State of the Stash, August 2012

Thanks very much for the words of encouragement about my vow of stash fidelity!  I feel especially motivated right now...having just brought a new-to-me piece of sewing equipment into the house: my early birthday present was a secondhand Janome Coverpro 1000CP.  If I wasn't feeling under the weather today I would be making sample hems all day long...but I'm not good for much other than sipping tea, reading, napping and (now) blogging.  Soon enough....

Anyway, in what now looks like a burst of pre-cold energy yesterday I organized my fabric cupboard to make room for the new machine.  Here is the State of the Stash, August 2012.

With the exception of long cuts (neutral solids and also prints I can use for backings), my quilting fabric is in a 3-doored Ikea cabinet in the dining room.  My machines are there too, although the 1947 Featherweight (the black box propping the door open in this photo) currently lives on the floor. The Coverpro is the upper Janome in this picture:








Solids, a few special collections (Birds and Bees, Habitat, Sherbert Pips, AMH voile, My Folklore, Far Far Away II) and dec weight odds and ends are on the shelves above the serger in the right hand cabinet.  As you can see, I have plenty to work with over the next six months.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that there's also a rubbermaid container full of garment fabric (including cotton knits) in our laundry room and a couple of cuts of shirting cotton in my  clothes closet.  It's a lot.  You perhaps can see why I want to stop the inflow for a while and just create from what I have!

All of this leads me to Stash Love dilemma #1: what if it's free????!!!!

The kind woman from whom I bought the Coverpro gave me about 20 pounds worth of two-way stretch fabric -- about half of it stretch cotton, the rest synthetics including some stretch lace, but the high-quality stuff that dancewear is made from (she had been making dancewear with the coverstitch machine).  She also gave me loads of thread (wooly nylon and metallic) and some elastic.

Zoinks!  What was I to do?  

Of course, I accepted it. Do you think I'm crazy?

I'm going to figure that this kind of opportunity cannot be overlooked.  And although I had to wash it all twice (even three times in a couple of cases) to get rid of garage-storage mustiness, there's hundreds of dollars worth of fabric here (and one large cut of dark red fabric was still hanging outside at the time I took this photo).  This is all well worth it.

Finally, knowing that I have to look at my Stash Love button for at least the next six months and also that one or two of you might actually want to join me on this journey -- please do! I can promise lots of encouragement from this end! -- I gave button-making another try.

There's less info now (the expiry date of Valentine's Day is no longer there), but at least it's legible!

<div align="center"> <a href="http://www.enchantedbobbin.blogspot.com" title="The Enchanted Bobbin"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq0eXUnKhaCjh0dGAgCDRhx1CVRIwGPRA9KiJIo8DqKeHBa-Fg1ByQP1iZAdrP5IYO66CD3C4VbI-iJR5pvtkuyPF2Jj2MJe_lyw3JIqTJ4Snc33ZPWUG55Nxv3w2n0cJin-nrCYUp-xt-/s200/stash+love+take+2.jpg" alt="The Enchanted Bobbin" style="border:none;" /></a></div>


Back to a pot of lemongrass tea and Henry James's Washington Square.