I would like to start off by saying… this is not my house. I have neither this much fabric nor this much room in my house, but it does belong to a good friend of mine who was away and I thought I’d surprise her with a belated birthday present (I told her on her birthday that I was working on something, and her husband knew!). And so you don’t have to scroll all the way to the bottom if you just want to see how far we got (and not listen to me blathering on), here are the finished parts:
(West Wall)
(North Wall)
Now, to start at the beginning… when my friend moved into this house she had a grand plan of fabric storage on these rolling wire shelves, but most of the fabric she likes is slippery so folding and stacking didn’t work, and the shelves didn’t have sides or backs, so everything just slid everywhere.
(North Wall, starting condition)
(West Wall, starting condition, looking north from halfway down, the problem was there were shelves in the middle and the clothing racks were in the way so I couldn’t get far enough back to see the whole thing at once)
(West Wall, starting condition, looking south)
(Blue shelf #1, in the middle of the room)
(Blue shelf 2, also in the middle of the room, back to back - as much as it could be with the support pole there - with blue shelf 1)
I bought 5 of the 5x5 IKEA Kallax shelves, and after swearing my way through one, called in reinforcements. My husband came and helped me put two together the first day (Wednesday the 1st) and two together on Friday.
I did line the backs with the leftover cardboard, I’m not sure if it will fully stay in place but I hope it helps a little with the fallout.
One friend said she didn’t know why I was doing it because it looked organized as it was (she did later say the after pictures are amazing) but as we were moving shelves we found escapees everywhere…
And I also have pictorial evidence of why we were rolling everything…
(How it was loosely rubber banded as we pulled it off the shelf)
(Neatly wrapped and rolled!)
So on Wednesday we did get the first of the shelves in, the two that go on the North wall. I took daily progress pics that I kept sending to her husband, but this post is going to be long enough, so just imagine the cubes loading up one by one…
It was as satisfying as it sounds to walk in there and see that!
I took Wednesday and Thursday off work, and was at her house from 8-5, then was there 8-5 on Friday (holiday!) and Saturday, as well. I also took bags of fabric home to roll in the evenings to spend some time at my house and make dinner and walk and play with the dog… so four solid days of 12-13 hours each.
(She’s a mouthy one, and does not like to be ignored!)
I found a lot of memories, including so many fabrics with JoAnn on the selvages and this bag!
Sunday I ran over there for about two hours to switch out rolled fabric for unrolled fabric, and put in maybe 5-6 hours of work at home.
Monday it was back to work, but I stopped by after work to switch out bags and put more away, same as on Tuesday (so maybe 3 hours each day?). Then Wednesday I am texting with her husband and he mentions they will be home ON THURSDAY (we were counting on having until Saturday). I frantically tell my boss I need the afternoon off and spend 5 hours rolling and sorting fabric… only to find out, no, just kidding, it’ll be on Monday.
I kinda took most of Thursday off, only spending about 2 hours rolling, then ran by on Friday to swap fabrics and spend another few hours rolling at home. Saturday I was there at 8, worked until 1, had another place to be from 1-5, then was back at it until about 8. Took fabric home for Sunday and it was the last push to drop stuff off on Monday afternoon before they got back late Monday night.
There are two shelves still unsorted/rolled (and, honestly, we ended up moving a lot of the kinda okay rolled stuff over just to get it done, but I know it could be condensed more, but we can deal with that as we move into fine-tuning the sorting, you know, separating the violets from the lavenders and whatnot).
I would like to replace this shelf with a smaller Kallax that will fit in that spot, this one has the tiny bits, the cotton, and some unsorted fabrics.
This shelf is still in the middle of the room and we could either replace one of the craft shelves along the wall with a Kallax and store the boxes on that shelf on top, or replace it with a Kallax there? I don’t know. But still need to roll and sort that fabric.
Last but not least, I made some signs to leave at her house. These I left upstairs…
And these I left downstairs. I taped a $5 bill to the whale one. I forgot to mention I’d promised the shelving that was in there to her husband, to help organize the garage - but not only did we not have time, it was so so so hot all this week, there was zero chance we were working out in the garage!
They came back late last night, and I’ve not yet heard from her (jetlag and the time difference, not surprised, plus she knows I’m at work all day) but I really think she’ll be happy with it?
(I also realize I’ve been saying we, and while my husband helped with the shelving, another friend was the one helping with the rolling and sorting, and while she couldn’t be there as much as I was, there is no way I could have gotten this much done without her!)
I estimate this was 83 hours of my life, in 13 days… along with those 36 hours I actually worked.
…Monday night was I asleep by 9pm. 
There’s still a lot of work to do, but I honestly feel so much lighter and happier walking into that room now!
