My Fabric Stash
January 14th, 2010 | Link

I’m starting The Year of Making It Happen with a couple of strategies. The first is to finish all of my in-progress projects, and I’ve shared some examples of this during the last couple of weeks. My second strategy is to take stock of what I have, so I can plan for future projects. (My third strategy is to spend less time on the computer, but you can see how well that’s working out.)

Bookbinding, sewing and knitting are all hobbies which tend to lead to stashing. You buy paper, but it’s cheaper to buy some of it in bulk (for pages) and some of it just comes in large sheets. You buy yarn for a specific project without ever getting to it, and the same goes for fabric (and, for that matter, paper). Or sometimes you just fall in love with a material without knowing what you’ll do with it—and end up buying more than you might have, just in case.

I have great paper storage and last fall I went through a very productive run and worked through a lot of it. And I only have a few knitting projects worth of yarn stashed right now. But my fabric stash is close to becoming a problem. I have limited space to store it, just a few shelves tucked into the window sill of my studio:

Six shelves of fabric, about a foot wide.

Since that photo was taken last April, the shelves have become jammed full, even after moving the thread and notions elsewhere. So as my holiday break was ending, I spent an evening and took everything down and sorted it and measured it, and came up with the following spreadsheet:

Amount (yards) Width (in) Fabric Weight Color Content
0.5 60 Superfine worsted flannel Light Black 100% wool
0.75 60 Superfine worsted flannel Light Dark Red 100% wool
1.5 60 Worsted flannel Medium Black 100% wool
2 60 Ralph Lauren stretch suiting Light Black 96% wool, 4% lycra
2 60 Vera Wang twill suiting Medium Charcoal gray 80% wool, 20% nylon
2.5 60 Poplin Light Black 55% cotton, 45% silk
3 60 Tropical hemp/cotton Medium Rust 60% hemp, 40% cotton
3 54 Linen (maybe a blend?) Medium Dark red Linen, maybe w/cotton
2.5 42 Linen (maybe a blend?) Medium Light red Linen, maybe w/cotton
3 60 Linen (maybe a blend?) Medium Black Linen, maybe w/cotton

… and so on for another 21 rows (and whatever comes in the next few days when my latest order from Fabric.com is delivered).

See any trends there? (I’ll give you a hint. In the 31 rows in my spreadsheet, black makes up 11 rows, red is five, and gray (in all its shades) is five.

Now that I know what I have and how much I have of it, I’m ready to compare it to the patterns and many Japanese pattern books that I’ve also been accumulating recently, and figure out what to use it for. And once I finish the few remaining unfinished sewing and web projects that are waiting for me, I’ll be ready to take on that stash.

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About

My name is Shannon Hale. This blog is on indefinite hiatus, but it contains archives of the last 10 years of posts about bookbinding, knitting, sewing. and other random things in my life.

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