From the Fig & the Pear: Practical Quilty Organization Tips – EYELET SWATCH CARDS

Well Happy New Year everyone and welcome to what for many of us is… Organization Month! :-).

We are happy to introduce you to a new series of bimonthly posts where we tackle… you guessed it, QUILTY ORGANIZATION and we need your help!

I am looking for a fun name for this blog series… something catchy to do with organizing, it can be just informative or catchy or funny! Please help us out in comments with some name suggestions for this series!

Without a name this is just going to be the first up in our ORGANIZATION TIPS [see… so boring :-)]. You can look forward to hearing about how we organize fabric, notions, our programs and ourselves for quilting.

To start us off, Susan has a visually fun & super effective way of helping us with our EYELET basics this year. Now that EYELET is officially here to stay, we might as well organize ourselves with using it, right?

FROM SUSAN

We’ve all been there before when starting a new project. The focus fabric was easy to choose, we slowly added some complementary small-scale prints, and chose the perfect striped or gingham binding.  We stepped back, thinking we are all finished and then we realize we are short one or two fabrics.  The fabric pull needed an accent of some sort – something that will blend in nicely with all our other favorite Fig Tree prints and round out the project.  The fabric would not try to steal the show, but quietly play a supplemental role and letting the other fabrics shine.  Joanna designed her new line of Eyelet Basics for just those occasions.

Although I had pre-ordered some of the Eyelet collection to add to my stash, I knew there was going to be a time when I would need to pick up another Eyelet fabric or two for rounding out a fabric pull.  I didn’t want to be guessing at what color I thought might look the best (Does Leaf match better or is it closer to Grass?) and so I picked up a Mini Charm Pack and decided to make an Eyelet Basics Swatch Ring.  I wanted a way to keep all my swatch cards organized and in one place, labeled with the color name and number for easy reference, and still be able to pull them apart to match and coordinate colors. This checked all those boxes!

To Make an Eyelet Basic Swatch Ring:

Materials:

• Mini Charm Pack of Eyelet Basics
• Paper Tags
• Permanent Adhesive Tape (Tombow or something similar)
• Binder Ring
• Ribbon for an accent

First, measure your tags.  The tags I had at home measured around 2 ¼” wide, so I needed to trim my mini charms to fit.  I played around with the sizes a bit and trimmed all my fabric squares to 2 1/8” x 2 ¼” using my pinking shears rotary cutter blade.  I also trimmed about ½” off the end of the tag to keep the tags a more manageable size and easier to work with.

Then, add some permanent adhesive tape to each paper tag and place the fabric swatch on top. I opted for adhesive tape as opposed to glue to keep each swatch laying nice and flat and not add any bumps or bubbles that can happen when using glue.  A permanent gluestick would also work well.

I finished the project by writing the color name and number on the back of the card for easy reference and attached them to a binder clip I found in my craft bin.  For added cuteness, I added a small decorative bow from the Moda twill tape that comes attached around a fabric bundle or jelly roll.

HINT: To find the fabric reference numbers, I pulled up Joanna’s FABRICS link on her website HERE . What you will find is a list of all the collections Joanna has ever designed in descending order. So as she adds new collections, those will be at the top. Click on EYELET and you will get a download of swatches. As a bonus you will see any projects she has designed with that collection too!

The ring is small enough for me to carry around in my purse when I am out shopping at my LQS and self-contained, so it doesn’t get lost in my sewing room.  It will be easy to add additional tags as Joanna expands the line and adds new colors and background print options. 

This project took me under 30 minutes to make, and I have already used it twice to play around with color combinations and identify which Eyelet Basic would be the perfect choice to complete my project.  Let us know if you make one too!

**Note: Mini Charm Packs are often only available with the initial release of the Basics collections.  If you are unable to find one, you can cut fabric swatches from your stash or a larger precut for the same results!

-Susan