How I Organize Quilt Pieces

You know that beginning phase of a quilt where you have a bajillion little pieces, usually several of each kind? How do you keep them sorted, relatively wrinkle-free, and easy to collect together and take to sew days or retreats? Here’s what I’ve been doing lately.

I am working on this pattern called Winter Solstice by Patti Carey. I am making it in shades of blues and teals instead of the grays pictured. Pictured above is a stack of paper plates. Each plate contains one set of pieces. See the below image for more detail.

So for each type of piece, I have one plate. I just write on the rim of the plate which fabric and piece type it is to help me double check that I have the right one as I’m putting together the quilt. When I start a new quilt, I reuse the same set of plates by just crossing out the old information and writing in the new information — that’s why you see some plates with old information crossed out already.

When I’m traveling to a sew day or a retreat, I just stack up all of the plates and bring them along. I really like Artbin Super Satchels, this is how I store most of my projects when I’m not actively working on them.

That’s it! Quick and easy, hope it helps. I originally heard this tip from Libs Elliott, so thanks to her. If you have other ideas for storing quilt pieces, I’d love to hear them!