I love Casey's ideas for planning your makes ahead of time, prioritising them and ensuring they work together (so necessarily for a cohesive wardrobe, which I utterly don't have!). And, don't tell anyone, but I'm the kind of sad person who quite likes spreadsheets. The shame!
A couple of months ago I actually went through my stash and measured every piece of fabric and wrote it down, so seeing Casey's post inspired me to get my sewing-geek on and take it that one step further (a step too far, perhaps?!):
Yep, that would be a spreadsheet showing all my fabric. Colour-coded and sorted by yardage. I told you it was a step too far!
There are headings for:
- a description
- the composition - I try to note this when I first buy it as sometimes I forget.
- size of piece - from a scrap to metres and metres!
- the project concept or pattern I have planned for it (if any!) - I might have a vague concept that I want to make a wiggle dress and, if I'm really lucky, I might even have a pattern picked out!
- further info - for instance, one of the fabrics shrinks loads when pressed - eek! - so I'll be sure to pre-wash that!
- colour type - this is just one word for the dominant colour for very geeky reasons ... It means I can sort the spreadsheet/database by colour, so I can see what fabrics I have that go together or fit a particular colour scheme. Yeah, you can mock me now if you'd like. *Hangs head in geeky shame.*
- colour description - a more detailed description of the exact shade of colour and the colours and patterns going on.
- plain colour? This is to flag up those plain fabrics - this has shown me I have far too many prints and patterns! I must get some flat colours.
But let me defend myself!
You see, what I've done is make a spreadsheet like Casey's for projects with separate workbooks for fabric and patterns to help me marry up patterns with fabrics I already have. The fabrics are colour-coded by yardage (blue for 2.1. to 3m, for example) and then the patterns have the same colour-coding:
Seeee? So if there's a pattern I'm eyeing up and it's coded blue it requires between 2 and 3 metres, I know to look at blue-coded fabrics to find something with enough yardage to work with it.
I think there is probably an easier way of recording all these patterns - I had to do an entry for each view because of the different yardage requirements - but this seems to work. The headings for patterns are:
- Description & View - a brief description of the pattern and this particular view. I haven't put pictures in the spreadsheet, so this is to remind myself of which pattern I'm talking about.
- Item - what kind of item it is. Again, this is a bit of organisational geekery so I can group all my dresses or skirt suits together.
- Manufacturer - self-explanatory.
- Number & View - ditto that!
- Vintage? Whether or not it's vintage or a repro pattern or simply a modern one. I'm not sure why I put this in, really, just out of interest, I suppose! Plus it probably helps me to remember which pattern I'm talking about.
- Size and Recommended fabrics - self-explanatory.
- Fabric 115cm, Fabric 150cm - the metre-age required for each of these fabric widths. This is what I've sorted the spreadsheet by.
- Notions - notions, interfacing, lining, interlining, etc.
- Requires re-sizing? Notes on fitting.
- Fabric assigned (if any) - self-explanatory.
- Love rating (out of 5) - simply how much I bloody love the pattern, with 5 being adoration at first sight. The spreadsheet is sorted by this as a secondary sorting category.
What about you, are you organised in your sewing? If so, how do you do that?
