Mini Bolts

Yesterday, I showed you how Jameson has been so 'helpful' in organizing my fabric for me. But today I'll show you how I prefer to organize my fabric.

My fabric stash has gotten to the over flowing point lately and it's gotten a little out of hand on those shelves.

I purchased these comic book boards from Amazon.com. They came really fast! I could have gone to a comic book store and  bought something similar but I don't have the time to track down a comic book store out in the country. These boards are the perfect size for creating 'mini bolts' of fabric.

To begin I needed some help taking the boards out of the packaging. Jameson is such a big helper.

To wrap a 40"-43" standard fabric width onto the boards begin by folding the fabric selvage to selvage. In case you didn't know, the selvage is the edge that has the printed company info on it and where it was attached to the manufacturing machines.

Then fold the selvage edge to the first folded edge. So you have folded the fabric in half & in half again for a total of 4 thicknesses. I hope I didn't just confuse you there!

Take one of your comic boards, beginning at one of the ends, and wrap it up. When you get to the end you can fold it under for a nice clean look and pin it in place. Or you can put a rubber band around the whole thing. I have plenty of pins and no rubber bands so I went with pinning!

To wrap a 60" fabric width fold the fabric selvage to selvage and then fold that into 3rds. You'll then have 6 thicknesses of fabric & wrap it around the comic board just like above.

This method is great for 1 yard (and more) cuts of fabric. If you have a lot of fabric (such as 10 yards) this method can still be used, just wrap your comic board from both ends and meet them in the middle. For smaller cuts of fabric, you could probably cut the comic boards in half and wrap the fabric then. I haven't done this but I'm sure it could still work out great.

At the time of this posting I have wrapped and organized 200 different cuts of fabric. And I still have a little pile left over to get to. I had to order more comic boards!

I have also organized my fabric stash by subject. In the past I organized it by color and it didn't really work out very well. Now the fabric is grouped by solids, boy, girl, baby, animals, stripes, dots, floral, seasonal, food, batiks, etc.

It was very inspirational going through my fabric too. I can now see exactly what I have and I don't have to dig through any piles looking for something. It has well been worth the time and effort I put into organizing this!

~Heather~

Update: Since posting this, I have completed all the mini bolts and you can see the final product HERE! :)