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Old 08-06-2011, 11:17 AM
  #59  
MsEithne
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Join Date: Jun 2011
Posts: 294
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I can't remember not knowing how to sew (or embroider or knit). As I graduated from doll clothes to making clothes for myself, my mother taught me to always get a half yard to full yard more fabric than the pattern called for (if I used a pattern--she taught me how to draft patterns, too). Just in case I made a mistake. Of course, fabric was way less than a dollar a yard back then!

I never intended to build a stash and I never bought a fabric without a purpose in mind but when the project was done, there was usually just too much scrap left for me to feel comfortable throwing away. So now I have a stash and some of the fabrics are over 40 years old.

It has been stored various ways over the years, from a cardboard box, wrapped in a plastic garbage bag inside the cardboard box, in a wooden slatted crate and in plastic bins.

I've been going through all these old scraps with my husband, who wrote a database to catalog them. None of them are damaged, all of them look as new as the day I rolled each set up neatly and tied it with a scrap of the same fabric.

The only precaution I ever took with my scraps was to keep it in the main part of whatever house I was living in, away from basements (too humid in the summer) or attics (too hot and too humid).
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