Good Bye?

It's so hard to throw away fabric and books and magazines. Does it make it any easier to donate it or give it away? When do you have too much stuff? Like most quilters, I have enough fabric to last me for the rest of my life. There is a saying, "whoever dies with the most fabric wins". There are lots of other sayings, but I'm sure you've heard lots of them.

I knew it was time to destash when I bought a longarm quilting machine. We had to empty and remove 3 bookshelves that were full. The bookshelves were used to close off the dinngroom from the living room. This is what it looked like when the shelves were removed.

Then I had to find a place for everything and that's when I became ruthless when it came time to decide what to keep and what to let go. This is my foyer with my donations.

I am donating a lot of my magazines and some books to my quilt guild. I do have a bunch of magazines that have my Chanukah patterns or quilts in them. I thought there might be some quilters who would want the Chanukah patterns, so I am offering them for the cost of shipping. If you want one or more, email me and I will send you a PayPal invoice for the shipping cost. I will need your address.

I have 5 of these from McCalls Quilting, 2009

And this is the pattern.

I have 3 of these Quick Quilts, 2008

With a pattern for this:

I have just one of this 2009 Quivk Quilts

 

With this pattern

One Quilt Life, 2013

 

With my Frosty Flake pattern

The Love of Quilting, 2009

Has an article about my quilt, Willoway

2 copies of Quilting Arts

 

With an article about My Motherhood quilt - 2 copies (sorry it's sideways)

2 copies of QNM

Also with my Motherhood quilt

And finally, one copy of The Quilt Life

With an article about my Mexican tile hilts and a pattern for

They are all FREE!! Yes FREE! You just need to pay for shipping. I will ship anywhere n the world. As soon as you email me and let me know your email, which copy (copies) that you want, the cost of shipping will be determined and you will be sent a PayPal invoice.

So please take advantage of my de stashing and help me to not have any regrets!

 

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My Idea Of A Scrap Quilt

Sometimes I sit in my studio and look at all the fabric that I own.  All of the money that I have spent over the years, has certainly been my form of therapy.  If you had to guess how many yards of fabric 

you owned could you do it?  Would you want to do it? I couldn't guess and the thought of it makes me very uncomfortable. 

 As a former scientist, I can figure out a way to approximate  the yardage in my stash.  I can estimate  how much I have by weighing it.  Do I want to do this?  Heck No!!!  It's depressing enough looking at my bulging shelves.  Much of the fabric is outdated and would not be the focus of a quilt that I would design now.  I shy away from fabric stores and quilt shows, so I am not tempted to buy more, at least until I've used up some of what I already have.  If I need to create a project for a book or magazine, then I would be happily forced to buy current fabric, but otherwise, I've gone on austerity.  And yes, for those of you that are not quilters, quilting fabric is like fashion.  It changes from year to year.

But here's the problem.  I probably have enough fabric to make 100 quilts. This means that I could potentially spend years trying to use it all.  And what about the new projects?? And what about quilting all those quilts?? It all makes my head hurt.

So here's my attempt to start using up some of that fabric.  This is my version of a scrap quilt. It's my own design that I created one step at a time.  That's the way I like to design.  I only used fabric from my stash.

 It measures about 57"w x 68"h.

The center of the design is a hibiscus.  The background fabric behind the flower is a feedsack from the 1930's.  I must have bought it about 20 yrs ago.  Some of the other fabrics have also been sitting on my shelves for a long time.  I am thrilled that I got to use them and now they are gone - in a quilt.

To make this a total scrap quilt, I also cut up fabric from my stash to piece together a back for the quilt.  This was instead of using one big piece.  I was happy to use up more fabric for this.

I enjoy piecing the back for a quilt. It certainly adds interest and it makes the quilt reversible. 

And it helps to decrease my fabric stash.

Destashing

Most of you know what I mean when I say  I am destashing.  I had a bin of fabric in the basement full of Chanukah fabric.  What am I saving it for?  I almost never use this type of fabric in my Chanukah patterns/designs.  So let's let it go!

My husband is the e-bay pro in my family and he always wants to get rid of stuff..... especially my stuff!  We took the fabric out of the bin and measured it all.  I panicked right before he wrote the listings.  What if I have grandchildren and want to make them a chanukah snuggle quilt?  So I grabbed back 2 of the larger pieces.  The rest of it went up on e-bay yesterday.  If you are looking for Chanukah fabric, click here .  If you want to see more, go to my other listings.