Hello, friends! Today I’m sharing Spring Cleaning Tips for Quilters with ideas for cleaning and organizing your sewing projects and spaces. I hope you’ll find some ideas to jump-start your progress or help you set goals to begin. As I always say in my videos, “Let’s get started!”
Spring Cleaning Tips for Quilters
Cleaning and Organizing Your Sewing Space
Cleaning and organizing your sewing space aren’t just one-time projects. I like to organize and clean year-round. I think my attitude about taking time to clean and organize got a lot better when I finally realized that this isn’t just a one-time thing. Some quilters like to tackle everything all at once, while others prefer to work on a space or section at a time. Whichever method works for you is the one you should use. Before you get started, you might want to look at some of the Free Quilting Organizing Printables I have available here on the blog.
Organizing and Storing Unfinished Projects
Keeping track of unfinished projects is one of the first steps I recommend–you can’t work on or finish what you don’t know you have. I like to make a list of all of these projects and sort them by the following classifications:
- current works in progress with a deadline
- current works in progress without a deadline
- long-term works in progress
- projects I don’t want to finish
After categorizing your projects you’ll find it easier to decide the order you want to work on them. After organizing them and making sure each project has a container or space to live while you are working on it, make note of where each project is stored to make it easier to find.
Purging Old or Unused Fabric
The first step when going through your fabric is to purge old or unused fabrics you won’t be using. It’s essential to start here so you can get this fabric out of your space and sold or donated. My best tips for purging these types of fabrics can be found below.
Sorting Fabrics to Keep
Once you’ve decided on the fabrics you are definitely going to keep, you’ll need to come up with a system to manage them. The post below has lots of ideas and also links to additional posts which share thoughts on organizing project leftovers and sorting and organizing scraps.
Organizing Notions and Tools
Spring cleaning in the sewing room also requires sorting notions and tools. Sorting these types of quilting products and items will take some time. I never plan on doing this in a day. It is helpful to take a category every so often and go through all of the items in that group. I also find it helpful to keep notes about where I store many of my tools. Find some terrific ideas for organizing notions and tools in the post below. And also find some of my favorite notions and tools below.
Thanks so much for stopping by to read today’s Spring-Cleaning Tips for Quilters. I hope you have found some great ideas to help with your organizing and cleaning!
Happy Quilting!
mary says
Excellent article! I do a deep clean once a year and only sweep or dust when it gets ridiculous. I find when I go into my sewing room, I’d rather sew! But there are those days when I decided ‘it’s time.’ I feel so much better sewing in a clean room.