More stash loving

Wednesday 6 March 2013
from Pinterest of course!
I am so pleased that (most of) you love your stashes, big or small, and I happily accept your admiration for mine! Although I'm sorry Lesley S for destroying that nice image in your head of my neat fabric stash, hopefully I can get back to that state soon.

Actually all of your comments have given me a new perspective, I no longer think of my fabrics as a stash or a hoard but rather as a collection and essential tools of my trade.  As Stephanie said, it's not like we can sew without fabrics.  And now that I've been clearing out the less lovely pieces it's become a carefully curated collection, only containing those pieces I love (clearly I have a large capacity for love ha haha).  But unlike the stamp collector who'll never post a letter with them, or the wine collector who'll never drink a bottle or even the vintage toy collector that will never play with the toys I do actually plan to one day, piece by piece, use as much of my collection as I can.

And the final word on the collection goes to Paola (who has recently started her very own sewing blog La Sartora), who so wisely said that it's better to spend your money on the things that make you happy.

Jane at BallesBazaar - we're planning to sell our house in spring this year (6 short months eek!) so that we can build a new house for my husband's parents to live with us.  They are both getting quite elderly and need more care than we can give them since they live so far away.  Plus my husband is the first born son of Chinese parents, so it's sort of expected.  I really like my inlaws so I don't mind the planned living arrangement, and I've already told my husband that a large sewing studio for me is non negotiable, so whilst I'll be temporarily packing up the stash while we build it will be totally worth it in the long term.

As to the cataloguing of my collection I'm afraid I have no impressive tip to share.  I'm going the very low tech route of using an excel spreadsheet with photos inserted into the row, listing the width, length, fabric type and cost/place of purchase if I can remember it.  I did think about using the FabricStashXL app to record it all, but I have read mixed reviews about it's functionality on the iPad so for now I'm sticking with good old excel, especially since over the years I have kept a few scattered records in excel that I'm going to amalgamate.  Plus with excel I could in theory, if I wanted to, calculate exactly how much fabric I have (do I want to know exactly though?).

Far - the fabrics on the bolts are mostly bought from The Remnant Warehouse, a fabric shop here in Sydney that sells fabric by the roll for quite reasonable prices, especially on their two for one Tuesdays.  I also ask at the fabric stores for any empty tubes they don't want so I can use them for storage of slippery fabrics or really long lengths of fabrics, and I've quite often found bolts of fabrics from opshops too.

I'm in the midst of sewing a dress from the fabric I bought at the first Sydney social sewists meet up last year but had to pause while I searched for and and then prewashed some grey lining material.  Perfect timing to clean up the grey shelf, which looked like this before:



And now looks like this:


Hmmm, you all know how much I love my grey fabrics so there's no surprise that this shelf is still pretty full after a clean out.  But at least it's neat and tidy once more.

17 comments:

  1. I think it is great you get on with your inlaws and I think it is doubly great that they will be moving in with you. How wonderful for Anna and Toby to have some Grandparents at hand to love them in that special way. My sisters and I had no Grandparents around us (my Day was orphaned at a young age) and I was 15 when we saved and had our last remaining Grandparent (my Mum's Dad) come from Cyprus to live with us for 6 months. To give perspective to how big a deal this was - my Grandfather was 80 and never been in an aeroplane before or left his country and spoke only one word of English - water!

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  2. You don't want to total that yardage, trust me. I've got an Excel spreadsheet for my yarn collection & the total is prety horrific.

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  3. Your stash is incredible! Only semi related, but that picture made me laugh -- the nice older lady at the fabric store asked me what I was making recently when I was buying a couple quarter yards and I had to go "oh this and that" because I just couldn't tell her I was making underwear! lol

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  4. I have just started reading Dressing the Queen...and she has a fabric stash! Some of it going back as far as the 60's! You are in good company.

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  5. Your stash is amazing and enviable! I wanted to chime in because we also live with parents (mine). We have separate apartments/entrances as well as separate kitchen/bath etc. It's a wonderful arrangement for all of us - the children love being around their grandparents (and vice versa), going out for an evening is no big deal at all (in-house babysitter!) and the care, company and (still little) assistance my parents need is no big deal at all while sharing a house, but it would be if we had to commute/travel to see them. Good luck with your move!

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  6. Hi Kristy. I love your stash. It is an Aladdin's cave of dreams and possibilities. I use a programme called Springpad to store all my fabric and patterns. It works well on my MacBook Air as well as my iPad and iPhone. I haven't tried it on a PC but it is probably Ok. The advantage is that the info is stored online so you cane access it wherever you are. Easy and simple to use.

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  7. A sewing studio would be non-negotiable for me too! I really should put my stash into an Excel spreadsheet as well. I am even more low-tech/no-tech than that. All of mine has a piece of paper pinned to it that tells how much, when purchased, cost and from where. Maybe someday soon I can work on an Excel spreadsheet. :)

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  8. Ive started rolling my fabrics and keeping them together with a rubber band. Then when you go rifling through it looking for the perfect one, you don't mess them all up. It's brilliant!

    Bettina
    www.littleoldsouls.com

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  9. You're a great Mum and daughter and it just happens that you love fabric too. It's all good Kristy.
    I hope the building process goes smoothly for you all.

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  10. Carry on Kristy... you are doing great! I'm sure your in-laws love you too. Bit by bit and you'll have it done... and just think, someone will be loving the fact that they found just the right fabric at the local thrift shop to use for some project or other! Nice to feel like your helping out the economy also!

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  11. Thanks for the info Kristy! I will keep my eyes on.the lookout for those rolls! :)

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  13. You're so lucky you get on with your in-laws! My brother and his family tried living with our mum but it pretty much sucked horribly for everyone and they called it off. I definitely refuse to try living with her because she has a tendency to me me go bugshit crazy. so we two offspring are just doing our best to keep her independent until we are forced to go further down that path...

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  14. precious that you have such great relationships with your inlaws.
    COngrats on the progress you are making tidying your stash. I hope you keep the pictures coming - to encourage you of course - nothing to do with fact I am a sticky beak and love seeing other peoples fabric stashes !

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  15. Lucky you! I would love for our in-laws to live with us, if you get along well it's so special to have multi-generational living.

    I'm totally going to have a stash clean up :(

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  17. Ooh I love grey fabrics, your stash is lovely!
    I'm tidying up my sewing cupboard today and weeding out some junk that managed to find its way into an area designated for fabric. Feels good to be organised, at least in that area of my life!

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