I never thought of building a stash.... it just happened on its own. When I have fabric left over from a project (quilt or otherwise) it goes into my collection of fabrics (stash). At the beginning of my quilting (35-40 yrs ago), I looked at a beautiful antique quilt that had so many different fabrics and thought how expensive it would be to make that quilt. Add together the cost of 100's of fat quarters and the dollar value goes up. But now, I can make a quilt with 100's of different fabrics that I have pulled from my stash. And I didn't plan that stash.... it just took on a life of its own.