What's In Your Closet?

Last week I decided to take a step back and assess the stash. Bear in mind that like most of us I'm near finishing a few things, I'm in the middle of a few things, I've also started a few things...and there's projects where I've gathered the fabrics and the pattern or book into a basket so it's waiting in the wings...and then there's THE STASH.

 

A quick look shows me that I could most likely occupy myself for the next 3 or 4 years without leaving the house, or logging on to the Internet. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

 

 

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This past fall I gathered all my Kaffe Fassett polka dots and matched them up with Kona solids, using my swatch chart.  There's at least a FQ of each (the stack in the center are yard cuts of 'extra' solids).  There's 42 pairs of print and solid stacked. Two quilts?

 

Now this is a miscellaneous stack of yardage. That black/white/red/gray piece on the right is about 6 yards and it's for one of those one block wonder quilts where the print used becomes unrecognizable in the quilt. I was hoping to take a class and it was cancelled, so I picked up the book and I'm on my own...hopefully the book won't be all yellowed and crumbly and antique by the time I get around to it.

The pretty blue stack on the top left is Timeless Treasures Peacock. They had a challenge using this last year (okay, you caught me, that's how I justified the purchase to the hubs). It's stunning, so I bought enough to make a quilt when I was in Florida last January.  The other fabrics belong to the 2 Baltimore quilts that are unfinished, and the not yet begun Day of the Dead quilt (again, enough fabric for 2 of those).

Who didn't want to make a Red and White quilt after the Infinite Variety exhibit in New York the year before last.  Half yard stack, with a couple more to add to it arriving soon. Having just seen the red/white Dear Jane quilt I'm almost tempted to now start collecting small scale, mostly red prints. (Oh yeah, did I mention the Dear Jane quilt that's been on the To Do list for the past 4 years?)

Okay, so sue me....my daughter's favorite bedtime story (or more like our favorite story to read to her) was Goodnight Moon. So when they made a line of fabric for this theme, of course I bought one of every fabric (justification: possible future grandchild). And then when they came out with an added 'Goodnight Bunny' line to add to this line, who do you think ordered one of each of those (on sale, last week). Considering the finished size of a  baby/toddler quilt....my daughter had best consider having triplets or buying a king size bed once said future grandchild is out of the crib.

 

A sucker for French General (and anything Moda), L'ecole was my latest acquisition from that designer. I likely found it desirable as it is one of the few French words I remember from my elementary school French classes. I now tell myself that I can't buy another French General fabric until I create something with the French General I already have. So far, so good.

Okay, when was it I was sent to Hawaii for work? 2009? 2010? The road to Hell is most certainly paved with good intentions. That's major yardage of Hawaiian print tropical cotton. I will always remember the euphoria experienced when I stepped into that fabric shop and found myself in a forest of fabric...hundreds of rolls of fabric as tall as I, that I couldn't even lift out of their stands to take to the cutting table (there were men in the shop whose job it was to be fabric bearers). The three on the bottom were meant to be a summer bed quilt. The three on the top were purses/totes. Aloha.

 

The Halloween before last I won an online quilt contest for my Halloween quilt and received this fabulous stack of Moda batik FQs for my prize.  I think there are something like 42 of them. For all this time I've considered them too yummy to cut into. It's FQ stacks like this that can lead a girl on a path to Hoarders.

 

 I call this a 'Fear Stack'. I've got a few of these in my stash...fabric I'm afraid to use. These are gen-u-wine French fabrics purchased at Quilt Festival Houston the year I went (2009? Oh gosh...that's so long ago, I need to go again). Cost? Quite spendy--French cotton is the Lexus of fabric. I tend to not want to use fabric like this until I've convinced myself that I am worthy. While that finally  happened with the stack of South African Indigo last fall (and is still happening if you know what I mean)...

 

 

 Sadly, French fabric stack needs to cool it's jets a bit longer until I've got some confidence in putting those colors together.

Aboriginal Australian prints. Yet another color challenge.

That's a fair sampling of what's in my studio. Maybe you'll see some of these fabrics this year, or maybe you'll see something else (Day of the Dead....Doggy Quilt (yes, I said Dog---puppy prints justified with the intention of making a quilt to toss on the couch for the dogs...but  before I could start on that project, I needed a new couch to protect with a quilt...which we got months ago...hmmm....I think I've run out of excuses for that one).

Maybe next we'll actually break out the Kaffe Fassett stash that keeps getting larger every time look at it. Makes me wonder what goes on behind closed box lids.

I took a couple classes with Gyleen Fitzgerald this past summer. She does a hilarious rant about using all those fabrics we've been stashing because if we don't, when we die or our kids put us in 'the home', our family is going to sell our stash for 25c a piece at a yard sale.  Like that box of Kaffe above....the hubs would probably slap a $2 price tag on it....$1 for the box, and $1 for the fabric inside it. Oh Lord, something tells me I need to be spending a lot more time in the studio  than I have been.

Which brings me to the question of the day... what's in your closet, and how do you feel about it?