About 5 years ago, while living in an apartment from which I had to move, I held a "sale" from my fabric stash by putting a notice in a local quilt guild's newsletter. I pulled from my stash any I couldn't part with and hid it. The rest I arranged in huge baskets and on shelves/tables. I determinedly sold everything for $3 per yard (some cost me a few tears but I was ruthless with my clearing out). The 'buyers' called/emailed first to arrange a time to shop as a way for me to control the number of bodies in the house at one time. They all paid cash. I cut anything from 1/2 yd. up, no cutting fats. But some of the pieces I had were already only fat quarters or ¼ yd cuts, too.
I had little slips of paper I'd printed from the computer with columns of cut sizes: .25 yd, .33 yd., .375 yd., .5 yd., .625 yd., etc., etc. and I put a chit mark in the appropriate column as they 'bought' and I cut. Then it was easy to add up all the decimal sizes and come up with total yardage, then multiple that by $3 for the total they owed me.
I met some lovely ladies, had fun conversations, sold a ton of fabric I had not used for a decade, and made $1400!!
Of course, I had to do it all over again 3 years later as I spent the original $1400 on more fabric.
And I made another $1200!! (What I sold the second time was more of the 'old stuff', not newly bought, of course.)
I admit that I owned lots of yardage of individual fabrics because I kept tons when I closed my shop in 2000. But a large number of the prints were those I’d collected in ¼, ½, ¾, yards for years. Some had been used in more than one quilt over the years. I had many, many blenders and tonals useful in any quilt, and I believe that’s what made my ‘sale’ so successful.
Jan in VA
Who knew I had so much value hiding in my fabric closet! :thumbup: