how to store an out of control pattern collection

After not buying any sewing patterns for a long time, a few (ok maybe a lot) sewing patterns have followed me home lately from various sources - the free ones I scored from the lovely Kaye, a whole bunch I bought for 50c from the Salvos on Dale St in Brookvale (northern beaches ladies get yourself there pronto, they had heaps of patterns the other day) and I bought this Vogue one from brand new from Spotlight today:

Isn't it gorgeous? I only bought it because they were having a $15 Vogue pattern sale - patterns are certainly much much dearer here in Australia than they are in the US. If we had 99c pattern sales here I think I would firstly faint from over excitement, and then have a bigger problem storing my patterns than I already do!

Anyway, since patterns are so expensive, although most of mine are vintage patterns collected from various sources, I hold on to them and never get rid of any, even really ridiculously ugly ones. I like to think of them as a fashion history sourcebook. At last count I have about 700 (gulp!) ranging from the 1940s onwards, although I seem to have the most from the 60s and 70s. Which of course poses a big problem of where to put them and how to find them.

A long time ago I did a post on using the Ikea Aneboda chest of drawers to store sewing patterns in. In fact it may be how some of you found my blog in the first place, because after Erin over at A Dress A Day linked to my post my traffic went way up. This is what the drawers look like:

The Aneboda fits sewing patterns in perfectly, although if you shove too many into like I did, the weight gets too much the flimsy masonite board bottom of the drawers, and they'll bow outwards like this:

I got my handy husband to screw in some timber supports across the bottom like this, using some L-shaped brackets so that the screws aren't visible from the front:

And now the draws are back to normal and are strong enough to hold the patterns in. But I had run out of room for any more patterns so I trotted off to Ikea to buy a second set of drawers, and now I have a draw for each pattern company. I whacked a few labels on the draw fronts and now I know where every one is. The drawers are the perfect depth for the big Vogue pattern envelopes to stand up:

and are the right width for smaller pattern envelopes like my Simplicity patterns to fit five rows across.

Perfect! The only annoying thing is that the light beech colour drawers I bought in the first place aren't available anymore, only white, which offends my matchy matchy tendencies....

Each pattern is stored in numerical order, according to the pattern company. I also have scanned the envelope front of each one and have it saved to a USB key, so I can quite easily browse through the patterns without having to physically flick through each one. Plus I can look at them anywhere since it's on a USB key, and I quite often spend a lunch hour at work daydreaming of which patterns I'd like to make.

For BWOF patterns I scan the magazine pages that have all the styles on the one page (both line drawings and photos), and for the patterns that I have traced, I print out a picture of the technical drawing downloaded from the Burda site, glue it onto an envelope front and they also go into a pattern drawer too. Too easy!

So my pattern drawers, combined with my giant wall of fabric really makes me feel like I have my own little fabric shop happening!

Anyway I hope this gives you some hints for getting your stash under control - now that I have them packed in so neatly they take up hardly any room at all. And there's room for more......