Organizing

I'm not a very organized person. And when I see pictures of an adequate pattern filing system, fabric storing system etc. I'm impressed. Because it always looks (is) so organized, and I'm feeling awkward, because I lack that ability.
My (small) fabric collection is in a closet and a drawer, and oh yes, one box with lingerie fabrics. But they're not labeled, I don't carry swatches with me all the time for when I'm in a shop and might find the correct matching fabric or garment. Well, that's just me, and I've accepted for myself that I'm like that.

There's only one thing I would like to improve. I do have a subscription to BWOF since about a year, and own a few of the years before. And when I see a pattern that I like to make sometime, till now I used post-its sticking out. But with the increasing number of magazines, it's difficult to keep track of my favorites.

Yesterday someone in de Burda English group wrote a post of scanning the line drawing pages and give them a tag to easily find them back on your computer. Good idea. But then I thought of the screenshots I make of pictures and linedrawings for my reviews and on this blog, I thought of a system that would organize my favorite BWOF patterns. And on the computer I'm pretty organized :-)










This is the idea: make a computer picture of the picture or line drawing of the pattern and store the picture in a folder with the type of garment (skirt, pants, blouse etc). When you show miniatures in Explorer, you easily see the patterns that you liked in the issues you have.
For me it is now taking a bit of time to make the files, but once I've done that, it will take me only a couple of minutes each month to update my inspiration folders.

I use a special program for screenshots (which I use for my work too), but you don't need to have that to make the files as in the picture above. In my next post I'll write an instruction how to do this with the default Paint program.