DIY Fabric Bolts {Tutorial}

My fabric was a MESS...

I had all my fabric in these cube organizers:

The problem was that I couldn't see all of it at once, so I'd end up digging through it and creating a mess. At one point it was all folded nicely, but it quickly turned into a case of it just being shoved into the cubes.

Then I saw this: 

Source: surecancraft.blogspot.com via Erin on Pinterest

Foam posterboard was used to create mini fabric bolts to organize this fabric. Genius! 


I'm all about using what I have, though, and I didn't have any foam posterboard around. So what else do I have a lot of that I could use? Diaper boxes! They're great boxes, so I have a hard time throwing them away. So, I gathered a couple up (I also had a wipes box).

I broke down the box, so I could lay it out flat.

Since I have little hands that would pull fabric off shelves, I decided I still wanted to keep my fabric in the cubes, so I measured the cubes. Then I measured and drew lines on the boxes to create pieces of cardboard that would fit in the cubes. I just used a ruler and a Sharpie to create the lines.

It's at this point that I took a break to run to the store or something, and when I got back to working on the project, the sun was down. Soooo...we're missing a couple pictures here, but I'm sure you can use that imagination. :-)

I cut along the lines I had drawn to create my cardboard pieces.

Then, since I didn't use that pretty foam posterboard, I wrapped each piece in wrapping paper. I did it inside out, so they would all be white. This was more time consuming than I thought, so I stopped here for the night. In the morning the sun came out (yay!), so I was able to take a picture of my hard work the night before:

I should have taken a picture here, but it's pretty easy to explain. I folded each type of fabric, so it was not quite as wide as the cardboard pieces. Then, I attached one end of the fabric to the cardboard with a straight pin, wrapped the fabric until I came to the end, and attached the end to the cardboard with a straight pin. 

I combined smaller pieces of fabric on one cardboard bolt.

Then I put all the bolts in my cube! I actually was able to fit more fabric in a cube than when I was just piling it in there.

I'm so  happy with how they turned out, and it's going to be so much easier to find my fabric now!

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