State of the Stash Address

I’ve been working pretty hard over the last week or so to get all of my more recent fabric acquisitions washed, folded, and tallied up. I like to start the new year with a clean slate, and see where things really stand. It also ties in with the current theme in the Stashbusting Sewalong, which is stash organization. And, well…my one Stashbusting Sewalong goal for 2015 was to end with less fabric than I started with. In this, I failed. Epically so.

To be fair to myself, I did have two destashings land on me, from my in-laws and from a friend of my grandmother’s. I was certainly not planning on that. And as I was going through things, I did find about 19 yards’ worth of older fabrics that I just hadn’t added in, or leftovers that I didn’t think were big enough to be worth measuring. So my numbers at the beginning of the year weren’t entirely accurate.

But I did buy a few pieces near the end of the year that were specifically to test a few newer patterns, after checking my stash and seeing that I didn’t have anything appropriate. (Or, in the case of the Ginger jeans pattern that I finally just bought, I didn’t want to sacrifice the stashed stretch denim until I’d tested it. Because I bought that denim in Paris, and I may never be able to fabric shop there again.) And I got a lot of fabric for Christmas this year. As in, nearly 30 yards of it!

Oh, you want to see the pretties? Twist my arm, why don’t you?

These 6 pieces are actually more for Hobbit, but I get the fun of sewing them up! The ones on the right are for another batch of diapers. I’d mentioned before that I made newborn, small and medium sizes. And I knew there was the possibility that I’d have to do the large size as well. Well, at 6 months old and well over double his birth weight, he’s pretty much at the largest setting that the small diapers will go at. I really doubt that he’ll stay in the mediums long enough to get to a good potty training age. So to be on the safe side, I’m going to make a batch of larges. The two fabrics on the left are knits, so I can finally try out some of the cute stuff in the two Ottobre magazines that I picked up over last year. Between the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the hockey sticks in the Canada print, my mom was definitely working to keep my husband happy!

And then there’s these 10 (!) pieces for me. There’s a plaid flannel with an Archer shirt in mind, and two more flannels for some much-needed pajama pants. There’s several knits, which is great, because my stash of print knits was almost non-existent by this point. And you all know how I love my prints. There’s a couple of pieces of denim, and a Cotton & Steel voile that I just want to wrap around myself like a blanket. It’s like a silky hug.

I think that I have the totals pretty accurate now. I’m only counting it as yardage if it’s full selvage-to-selvage width, and more than 1/4 yard. So without further ado, here’s the (scary) totals:

Stash at the beginning of 2015: I’d originally said 375. My adjusted number is 394.

Stash at the end of 2015:  Just over 426.

Yards used up: about 91.5. Considering everything that was going on in my life last year, I think that’s pretty good!

The difference: A net addition of 34 yards. Honestly, I probably shouldn’t be too hard on myself, because that means that even with the Christmas haul, I would have done really well if it hadn’t been for those two destashings!

I think my focus/goal for 2016 is to really buckle down on using what I have on hand. So with that in mind, I’m going to see just how long I can go without buying any new fabric or patterns. I bought a few more at the end of December that will hopefully fill some gaps on staples (namely, the Ginger jeans, which I’ve been wanting to try since before the pregnancy). I will make exceptions on things like zippers and buttons, if I don’t have those things on hand, especially since button-downs are a major goal of mine this year. And I’ll make an exception for Halloween, because I’m very excited about my plan for this year, and I have almost literally nothing on hand that will work. But I’m hoping that if I really buckle down and get creative with the patterns and fabric that I have, I can make a serious dent in this ridiculous pile this year.

You know, assuming that I can get the baby to learn to take naps or something.