In a previous yarn university post I discussed the different types of yarn fibers and described their drape.  I think it is important to talk about the difference between drape and droop.

Drape takes advantage of natural fiber and fabric properties to make something look good.  Droop is when the fibers do something undesired and make it look like crap.

Wedding dresses drape, flour sacks droop.

Quality cotton and wool yarns will drape and retain their shape.   Cheap yarns and unfortunately acrylics have the tendency to droop.  If you are going to spend hours and hours on a project do what you can to make a quality finished project.  Pick the correct yarns for the situation and avoid a droop disaster.

Once you start growing your stash you are going to need to organize it too.  This will make it more pleasant to look at, but will also increase the odds of you using something.

You are going to have to group your stash by like items such as beads, tools, paper, and yarn.  However, at some point you are going to have more than just a few items and sub category organization will be necessary.  In some cases you will be able to apply all the types of organization to your stash, the more categorization the easier it will be to find that perfect something.

By color-If you have a lot of an item organizing by color makes it easier to find like items, say a bunch of buttons or beads, as well as making it more attractive to look at and allow you to be picky when selecting different shades.  If it is attractive you are more likely to use it.  I dropped an organized box of beads once, I found I didn’t want to use them digging through to find each bead that matched.  I ended up spending a week sorting them back out, now I use them again.  My step-mom gave me a bag of dyed wool roving she got for free at a garage sale (great find!).  I didn’t use any of it until I sorted it by color.

By type- Sort things by type as well.  What kind of bead is it?  A seed bead, large glass beads, etc?  Sort things like yarn by weight and fiber content so you can reduce your choices by those variables for a particular pattern.  Same goes for fabric, I generally have my fabric sorted into 108″ wide fabrics, decorator fabrics, specialty fabrics and cottons.  Then they are then sorted by color as well.

By use- I have an entire box for kid crafts and one for adhesives.  If I am looking for glue, I go to the adhesives box to look through my different kinds of glue.  The kids crafts have things like sequins, pipe cleaners, pom-pom etc. that my son enjoys while doing crafts.  That way I can put the whole bin on the kitchen table for him without having to go back and forth and clean up is a breeze.