On the weekend a bunch of friends had a refashioning day. We met at 11am then, after I showed them some clothing I’d refashioned as examples of what can be done, we headed to Savers. I didn’t find anything I wanted but I already had a few garments awaiting work so I didn’t mind.

By the end of the day the most sewing I’d done was adding elastic to a skirt waistband and unpicking the waistband of another skirt. However, we did lots of brainstorming. It was a fun day and it was so nice to hang out with friends again.

One friend had filled her car boot with fabric to destash and I picked up three pieces. The next day, while packing things away, I decided I had to come up with better fabric storage than the two big plastic tubs I was using. They are too heavy for me, and though they’re on the bottom shelf of the cupboard and have wheels there’s not enough space in front of the cupboard to roll them out onto the floor.

I did an image search of the internet for fabric storage ideas and one suggestion that kept coming up was keeping fabric in a filing cabinet. That reminded me of the hanging file storage bins I’d bought years ago when we were renovating and I needed to keep certain documents at hand rather than in storage. They were useful when we moved here, too, but had languished in the garage since.

So I brought them inside and washed off the dust and cobwebs. Then I set about taking fabric out of plastic zip lock bags in the tubs and refolding it to better fit the hanging files. I labelled everything and shuffled a few things in the cupboard to fit better. The boxes are light enough for me to carry and I like the result:

They divide the fabric into “heavy”, “light”, “lining and structural” and “projects”. But there is one problem. See that pile of fabric in front of the cupboard? Well, while most of it is calico to use when testing patterns, the rest is fabric batches too big to fit in the filing boxes: a very long length of corduroy and some thick light brown denim.

I may have to switching from refashioning to sewing from scratch, in order to reduce the fabric stash enough that I can get everything in the cupboard.