Fabric overload
Now, I know some people will have no sympathy for me at all, but bear with me...
I love fabric. LOVE fabric. But I have almost reached burn out. I am an assistant coordinator for my local Project Linus, and we frequently get donations of fabric. The coordinator is a knitter, so she has no interest in fabric, so it all comes to me (lucky me!).
Recently, we got a whole bunch from a lady who was "downsizing" her stash. Her daughter and son-in-law brought me about 10 big plastic totes of fabric that she had purged out of her stash -- of 80 totes!
It was really interesting seeing some of the older patterns. There was some from the late 70's and early 80's, as well as more recent stuff. I always separate out the cottons, specifically the child-suitable stuff. Unfortunately, no matter how much I try to explain that we only want fabric suitable for making kids' quilts, I always get a lot of upholstery weight and apparel fabric. I always take it cheerfully, though, and pass it along to other charity groups.
My problem is that I pull out everything I think I would possibly use, wash it, and iron it. It destroys my sewing room and kills my productivity. Takes forever to get it all ironed, especially when they are big pieces (great for backings) that get twisted in the wash and dryer and are that much harder to iron.
I finally got everything squared away, and this week we got another big donation from the husband of a quilter who had passed away. Now, of course I can't say no to fabric. I simply can't. But after driving to go get it, I spent about six hours sorting through it all. There was a lot of good stuff, I won't lie, but probably 75% of it is moving on.
I look at the fabric I kept out and I am too tired to even think about sewing. How sad is that.
I do intend to try to sell some of it on the board to bring in some funds for our PL chapter. I'd like to get this fabric into the hands of people who can use it, especially for charity quilts.
All through the sorting I kept thinking about the woman who left this stash. I tried to send her appreciative thoughts and let her know I liked her taste in fabric. Then I tried not to think about someone who might have to sort through my stash some day, lol.
Definitely need to move some of my fabric along!