Sharing this little story today because, when I shared it recently with a customer, Laura, she said it really helped her to be a better fabric buyer and made her stash more useful!
A few years ago I joined the Tri County Quilt Guild. They offered lots of workshops that I was excited to take but, with money tight and not wanting to go hog wild buying a lot of fabric for projects when I had a large stash already I made this rule for myself:
Rule #1. Fabric needed for Guild classes must come out of my stash! See Exhibit A:
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| No this isn't my entire stash but you get the idea! |
Okay - so it took exactly one class to realize I had a BIG problem. I had NO LIGHTS FABRICS and the very first class I signed up for required a light, a medium and a dark fabric (as many patterns do)!
Looks like it was time to break Rule #1 (already!?!?! oh no!)
OR
make a Rule #2!
Few of us have any difficulty finding gorgeous medium and dark fabrics to catch our eyes. See Exhibit B:
BUT........ the lights are just not as flashy,
and we tend not to buy them. Thus I created:
Rule #2. When buying fabric, I MUST buy at least one yard of a light for stash building.
I confess at first this seemed like homework, however, when I actually started searching for lights with every shopping trip I started to appreciate lights more and developed a healthy supply of them which serves me very well. I bought light batiks, solids, Polka dots and more. Many from the clearance rack!
I started to find some I liked!
I found that I can now follow Rule #1!
I ALSO found that when I am in the mood to sew, I very often have EVERYTHING I need and can dive right into a new project when the mood hits!
See Exhibit C: I made this one night entirely from my stash just because I felt like sewing!
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