Stash Report Week 19, 2012

edit: Well, I typed and posted this yesterday (Sunday), but forgot to link it at Judy's so that's what I'm doing now, and ...

I'm guessing that since you found your way here, it was through Judy Laquidara's blog so you already know about what other bloggers have posted, but I'll still link back to her Sunday Stash Report anyway ;)

Used this Week: 0 yards
Used year to Date: 0 yards
Added this Week: 33.3 yards
Added Year to Date: 35.3 yards
Net Used for 2012: -35.3 yards

Earlier in the week I had received an email from our Guild president letting us know that the guild had been contacted by a lady whose elderly aunt, a quilter, had suffered a stroke and the family was selling off all of her sewing room supplies and fabric at a yard sale on Saturday. So I got myself up early for a Saturday...the yard sale was to start at 7:00 a.m. and was all the way on the other side of town. And of course, I got lost because I'd only quickly made notes of where to go from Mapquest, and wouldn't you know, the one street that I thought I was supposed to make a left on, also continued straight from the one street I was on.

It's like Main street goes so far and becomes Back street, but at the point it becomes Back street there's also a left turn and that is also Back street. We have one area where two roads intersect: up to the intersection, one street is North street, the street opposite is South street, the street to the right is East street and the street to the left is West street, but after a few blocks, West street is Further West street - all names are fictitious, and you can supply your own names if you want, but the point is that the street names are not continuous in too many places. I think it's because way back when in history, this large valley had several small communities and as suburbs grew and united becoming one large sprawling city, they've kept the original street names before roads actually connected. When Marty & I were first married and I moved out here, it took me several years to figure out the streets...some of them even have the same name but in one area they run North-South and then turn and run East-West and practically cross over themselves - very confusing. During those first couple years, I was still working and that was 20+ miles away so most things I did were still in that area and I had no reason to go anywhere out here.

Anyway, I digress...after I finally found the yard sale..and a place to park, I browsed the many tables of fabric. There were also boxes of scraps, books and other odds and ends. So, I loaded my arms with 2 books, and a healthy stack of fabrics and was poking through one of the scrap boxes and was chatting with the seller and she decided I could have the whole box of scraps for $3 !!! My total purchases came to $13.00 . I sorted through the fabrics at home, pulled out any non-cottons, fire-tested every piece and roughly tallied each piece's measurements. Of actual yardage (full-width) I had 13.5 yards.. Of smaller pieces and anything not full-width was...are you ready?... an equivalent to 19.8 yards for a combined total of 33.3 yards...all for $11 (the books were $1 each)! At today's fabric prices, that's like getting 32 yards for free. I realize not all are quilt-shop priced fabrics and I have no problem with that; when you make those scrappy quilts, and give them to someone that knows nothing about a quilt "it's just another machine-washable blanket" it doesn't really matter if it was from a high-priced place or a purported 'lesser quality' place. I'd rather my quilts be loved, used and worn out than stored forever in a chest for generations never seeing the light of day because "Lee" made it.



I have it all out on my freezer and a laundry bin as it all needs to laundered and pressed. I don't always press the larger pieces, but the small ones I will because I'll be cutting them up for scraps ala Bonnie Hunter.



Have a blessed Sunday, and happy quilting :)

And Monday It Is !!

The weekend is over, we signed the remodel contract on Friday, I went to a quilt show on Saturday - and had a wonderful time I might add! - 'attended' church via the internet again, it was a 'guest' pastor but one who's on staff, Marty took a few hours Sunday afternoon to head to an area of higher altitude to try to get some snow shots - we'd had rain here and the mountains had snow. During the times I was home over the weekend, I emptied everything out of the bathrooms to be ready for the contractor demo today.

Back to the quilt show. I'll cover purchases today. I got these two bits of fabric; the blue/brown stripe is 1 1/3 yards, the other is a stack of 42, 5" squares. I have a gift project in mind for them. The colors are right in the 5" squares, but the florals won't work, so I'll save them for something else, and if I need more I'll shop in my stash.



This was an 'ahem' somewhat costly purchase because I bought it ONLY for one block.



The block I use, will be either this one, the rooster in the middle:

or this one, but I'm thinking I'm leaning towards that first one but I may adjust the comb, it doesn't seem quite big enough for a rooster. I'll have to think about that. It'll be for my rooster quilt which is in my 2012 UFO Challenge list. I'm very happy to have found this, I've been looking for just the right rooster, in just the right size, for the longest time. I will probably flip it too, as I want the rooster to be looking to the left. Looking to the right just doesn't set with me. It must be a brain thing.

And I saw this nice cross pattern but needed to buy the pattern which had the special acrylic templates to make it. I don't know why Blogger rotated the latter photo-I did not take it that direction and it doesn't show that way on the memory stick :S



And then this one just looked interesting in the form of a flag that was on the vendor's wall.
It's by Donna Poster and she looked VERY familiar. Maybe I saw her years ago on Alex Anderson's show, or maybe she's even been a guest speaker at our guild...I just don't remember. It's a very forgiving pattern if you have trouble with that 1/4" seem, but does use a wee bit more fabric than the traditional method, but that's countered by an almost 3-D effect because of the folds. She has the flag pattern - free - on her website.



I also bought another pattern along with some embellishment items, but I won't show it as it will be a gift item also, but not for the same person as the aforementioned fabric.

And those are my 'conservative' purchases. I spent about the same as the limit my friend had set for herself. Hehee, I won't say what she spent but it was more than her self-imposed limit.

Fabric-o, Fabric-o, What Do I Do With Thee?

Did you think I was trying to decide my next project? If only. Well, that thought is there, but that's for another post. This one is on fabric organization, or lack thereof.

Despite the fact that my house seems rather disorganized and at times cluttered, and a box or two, maybe three or more, can be found stacked in a hallway, or in the middle of a room, I really, really do prefer organization and my fabric stash has been a little chaotic for awhile...and not because I've been so busy piecing and quilting with it that I've left pieces laying around. You see, for the last year or so I've probably done more collecting than sewing. And that fabric has been stuffed here, and there, and even elsewhere. Throw in this year's medical issues, and it's chaos...at least in MY mind. I'm working towards changing that in 2012. I have 2.5 months to get my act together - self-imposed structuring! I'm determined to not buy any new fabric, unless it's an absolute requirement for a specific project (when I get back to sewing!) and I just can't find anything acceptable in my stash.

So...for a few days I've been working on pulling out all my fabric and re-folding and trying to decide how to best store it. Most pieces have been in locking plastic tubs stacked in a closet. Fine, but hard to work with. The shelf above (not in photo) has bags of batting pieces. I have a huge bundle of batting (Warm & Natural) in a large bag to the left of these stacks. Initially I tried to organize by color but one color runs into another which then runs into another and my brain started getting confused as to which tub it belonged in, oy!, and with a few things by 'collections', i.e. repros, western. The photo below shows my ca 1930s collection. I have a couple 1 yd pieces that my mom gave to me, not necessarily 1930s, but vintage early 1950s which she had used to make dresses for my sister and I. I think of those is that vertical piece between the two rows on the left.I'm still not entirely sure how I want to organize, and I need to finish my re-construction of my real fabric storage closet. That closet measures 56" wide by 45.5" deep, a small walk-in closet. This is a photo of the closet. The two tubs in the back right corner are fabrics I acquired as the result of a precious lady who was instrumental in starting our missionary quilts classes many years ago and before my time, who ended up with Alzheimer's and her daughter passed the fabric on to someone else, who in turn passed some of it on to me. I'm sure a lot of it will still be used either for missionary quilt's or other community service projects. The tub on the left has some strips for log cabins in military red, white and blue in addition to some yardage from when a group of us worked on some military quilts. and there's a pile of quilt magazines, too, and still the paint stuff that managed to get cluttered with miscellaneous stuff. Back to the closet; to date, I've painted the walls and nailed cedar down for floor covering. The closet has a ceiling light fixture. Originally, I was thinking I'd put in deep wire shelving and stack the tubs of fabric on the shelves. But the last few days, I'm thinking I may just put in laminated board shelving, adjustable, and with about a 12" height in between. Then on the side, put in a rod section where I can hang those fabric lengths of over 3 yards (I may change that to 4 yds). I currently hang those on the hangers with cardboard tubes. I may leave the hanging fabrics in the guest closet. There are two closets in that room. The one you see below and a shorter one on a wall to the left and behind the room's entry door. I could then likely utilize a rolling cart or two for the smaller pieces.

I had read somewhere the idea of using comic book cardboards for wrapping your fabric around like bolts of fabric at a store, but rather than the height of the fabric's half-width, fold it again so that it measures approximately 11" high (1/4 fold of width). I was thinking of doing that but wasn't inclined to buy online and wait for delivery so decided I could achieve the same effect by using a 6" ruler, or in this case, a 6" cutting mat which I could use as the guide while 'rolling' the fabric and then easily slip it out. I decided this would work fine and have been doing so with all yardage measuring from one to three yards in length. I now have a whole lotta cute little fabric 'bolts' which I can stand alongside each other or lay atop each other on a shelf...if I only had the shelves! I had also read about folding fat quarters so that they fit into empty tissue boxes (which I just happened to have three empty & flattened waiting to go into the recycle cardboard trash). I pulled them out, taped them back together and cut the bottom off them. My FQs were already pretty much folded the same way, so that one was easy.

Now my real dilemma, the decision as to how to fold those fabrics that measure full width by whatever length up to a yard, and then all those other odd pieces that don't measure the full width but could be of any length, and all those other odd pieces that I haven't already cut into specific size squares or strips for future not-yet-selected projects, sigh! And what about those pieces of whatever size that match a bigger piece of yardage, do I keep them together, or pretend they're just 'scraps' and separate them and cut them down more? Oh, what to do, what to do! And then do I still keep 'collections' separate? I know I will on the '30s repros because I've only ever bought FQs of those, and they fit snugly in that drawer.

Note to self: buy appropriate shelves and install (or get Marty to install).