Lately all I think about is my stash, or at least since I started re-organizing my studio last month. It got me thinking about why I bought certain fabrics and the amount I bought of each. It also made me start thinking about how I should start buying fabric from now on.
This is a group of fabrics that I bought this past spring for a project
I want to do. I bought most of the fabrics from one fabric line (penelope from lakehouse dry goods) because I wanted the fabrics to play nice together without me having to give it much thought. But most of the time I purchased fabrics whenever the mood hit me. My taste in fabrics have evolved over the years and my stash does reflect it. I have Thimbleberries (civil war repro), I have 30's repro, I have brights, I have batiks, I have Kona cotton solids, I have novilties. I also bought yardage of nearly complete fabric lines...mostly that of Moda, and Benartex Nancy Halvorsen's collections.
This one was from Moda Birchwood Lane That I purchased for a French Braid quilt a few years back. But lately I am debating if these should just be fed into my regular stash and forget about the french braid quilt, after all I already did one and although it was fun, and quick the excitement to do another is no longer there.
When I first started longarming as a business, one of the first quilts I did for a local customer was "Jewel of the Prarie" that she found in a Fons & Porter mag. Wanted to do one ever since (one of the hazards of being a longarmer is that you end up wanting to make most of the quilts your customers bring to you to quilt). It took me several years to decide on my colorway for it, I wanted it to reflect where I live...the desert ;0) so when it ever gets finished (& there's no telling when that will be, lol) I will call it "Jewel of the Desert".
Then there are these fabrics...this was a fabric line (or what was left of one) that was dirt cheap... in the $3.98 a yard range at www.fabricshack.com
which I bought a few years back. Back then I had no clue what I was gonna do with them and to this day I still have no clue. Just know that I still want to keep them together for something.
These are only a glimpse of how I purchased fabric in the past. I also bought random yardage (mostly 1/2 yards or 1 yard cuts) of various fabrics when I found something I liked in the $3.98 a yard range at Fabric Shack.
But what I ended up with is alot of genres of fabric that I don't like much (for instance the 30 repros) thank goodness I don't have alot of them but enough of them that I don't ever want to purchase anymore of them. It also made me think about how I should purchase my stash in the future, which is why I am writing this post...to get you to think about it as well.
Let's face it fabric is getting more and more expensive and I have never seen the cost of it (the new lines of the latest styles) go down in price, they only go up. So most of us quilters are starting to rely on our stash more and more to keep us afloat in are quilting advetures. So I decided that the best way for me is to shop the sales (on-line or local quilt stores) and to purchase mostly tonals, blenders, in brights/whimsy, traditional, baticks & solids with an occasional floral or stripe thrown in (I like the look of stripes for bindings). Stick to fat quarters, 1/2 yd, & 1 yd cuts so I have a wider variety in my stash for scrap quilts instead of getting stuck with multiple yards of fabric that I end up not liking in the future.
Take a step back from your stash and really look at it...is it working for you?, Does it still inspire you? Or does it need to evolve like you have as a quilter. Ask yourself this one question...does your stash reflect how you quilt?
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