How to organize your sewing for the year?
The start of the new year is an ideal time to tidy up your sewing room, sort through your belongings and take stock of all your current projects.
If your good resolution is to get better organized this year, here are a few tips to help you do just that!
Stocktaking
To start the year off on the right foot, why not begin by emptying the cupboards in your sewing corner? It’s a good opportunity to tidy up, sort and catalog your stock.
It’s a great way to find out if a fabric coupon you bought two years ago would be perfect for trying out that dress pattern you’ve been dying for!
To keep track of fabrics and patterns, you can use an application like Marguerite or NeedleMe. These two digital sewing books allow you to keep track of everything you have on hand: fabrics, patterns, haberdashery.
If you prefer paper, you can also use a blank or sewing notebook.
You can also opt for the Miss Cactus sewing project organizer, a modular PDF that you can print out at home. Perfect for planning, visualizing and keeping track of all your sewing. Ultra-complete and customizable, it lets you centralize your ideas, inventories and calendars in one place.
For scrapbookers, cut small swatches of fabric or bias tape and glue them onto the corresponding pages. This will give you an immediate visual idea of what you have available.
Taking stock of what you’ve got in stock means you don’t have to multiply your purchases, and you can resist fashion trends. You can combine patterns you already have with fabrics lying around in your closet. Or find a new sewing idea by putting away a bias or a set of buttons.
Really take the time to go through your inventory and make a list (on your app or in your notebook) of the projects that appeal to you by season. Such and such a jacket for spring, such and such a dress for summer, etc… This way, you won’t spread yourself too thin throughout the year by starting too many garments at once.
If you like spontaneity, you can always put aside one or two ideas and go for that coat pattern you hadn’t planned on.
Take a tour of your dressing room
It’s a good way to plan your sewing projects for the coming year, and to sort out your wardrobe. It allows you to take stock of the clothes you need.
For each category (pants, dress, jacket, coat, etc…), the idea is to list the garments you like and those you miss: an oversized jacket, a t-shirt in a certain color, a dress for summer… You can come and list these desires and compare them with the patterns or fabrics in your stock.
Sorting through your wardrobe also helps you identify your favorite pieces. For each garment, make a note of what you like: the cut, the color, the material… This will guide you in your future sewing projects and prevent you from embarking on projects that look good on others but won’t suit you.
If you like to challenge yourself, you can imagine your ideal capsule wardrobe (selecting a limited number of pieces per season). With a pattern and fabric for each piece, and sew it throughout the year. Once again, this way you don’t spread yourself too thin, and you only make useful clothes.
If you’re sewing for your children, you can do the same. Sort through their closets and ask them for their favorite pieces. This will give you a good idea of which sewings to choose for the coming months.
Making wish lists
When you spend a lot of time on fabric or pattern websites, you always have a thousand ideas for projects and desires. But when it’s time to get started, we sometimes completely forget where that great jacket pattern was that we’d fallen for two months before.
To avoid this, you can try keeping a wishlist, in a notebook, in your browser bookmarks or on an app. Identify the patterns and fabrics you like and arrange them by season for easy reference.
Having a wish list also allows ideas to settle. And to see if we still like that pretty dress a few weeks later!
How do you organize your future sewing projects? Do you plan your projects a few months in advance, or do you prefer to let yourself be inspired by the moment?
