Conquering the Fabric Pile

I’m not sure what came over me, but last week and I randomly just emptied out ALL of my fabric, and all of my scrap stashes onto my guest bed.

Well it might have had something to do with this mess:

 I couldn't even shut this door anymore!

Something had to be done so I guess I just got fed up with it and threw it ALL onto the guest bed.  I had tons of scrap stashes, too.   A drawer full, a bin, and an old scrapbook carrier full.

Oh wait there was this little basket, too. 

Then I started organizing all the larger pieces by color.  This was fun, actually.

But the not so fun part was folding it all again.  It took me several days of going back to work on it since Sam {The Destroyer} couldn’t be near by to ruin my hard work.  I just measured the shelve and cut a piece of cardboard about that same size to use to fold my fabric with. 

Here’s some of the progress.

Then I also got started on the shelf itself.  It’s nice that it fits perfectly in the odd nook part of my craft closet, but I felt like it needed to be white to match the rest of the closet innards.  Being white also makes it less distracting from the fabric itself. 

I used Zinsser Bulls Eye 123 Primer because I already had a quart of it in the garage.  I’m not sure why I bought it originally, but I used it as a primer for these shelves.  They are just crappy Ikea shelves from an old entertainment unit we took apart, so it wouldn’t matter if I screwed them up somehow.  It took 3 coats of primer and then 3 coats of white paint to get these shelves to be somewhat decent looking.  I wish I’d just kept the shelves themselves on the unit, because the paint got scraped off pretty easily when I put them back in.  I just took a can of spray paint to the messed up spots. 

I drilled and screwed in 4 wheels into the bottom—all by myself.  My first attempt at using the drill!! 

I also drilled and screwed in handles. And here it is in the closet!







































I put a board on the floor to help the shelves easily roll in and out and it works perfectly!! 

I bet you are wondering what happened to all those scraps, too?  They were separated into color families and put into Ziploc bags which were then put into a smaller bin.  Smaller to allow for the roll-out shelf to do it’s thing.  If my scraps outgrow this bin, then it’s time to purge again.  No reason to hold on to tons of scraps that won’t get used!  The large yardage, denim, sweater material and large pieces of felt and flannel got organized and put into the big bin. 

Phew!  Overall it took two weeks, but so worth it!

I actually kinda feel like sewing something now…