Monthly decluttering post – finished quilts – 2022.02.25

In my January 16th post, I said that I will post about my decluttering activities at least once a month. I hope that by the end of the year, I will have accomplished a lot.

I have done a lot of decluttering in the past month, but mostly in other parts of my home other than my studio. I’m happy to say that in my studio, I have maintained the decluttering I did in January. I’m much better at putting things away after each project.

Lesson to be learned – I just spent an hour searching through the cupboards and drawers in my studio looking for a small quilt I finished in January. Eventually I found it in a stack of shipping envelopes. I’m pretty sure that happened when I was decluttering! So the lesson is to be careful when moving things around during a decluttering session.

That reminded me of a big project I did last year and did not post about. If I recall, it all started because I was looking for a quilt and couldn’t find it. I had been thinking about this project for some time, but had been putting it off because I know it would take a long time. I started in March 2021 and I think it took a couple of months to complete.

The project was to organize where all my quilts were stored – and make a record! – so I could find them easily in the future.

I pulled all my quilts out of their various storage places, and sorted them by size. There were about 90 of them. It took me a few days to do this, but I’m really happy with the result. I sorted them into 3 categories – small, medium and large.

Small-sized – 15″ x 15″ or smaller – these are in a green cloth bag. There are 33 of these, and room for more in the bag.

Medium-sized – 16″ to 20″ wide – I stored these in a 22″ x 50″ cloth garment bag and stored these under the bed. (The garment bag is lying on a large piece of cardboard, so I can easily slide it on the carpet. There are 27 quilts in the bag. It’s pretty full, so if I add more, I will have to start another bag.

Large-sized – wider than 20″ – I rolled these on pool noodles, about 5-8 quilts per roll, tied with cloth strips (selvedges). There are 5 pool noodles with a total of 30 quilts. These are stored on a closet shelf. I numbered each roll.

It was a big job to separate the quilts and store them. What took even more time was recording which group each quilt was stored in. Fortunately I already had an inventory spreadsheet listing all my quilts. (I’m a bit of a spreadsheet geek).

It has the following columns, and I use the Filter feature to sort the list in various ways.

• date made (yyyy.mm)
• name or description of the quilt
• binder (I file paperwork, sketches, notes in page protectors and file those in binders)
• size (width, height and square inches)
• stored (this new column tells me where to look for the quilt)
• location (if a quilt is at a show, has been donated or sold)

A few months later, I consider this a very successful project. When I need to locate a quilt, I find it on my spreadsheet, which tells me exactly where to find the physical quilt.

I hope this gives you some ideas of how to organize and inventory your quilts. If you have any suggestions for organizing finished quilts, please leave a comment below

I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.

• Quilt Fabrication Midweek Makers
• Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday