The Stash That Ate Hebron

I may not have mentioned that my small shop is home to my stash as well. I do very little sewing at home although I have a nice machine in a great table. But storage of fabric is a real problem so gradually all my fabric has migrated to the shop. I never thought I had a huge stash. Most quilters have several tubs of fabric that they draw from and add to as they piece and quilt their projects. Me, too.

I took having to move as an opportunity to reorganize and purge my stash. My goal was to separate all fabrics into colors except for the flannels, the batiks, and the fat quarters. After buying eight additional containers and sorting for two days, I am almost done.

After an hour, I had to stop agonizing over where the fabric really belonged --whether the blue fabric with the large yellow flowers should go into the blue or the yellow box; did the white fabric with the black and red design belong in the white, the red, or the black box. Crazy! Finally I just started tossing, making arbitrary decisions that will probably make no sense the next time I get into these boxes to look for fabric.

Blues! The blues overflowed the large container and are now taking up the extra-large one. I don't use blue a great deal and didn't think I had very much of it. I must buy it and then never use it as I have tons.

Pinks and Purples! How much of that can there be? Putting them together in one container didn't work and now each color has its own home, a medium for pink and a large for purple.

I knew I would have a surplus of red, black, green, three more large containers.

I had already purged my batiks for another purpose but I still have a large container of batik. Flannels left over from my Thimbleberries' days fill a laundry basket.

Creams, whites, tans, are overflowing in three containers. Yellow and orange also each have a medium container.

Ok, the purging thing. I really did intend to throw away and give away fabrics, but if I have held on to a piece of fabric for ten years, I must really like it. So I kept all but the smallest and yuckiest pieces which I did throw away -- In secret-- by the dark of the moon-- so that my dear frugal friends who applique tiny figures and piece together discarded triangles from my trash will not catch me and scold.

Four small containers perfectly sized for fat quarters are full of fat quarters. If I buy any more fat quarters, I will have to buy a new container. Terry Atkinson keeps designing delightful quilts which take fat quarters so no guilt there --I just haven't had time to make the tops.

Project boxes kept showing up as well, as I dug through my stash. UFO's (unfinished objects) are again common for quilters. Many of us like to work on several projects at the same time, going back and forth, back and forth, and then sometimes putting a project in a box and forgetting that it's there. I refuse to count them. It's too scary. I should go through them though -- all tools, scissors, and patterns misplaced in the last ten years are probably in those boxes, tucked in with the appropriate project so they wouldn't be lost. But not right now. Right now I should be packing!