I must confess I’m really bad at keeping order amongst my sewing stuff.

I know it is impotant to be organized if you want to be efficient in your sewing, but sometimes it is so much more tempting to start that new project, then to clean and categorize the previous ones.

This habbit of putting stuff in piles, make it inevitable to once in a while do some serious sorting and cleaning in my sewing room.

And so I have.

I started with my patterns. Since I drafted most of my patterns on my own, they don’t come nicely folded and paced in plastic bags. Instead I needed to do all this categorizing myself.

I putt the patterns in different piles (historic, to use again, trash ect.) and tried my best to mach up all those lose pattern pieces.

When finished I’ve tossed about half of them, and sorted the other ones in paper boxes and binders, nicely labeled with year, measurments, and a quick sketch.

 Then it was time to deal with my somehow ever growing fabric stash.

I carried all the fabric boxes and bags into our living rom.

Then I started sorting the fabric in different piles (syntetic, linings, smal scraps, historic ect.)

Some of the piles got quite big. (You might recognize the pink cotton on top (HSF Pink), and the brown flowery cotton print (Sport Anglaise).)The pile for “to make historic costumes of”.

I also found some new fabrics that I’ve forgotten about.A golden patterned syntetic, the striped pistage green “leftover” from my regency gown, and a white striped curtain voile.

Then I packed all the fabrics in different boxes.This is the ones containing syntetics and are going down to the storage in our basement.

And my historic apropirate fabrics, got packed and stored close to hand in my sewing room wardrobe.

I also decided it was time to clean my iron.This cleaning method is the best I’ve ever tried (If you haven’t yet, you really should). You just rubb the white paste to the hot iron and then wipe it of with a cloth. The heat melts the paste and takes the burnt dirt from the iron with it when wiped clean.

How organized are you in your sewing?