Stash Rearranging!

 

After tracing out a bunch of patterns earlier this week, I went into the stash looking for a particular piece of fabric I wanted to use for one of them. This led to finding fabrics for all four patterns that I had prepared. So I have a month's worth of projects organized now! 

However, this also led to some fabric being moved to find what I wanted. Then more fabric. Then before I knew it, it had turned into a huge stash dive! 

I ended up opening bins, moving piles around, filling bins again, and loosely sorting what was left into vaguely colour coded piles on my sewing table. 

These pictures show about half of the fabric in my stash. It's now a bit more sorted by colour, but back in bins and piles on top of those bins. At least I have a good reminder of what's in there. There wasn't as much to get rid of as I'd expected, maybe because I had a good clearout last year. But the yearly fabric and pattern swap at my local Garment Guild is coming up...so I'm going to be a bit more ruthless with what I've looked at and pull a few more to go. 

Considering how much I've been sewing lately, I really don't need all this fabric. There are a dozen or so that jumped out at me that I want to sew up soon, though, including the four I've picked for the upcoming projects. So I will start with those and see how it goes. It has helped to have an idea of my preferred colours and styles for my wardrobe, so I can quickly see if something is completely unfit for my stash - I still had a couple of brown fabrics that went to the giveaway pile very quickly! I found I had blacks and whites, blues and yellows, a few reds and pinks, and surprisingly, quite a lot of purple and green.

And as for substrates, I know I don't like poly so I only kept a couple of thrifted pieces because of the fabulous print, the others are heading out of the stash. A little more shuffling and I'll have my sewing table back -- then on to the first project, using the purple cotton on the top of the stack in my first photo. It's amazing how tiring this work can be -- but satisfying in the end. How about you - do you like a deep stash to pull from, or do you prefer a limited stash that you use as you go?