelves, or even in a cabinet drawer. The fabric can be easy to see and with so much information on the label it makes it easy to pull out the fabric and almost instantly know if you have enough of it for the project you want to use it for.

Happy Folding!

Til next time -  Keep those needles stitching! And remember if you want more information about Quilter's Pantry and what we have to offer please visit our web site at www.quilterspantry.com

Phyllis