Fabric Stashes

If you are a crafter, and especially one who works with fabric, you probably have multiple stashes of fabric lying around from various projects you’ve completed. If you are like me, you have even more fabric from projects you haven’t even started yet.

I got to know the fabric department at the store I used to work at very well because my department was right next to it, and thus, I worked there practically every day cutting fabric while they were on break or backed up at the cutting table. During this time I got to familiarize myself with various types of fabric, what they’re used for, the difference between quilting weight and crap that might just dissipate if you ever washed it, and heavy weighted upholstery fabric. Needless to say all this was too much temptation and I would purchase a few yards of fabric each week with the intention of making something from it.

My favorite projects were making the bed spread for the futon in the guest room and the comforter in our bedroom because I love the fabrics used. They are a quality heavy upholstery weight with bold prints and 100% cotton. But the problem is I have so much leftover material I didn’t use that I bought for coordinating pillows and throws and other projects. While I am not so keen on how the comforter for our bedroom turned out, I love the quick fix I did for the box spring. You see, we have a sleigh bed and the box spring is partially seen, so I used an old white sheet and sewed on a coordinating fabric on either edge of it and tucked it into place. This way, because the comforter isn’t large enough to cover the box spring, another design element was added, and helped lower the amount of fabric I have stashed. Of course, I failed to mention that this particular fabric is a Waverly print with bees and dragonflies called Flea Market and I bought the entire bolt of 10 yards. Don’t judge! At $3.97 a yard, it was a bargain, especially since this fabric goes for over $10 a yard online.

Most of my stashes are organized into projects, or as I like to call them, coordinating fabrics I bought to do something with but I don’t know what yet. One of these projects was for a quilt, which I really like the color combinations, but don’t know if I necessarily want it for me. This may turn into an Etsy project just to use up the fabric, or maybe make it for a holiday bazaar if our church is indeed going to have one this year. When we had a birdhouse competition at church for a fundraiser, I did the example and used one of the fabrics as inspiration for the house. A lot of people don’t think about using fabric as design inspirations, but really it is the perfect choice to start with and make a cohesive statement.

While there are fabrics I haven’t seen in years because they are at the bottom of my guest room closet in plastic totes and are quite difficult to get to without taking everything else out of said closet, I also have a lot of scraps from multiple baby blankets. Looking at them all peeking out of plastic bags (my ghetto “organizing” system) I get the sense that they would much rather be organized better, like say either by color or pattern, and folded nicely in an easy to reach area, rather than under a folding table or shoved into the closet that has been terribly difficult to close for some time now due to the contents trying to free themselves. Something tells me it is time to pull everything out again, go through it all and try to organize it as best as I can, come up with a better system to find a particular line or individual fabric and get rid of anything I no longer want. Yes, it is time to finally do something about all this fabric… next week.