The Stash

I just posted about giving away 60 yards of fabric in my last post. That generated some comments and questions about how much fabric is in my stash. Well, this morning I toured my sewing room and the nether regions of my basement - anyplace that part of my stash could be hiding. I am embarrassed. I kept finding more and more and more. What follows is a photo-laden tour of my stash. As always, the photos are clickable. O and I did not clean up the room. It really does look like this. Here goes.

When you first come into the room and close the door you will see this. This is the corner behind the door. I have an Iris cart absolutely stuffed with sock yarn. There are two bolts of fabric there on the floor under my shawl and the Bo-Nash Bonding Agent that are hanging on the wall. I notice a FQ on top of the Iris cart that needs to go into the giveaway pile. On the shelf (pay attention you Primatives Girls!) are 3 (three!) brand new bolts of homespun (24 yards each) with boxes of Kabinet Wax, parchment paper and freezer paper nestled in around them. See the little green fabric basket hanging from the shelf? That hold little bits and bobs of ribbon for I don't know what. The chalk board is good for practice drawing free-motion quilting designs among other things. Let's move on.

The next corner is the fusible corner. My design wall is the barely visible gray wall there on the right. I use this end of it for ideas and such. You can barely see a WIP that is slowly turning into a UFO there in the blue on the right. There is a cartoon drawing toward the bottom of Buckhorn Canyon road that I want to do in appliqué. There is my road map of block placement of another quilt right above the drawing and above this is a barely visible glue-page idea of another quilt. See my salamander? In the corner itself are all my different interfacings, fusible webs, vinyls and upholstery fabrics. This is also where I stash my tripod and Featherweight. You can see the only time I made a fabric bowl up there on the wall. And at the bottom is a recurring theme in the room: milk crates. I love 'em.

Moving right along you'll find the antique cherry-wood, glass fronted cabinet that was left to me by my grandmother. The doll collection Daddy started for me many years ago has long ago outgrown this cabinet so now it houses my Fat Quarters. Except for the upper left shelf of aboriginal type fabrics in yardage and the lower right shelf of Christmas fabric yardage. You can barely see the corner of another (of 2) Iris carts that double as a TV stand. The carts hold things like bias binding, trims, ribbons, glues, and sundry stuff.

This is the front side of my sewing cabinet. See another milk crate? This is where I store the giveaway fabric. Actually there is some in there now. I'll pull some fabric from the shelves and in a "what was I thinking?" moment put it into this crate. If I continue to think about it I'll pull it back out. But if I forget about it then it gets donated. Sitting on top of the crate is a basket a girlfriend made for me that contains my leader/ender squares. See those plastic shoeboxes on the floor to the right? The bottom one has vintage trims and the top one has elastics.

I'm going to take you back to the door and down the other side of the room. So if you come into the room and look to your immediate left you will see the countertop/cabinet setup that is my primary cutting surface and drawing area. The countertop is set on two standard kitchen base cabinets with a cubby hole in the center for a stool. The first picture shows all the garment-type fabric in the cabinet. It is two rows deep. The other picture is the other cabinet and is also two rows deep. It has all the 'other' fabrics in it. You know, the Osnaberg, the cotton sheets, the Harley Davidson bandannas. You know, miscellaneous fabric.

And THIS is the main stash.
Everything on these shelves is a minimum of one yard. I have it sorted by color. On the floor are more milk crates. The one in the very corner is just crammed with velvets. The others are wool yarns and cotton crochet threads. The paint buckets are my strings and sitting on top of them in the large basket are sewn leader/ender blocks. Um, let's see. To the very right is the bookcase the holds my quilting books. Above the paint buckets I hang some plastic templates and a teflon pressing sheet. To the very left you can see 3 archive boxes that hold all the garment patterns including some vintage ones of my mother's from the 1940's. And hanging from the rod on skirt hangers are the lame fabrics and the ultrasuede. Things I don't want to have creases.

Above the closet is the orphanage. These plastic shoeboxes contain various things: some UFOs, lotsa hankies, 1930 and 1940 fabrics, mosiacs and yo-yo, notions, and four of them are labeled as Orphan Blocks! One box is full of half square triangle blocks that were scavenged from the corners of snowball blocks. So I guess you could call them Orphans too. And then there are all the 3" paper pieced blocks in another box that are all Orphans. Next to the labeled shoeboxes are 3 that contain things like beads and sequins. Next to them are the project boxes. These usually contain WIPs, but I know for a fact that two of them contain more Orphan Blocks. See what you've done, Finn? I know where all my orphans are! And the floursack pillowcase contains flimseys from the 1930s and 1940s.

We are almost done with the tour. Hang with me a bit more. 'kay? We've got to move into another room.

This is a box of needlework magazines and pamphlets that I want to get rid of, but I'm not certain where they should go. They are counted cross-stitch, knitting, crocheting, home dec sewing, machine embroidery, etc. And to the side of this box are the quilting books and patterns that need to go. I think I may offer some of the quilting books for sale on Amazon and some of the unused patterns as giveaways on my blog here. Whadaya think? Good idea? or not?

These are the scrap bins. Starting from the bottom we have all flannel scraps. The next one up is all silk. Above that are large chunks of batting. The top tiers are 10.5" squares, 2.5" dark strips, 2.5" light strips and prefused scraps. I may have to dispose of the prefused scraps since the last time I used some they didn't fuse well. I know fusible web gets old and that might be the case with these. O well. It's not like I don't have more fabric, now is it? To the left of the bins you can see the rails for the John Flynn quilting system and to the right is all my dye stuff.

Are you still with me? There is one more area.

This is where I store all my batting. And fiberfill. And some yarn. And some leather scraps (what am I doing with those?). Ah, and I notice I have a bin of flannel for a nine-patch and snowball quilt there too. The other shelves to the right have some more dye and fabric painting stuff and a whole shelf of Quilters Newsletter Magazine back issues.

It's an addiction. Hi, I'm Paula and I'm a fabriholic.