My semi-organized fabric

I had to trek to visit the auxiliary fabric storage this week, looking for some lining fabric for the dress I intend to finish this month.  Thought I'd share my organizing scheme--in hopes that I can motivate myself to get rid of the auxiliary stash (in the garage attic), or at least bring it into the house where I can visit it more easily.

Most of my fabric yardage is stored in Xerox paper boxes, labeled with a title like "red heart" or "gold star".  These are on a top shelf along one wall of my sewing room.  There are ten boxes there now (room for only 3 more boxes).

The key to knowing what is in each box is a fabric swatch, along with measurements and other identifying details, that I keep in one of those photo albums that you aren't supposed to use anymore for pictures.  You know, the ones with "magnetic" plastic overlays.

An example of items stored in the "red heart" box.  I always include width and yardage information; sometimes the card also gives fabric content, date and place purchased, or a project I intended to make with this fabric.

The Xerox boxes contain yardage that is larger than half-yard.  For quilting projects, I have fat quarters and scraps stored in clear plastic shoeboxes, arranged by color.  Here are the [orange/yellow/brown], [blue/green], and [white/cream/tan] boxes of scraps.

Any quilter's cotton smaller than half-yard and larger than about 12-by-12" is folded in one of the "fat quarter" shoeboxes.  These don't have an organizing scheme--but I only have three shoeboxes of fat quarters, so it doesn't seem that important to put them in any sort of order.  The shoeboxes stack and store nicely on open shelves in the sewing room.

There you have it.  I have seen other fabric storage methods, but this works well for me, both for the quantity and variety of fabric that I have, as well as the available space to store things.