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Friday, August 19, 2011

Organizing Quilt Books & Mags

Greetings!  While I was on the subject of sorting quilting books, patterns, magazines & everything quilty printable over at my favorite quilting list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CyberQuilters/, I thought I might as well share it here also.

Eventually, I had trouble finding my books, so I spread them over the table, and re-sorted them. The bottom two shelves have mags, sorted into those office binders, so I can pull out a binder and sift thru the mags. The contents of the binders used to be in a nice dated order, but that got away from me.


The next two shelves have quilting books. The small section on the left is being kept separated with a book end. It is a batch of books that I am ready to give away! Next quilt guild sale, I guess.

Then on top, you see all the school binders. They were my organization style in the beginning, in the days of printing patterns and blocks. I tried to toss out some of those contents during my re-organizing phase, but weakened out. I have a binder on seminole, on EQ, on Quilt University classes, some with templates or special patterns, etc. and then the ones I could 'almost' toss out.

Then I sorted my books by   "how I look for and use them".   This seems to be a key phrase in all things we collect and do. I have my Carol Doak books together, my gallery collections, like "Scrap Quilts books", the log cabin design books, applique stuff, paper piecing stuff  right next to the Carol Doak section, books with special techniques together. If I have several books from the same artist, I keep them together. Generally, I know what books I have.

Do you have a special way of organizing your pattern collection?



2 comments:

  1. I organize mine by Scrappy, Paper pieced, applique, Special (labels, photo), art, Collections, and then all the rest. Scrappy and "all the rest" are filed by author's name, but when the author's name is not well known, or a compilaton, they go to the front of that stack. I also have a place for books I either don't want (right now) and might give away, or if they don't interest me (right now). Those that don't interest me (right now) are saved for a long time, because invariably, when I get ready to give them up, I take a last peek, and something jumps out at me that seems tooooo good to discard. I LOVE my books and sometimes just like to hold them, smell them, slide my fingers over the photos - I know, almost sick! LOL

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  2. LOL. Hold them, smell them, slide my fingers over them....sounds just like what we do with our fabrics. It all plays together.

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