Stash Additions & Thoughts on Stashing

Even though I've been on a craft budget recently, due to some charity shop luck and a birthday (way back in March!), some new fabrics have entered my stash.

First of all the charity shop finds:

Double bed sheet (M&S, polycotton, £2.99 I think) Like many old sheets it's seen time as a dust sheet so there are some paint splatters and some worn bits. I was thinking a simple gathered skirt but I might have enough for a summer dress, plus I could cut around the unusable areas

Then I had a very lucky find at one of my regular charity shop haunts which had been given a donation of boxes of fabric with each piece being sold at £2.49 regardless of length or fabric type. There were some lovely quality pieces of fabric but I only picked up the pieces I really thought I would use. This was in part influenced by the fact that the fabric had come from the stash of a lady who'd died. It feels wrong to let it sit in my fabric for too long - it should be used and loved

 This photo doesn't do justice from the amazing electric blue colour of this wool. About 1.5 metres for £2.49, the same price as the next 3 pieces

 Some cotton fabric, a few metres. Unfortunately I made the mistake of washing it with another non-colourfast fabric which bled blue-green dye into it.....sigh...so the white flowers are a bit grey now. It really reminds me of some curtains we had in our house when I was growing up and the yardage is pretty narrow but I can see it working as a skirt

 I was really taken by this fabric, printed with motifs from the artwork of Georges Braque. It is by Makower fabrics, which is not a name I'd heard before but they are well known for quilting and craft fabrics. This fabric is definitely suitable for a dress though as it's a lovely quality and quite soft. I can't see it as anything except a typical fitted 50s dress (or maybe a shirt dress) with a full skirt, can you?

 I got 90cm of this fabric which I think might be silk twill. It feels delicious in any case and I find the print intriguing - vintage-style nursery rhyme illustrations and letters on black. Black?! Immediately it struck me as a quirky Liberty print but that would be incongruous age-wise with the rest of the stash fabrics on sale which were 80s/90s. Anyway, I should be able to squeeze some kind of top out of it.

This IS Liberty (Tana Lawn), one of three fabrics I got from Mandors on my birthday as a gift from my Current Husband and using vouchers from my In-laws. I got plenty to make a dress and I think this is a lovely fabric for Spring/Summer though I do wonder that I chose something so subdued when faced with racks of lovely Liberty fabrics. I'm not usually a 'fabric before pattern' type of sewer so I think I was erring on the side of caution here. Nonetheless, it will be a delight to sew with.

Mushroom print voile - too cute and I love mushrooms. Will make a great top and I possibly have enough to squeeze a dress although I think the beige colour may be unflattering as a dress without clever use of the orange-red to accent

Gorgeous green silky poly to make a half slip, which is much needed and I really, really have to prioritise making (but won't).

It's nice to add a few more fabrics to the stash (collection?) and I have plenty from which to choose - currently about 3 drawers of fabric which is a good amount. There are some things that have been in there a couple of years but I feel confident that I will still actually use them. I did a good de-stash before baby Kestrel was born and got rid of fabrics that I thought I was unlikely to use. If you don't love it, why hang on to it?

At the beginning of the year, when sewers often make rash promises about not acquiring fabric/patterns and such-like, Kristin of K-Line wrote an interesting post about why she is not on a stash diet.  One of her points being that it's great to have some kind of stash for when the mood strikes you to sew, and particularly have a stock of fabrics that you usually sew with, be it knits or wovens. A stash full of fancy silk that you're too scared to touch or wool that needs dry cleaned is not an efficient stash. I definitely have some 'special' fabrics that I have still decide what I'm going to make with them but on the whole I have a 'collection' of fabrics that I'm excited to sew with. Now, just to get the time to sew - if only I could build up a stash of sewing time then things would be great.

K x