TUTORIAL: how to fold and store your fabric yards using comic book boards

I store my fabric (one yard or more) in an IKEA billy bookcase.  This is their tall version with glass doors, which comes with adjustable shelves as well.

I use acid-free archival-safe comic book boards to fold my fabric around instead of those expensive plastic boards sold by big quilt stores. They do not ruin your fabric and are easy to find.  You can even write on them with pencil crayon, cover by scotch tape, to identify your fabric, its price, and place of purchase.

They come in packages of 100 and I get them here in Canada for around $6 cad.  I use 2 boards for each kind of fabric.

I don't like my fabric wrinkly or inaccessible and so this is my perfect solution.  I also like to be able to quickly count my multiple yards and so this tutorial will show you how to do that, easily keeping track of your glorious yardage :)

ok, so I will demonstrate using some Amy Butler Coriander in pink, of which I have 4.75 yards left; this tutorial works with any piece of fabric 1 yard or more (I even have a 15 yard bundle folded this way).  I fold my FQs or smaller, on a different shelf.

First, I take my LONG piece and fold it SELVAGE to SELVAGE, pressing it smooth, so there will be no wrinkles.

I line one end up with the edge of my OLFA cutting board and let the rest hang off onto my semi-clean floor. :)

so it is lined up with the end of my cutting board and then folded over; this piece of fabric is exactly 1 yard!!

then I take the LONG end hanging over the edge, and fold it over pressing at the left end, like an accordion.

here you can see where the left side is lined up; now bring it over to where you started and continue doing this for each end.

don't forget to smooth out the wrinkles and try to be as accurate as you can measuring out your yard lengths.

just keep folding over back and forth until you are done.

now since this piece was 4.75 yards, my last yard didn't quite make it, but this makes that last yard easy to count in a hurry, just by opening this up.

you can see here that I have 4 full yards and that top one.

here is the close up of how to count your yards...

the opposite end, furthest away from me, is all the selvages

I then take the top part and fold it over in half

I do it this way because I am really picky and don't want to see the selvages and this way they are hidden in the inside fold

your fabric should now look like this

now take one comic book board and bring it in about 4 inches

fold the end of the fabric over it

roll the fabric in on itself making it kind of tight, but not enough to bend the boards

perfect, now leave this side

now to work on the other end.  

put down the comic book board about an inch away from the fold... 

then flip it over; basically you are eyeball measuring how far you need to be away from the other fold to really line it all up.

now that you are 1 board away from the middle, fold about 4 inches of fabric around that end

and fold that over again towards the middle

now VOILA! you have a perfect, rigid, fabric "book" that you can shelve into your bookcase.

and file this puppy away; unwrinkled, easy to count, and gorgeous to look at :)

as you can see, now that you know that fabric is almost 5 yards, you can pretty easily count your whole stash at a glance, knowing what you should buy...

who am I kidding, you ALWAYS need more fabric!!!

hope this helps and feel free to leave a comment, thanks :)