I have a lot of ribbons.
I realized recently just how often I use ribbons on cards and other papercrafts—I love wrapping matted quotes with ribbons, adding a bow as a finishing touch or length of twine around the fold of a card. Ribbons just add a nice sense of texture and softness to a project.
Last weekend we had a long Easter weekend. My studio was in need of some de-clutter, so I enlisted my preschooler to help me tame my stash of ribbons, most of which were escaping their regular storage place. She’s excellent at sorting color (until she got bored) as well as helping herself to a few of the “fancy” ribbons.
I know there are loads of cute and Pinterest-worthy ways to store your ribbons—check online and you’ll see organizers and cubbies and repurposed skirt hangers. I love the way they look but recognize that with a preschooler and two cats, the ribbons need to be tucked away somewhere, not hanging temptingly from an easy-to-unroll spool. Plus, most of my ribbons are not on spools, as I often buy them by the yard.
Here’s how I have mine grouped: By color (general color) in large plastic zipper bags.
I have one for each main color: Blue, brown, pink, and so on. I don’t work much with yellow or orange so those go together in one bag. Gray goes in with black. Patterned ribbon with two colors goes in the bag of the dominant color.
Here they are!
The bags are kept inside a 3-drawer rolling storage trolley I bought at IKEA several years ago. They take up two drawers. The trolley is right next to my work table, so when I need a ribbon I can just open a drawer, pull out the bag and choose a ribbon. Snippets go back in the bag after I’ve cut what I need.
The aerial view!
And from the front.
My weekend organizing was mostly because I’d had two drawers’ worth of ribbons crammed into one—you can imagine the chaos of pulling out one bag and inadvertently pulling out two more, and the fun of trying to stuff the drawer closed! So I had to clear out that bottom drawer, which was full of That Stuff You Keep—you know, the stuff you don’t know what to do with. Well, I figured out what to do with it (more organizing there) and freed up the space. It’s amazing how good it can feel to tackle something like this!
How do you organize your ribbons? I’d love to hear!
