I'm so excited for the Fall 2010 issue of Stitch to hit the newsstands any day now. Tricia and Team Stitch have done a fantastic job of assembling cute, fun, cool sewing projects from wonderful designers that will have you racing to get to your machine. There's a preview here, if you missed it last week, and a great photo-shoot-behind-the-scenes post from Stefanie, here.
Sewing room organization along with taming the stash are challenges that confronts everyone who sews, and for this Fall issue, we put together some great ideas and tips for managing the creative chaos. While you wait for the issue, we have a really fun bonus for you: free downloadable pages for a Fabric Stash Book or a Stash Keyring.
All you need is a 3-ring binder and/or a large keyring. Visit this link to download the pages, print as many as you need (it's a good idea to use card stock-weight paper), punch holes to fit your binder or keyring, clip swatches from your stash, and fill out the info for each one. Next time you go to the fabric store, just take your Stitch Stash Book or Stash Keyring with you and you'll never again find yourself trying to match a color by memory, or looking at a pattern envelope and trying to remember how much of that pretty sheer floral fabric you have, or wondering if you bought a matching zipper for the raspberry-colored wool that you're finally going to sew. It'll all be at your fingertips. For a targeted shopping trip, you can take just a few pages from your book or a few swatches from your keyring. For browsing, take your whole stash with you!
Here's a detail of a page that Stefanie has partially filled out (you can easily group fabric swatches by color or by content and then use the rectangles on the right-hand edge of the page to make "tabs"):
And here's a detail of a swatch section on the page:
So get your free organizing sewing fabric download -- available right now -- and get ready to organize your stash and catalog it as you go. Then pick your favorite projects from the new issue, shop your stash or head to your favorite local or online fabric store, and fill in any gaps. I know I can't wait to get my book and keyring set up, and it'll make me feel like a totally together sewist, ready for the next sewing project.
Happy sewing!