Sewing Storage

I sew... alot. Organizing fabric is my achilles' heel. Right when I think I have it figured out, I realize it doesn't work.

The first thing I tried was clear shoe boxes from the Container Store. Although I liked the idea that my fabric was seperated into neat little shelves, it was a complete pain to pull the fabric out. When I pulled one piece, it all came out. After a few days of this I knew this wasn't the solution for me... back they went to the store. Here is what it looked like:

Plan B. I turned to pinterest and the solution seems to be comic book boards. To Amazon I went and $15 later, 100 comic book boards were mine. These are pretty much industrial strength posterboard, and they are cut to fit fabric perfectly (although that was not their intended purpose- sheer coincidence). Here is what they look like:

Fabric is 44-45 inches wide. If you fold the selvege together:

and fold it in half again:

you get a width of fabric that fits PERFECTLY on the comic book board! I turned a small bit of fabric over to start rolling...

and then rolled up the remaining fabric. It's almost like a mini-bolt (from a fabric store). Depending on how much of a certain fabric I had, sometimes it rolled twice, sometimes 10 times.

Here's how I categorized the fabric:
Solids:

Gingham:

Polka/Pink:

Blues:

Everything else (greens, reds, black/white):

Then I had to organize other things that I use...
Ribbon:

Scraps (with labels specfic to the contents: solids, prints etc.) BTW these boxes were $0.97 at good old Walmart!!:

Blanks:

I had labeled this a while ago (and put the scrapbook paper in the drawers to dress it up a bit):

I showed you the picture in the beginning of the post of how I had it set up at the desk.

Then I moved everything to a bookshelf and we got rid of the desk. Josh and I now have smaller matching desks. Notice the fabric piled in those clear bins (and the thread on top that I couldn't reach):

And here it is after the comic book boards!!

I am still planning to paint this shelf either a fun color or white and put paper behind the shelves. In case you were wondering where my thread was hanging out:

Having it on top was totally impractical!!!!!

 PS- I have since painted the bookshelf white and added a beautiful stenciled painting on the back. Check it out here.