Design wall Monday, Dec. 10, 2012

Another Monday with nothing new on my wall. I've finally decided that it is time to start doing more than thinking about packing up my studio and getting ready for the move which is about a month away. I've been trying to figure out a good way to store fabric in a neat and orderly fashion, since my sewing area is going to be in our main living space, and not hidden from view. I saw an idea. on this blog for making up mini fabric bolts. She used comic book boards to form the center section that the fabric wraps around. However, I couldn't find any here, and for some reason, the online stores wouldn't ship to our address. Amazon.ca had them, but they were combined in a package with envelopes, which I didn't need. So I had to come up with another solution. This is where our local Curry's art supply store came in. They sell sheets of acid free foam boards for $4.85 each. The boards are 32 x 40, and bout 1/4 inch thick. So what I've done is cut them up into 8 x10 inch little boards using an exacto knife and my trusty quilting rulers. That gave me 16 mini boards out of each sheet amounting to 30 cents per little mini bolt...... not bad. Plus they have a lot more body and strength to them than the cardboard would have, which means they will last longer.
Of course, it isn't as easy as taking the fabric off the shelf, wrapping it around the board and setting it aside. A lot of the fabrics have been sitting on that shelf for a long time. They are wrinkled and crooked. So each of them is being ironed, the selvages lined up,
and then folded  again along the length.
The mini board is placed on the fabricand the whole thing is rolled up into a lovely little packageso that they are ready for use. All I will have to do is take a fabric off the shelf, unroll it, cut off what I want and then put it back. Sounds simple, doesn't it? It's always the putting it back part that I fail miserably on. Especially when I'm all excited about a new project and pulling fabrics to see what goes with what. They tend to spill onto every available flat surface, and then onto the chairs, and then onto the floors. I will really have to change that habit, or else my very patient, long suffering husband might just lose it. Anyway, it took me about an hour to do the ones above. So my job for today, before going in to work this afternoon, is to see how many more I can get done. I'm thinking I can put them into boxes, but leave the boxes open in the sewing room until just before they have to be moved, just in case I should get taken with a sewing fit. It would be terrible to be taken with a sewing fit, and have nothing her to feed it with. LOL!! Of course, that assuming I can find some floor space for the boxes to sit on........
I'm linking up to Judy's Patchwork Times Design Wall Monday post.