Wanting to use my unfinished quilts to decorate my apartment while creating more storage, I purchased a baker’s rack from Hobby Lobby that had several long shelves.
PRECUTTING
For each completed quilt top, I dug through my opaque plastic boxes for wool batting, backing fabric and binding fabric I wanted to use for that quilt, and I precut them to size.
After measuring the quilt top, I added a few inches to the size of the backing fabric, as I’ll do with the wool batting, because they tend to shrink during the quilting process.
Simply laying the backing fabric on top of the woold batting, I easily cut that without any fear of it shifting since it stayed in place so well.
Reversing the cut out backing and wool batting…
…I center the finished quilt top on top.
Then I folded it up to place on the baker’s rack.
After that went on the baker’s rack, I completed more quilt sandwiches that easily piled up, since most are larger than the one above.
Any time I’m ready for a new hand stitching project, I only needed to pull from the baker’s rack.
With this easy storage system that added some color to the dining area, I freed up lots of space in my small apartment.
WON’T ACCIDENTALLY USE A LARGE FABRIC
Another advantage to this is that I won’t accidentally use a large piece if I only needed small pieces of fabric.
Since I have so many large pieces of fabric, why not precut them for needed future projects, then use the scraps for the scrappy quilts I’m sewing?
ORGANIZING SEWING ROOM
Meanwhile, I unpacked my fabrics and displayed them in my sewing room on bookcases, by category…which I’m still fussing with.
Although it’s a work in process, I’m now able to nest my opague bins and set them to the side of the room for the next move.
Signing a new lease after the rent increase, not sure how much longer I can stay here.
So all this precutting will aid in quick packing, when that day comes.
In the meantime, I told my son about a cutting table idea I have, which he will help me with. Stay tuned!
