Attribute in Magnet for different product types?

Question

Magento

Attribute question. I can't figure out how to do it right. We are talking about Magento 1.9

There is a shop for fabrics and haberdashery. Initially, they did not understand how to add products correctly, and now all products in the store are not configurable.
There is a color attribute that is used for non-configurable products. In particular, in fabrics, several colors are allocated for each fabric. Those. One fabric can be in the filter for several colors.

Now we decided to change the structure and add configurable goods for many haberdashery products. You need to add several colors of the same product. As far as I understand, I cannot use the old color attribute for this purpose, because it is only used for non-configurable goods - fabrics.

How to do it right? Add another color attribute for haberdashery? Or to make changes to the old attribute and make it for simple and configurable products at the same time? So can you do it at all? After all, this attribute in the fabrics has a multiple choice.