Conchalea

Cattitude, welcome to the group! I'll start a new thread in a week or 10 days for 2020. I will post here to notify everyone so we can all bid farewell to the 2019 thread & get set for the next year's temptations.

Conchalea

Last weekend I traveled about 200 miles north to visit friends & to look at houses in the area. I currently live in a city of almost 120,000 & the traffic is awful. The area where I'm looking has 18,000 in the *entire county!* While there, I helped my friend's group sew walker bags for the local nursing home & of course many pieces too small for new bags were generated. They were sent home with me as none of the women sewing that day are quilters. Much of the fabric was pre-cut into squares & strips. The fabric was donated or bought from their local thrift store, so it may well be from quilters who passed away or just got tired of it. I've sorted it & continued cutting squares from all the pink & red to make big 4-patches to go into a quilt. I think I'll take the finished quilt back & let the group donate it once I'm done. The colors arent what I'd choose, plus I'd like to have the finished product return to the area where most of the contents originated. I had to add some of my own red fabric to use up all the squares from what was given to me.

grann of 6

Cattitude, your purchasing sounds exactly like mine has been. I've been quilting for around 10 years or so. My dear departed neighbor got me started quilting, we made place mats and table runners. So FQs were a 'smart" purchase at that time. Now how many placemats and table runners can a body use??? So I graduated to smaller quilts. I am now totally addicted to the entire process. Now to use up some of that overflow, and purchase wisely.....

oksewglad

Now you know why I usually don't like to work two days in a row! As you have found out, bolts of fabric are heavy...especially new ones. I told my boss the other day that working there was a way for me to keep in shape with all the stretching that I do! The balance is when a customer comes in and I can help her find just the right fabrics for the current project! And even better when they come back in for the next project.

oksewglad

Welcome Cattitude...and your story is often how we start to drown in a stash! My quilt buddy for over 20 years would kind of roll her eyes when I would pick up 2-3 yards of fabric I just loved and then ask "What are you going to make with that?" (BTW she is not perfect...ask about all the kits she has bought and never made!) Fortunately this was before precuts and online purchases.

As you seem determined to not buy any more than you need, you should make those dozen or so quilts with the fabrics you love first and let the others simmer in storage so you won't feel so guilty. As time goes on revisit those storage fabrics and maybe you will find a use for them...if not maybe you could offer them up for sale or gift them to a quilter or quilting group. I will be signing up for 2020, too and it will be fun to see you use it up!

joe'smom

Cattitude, thanks for sharing. You perfectly described my fabric history, and in such an amusing way, LOL.

Iceblossom

Welcome aboard Cattitude! A lot of the pictures I post here are because they are ways to use up stash. It can seem so easy -- oh, I have lots of fabric! But putting those fabrics together is often harder than it seems and mostly always requires getting "just one more piece" of fabric. As far as the Moratorium goes, that is fair use to buy and use immediately.

Speaking of which, love those crazy blocks interlocked with the solid blocks, RetiredTeacher. Good way to keep it from going too crazy and use up different types of yardage.

This coming year I intend on concentrating mostly on my civil war fabric collection. To be honest, it doesn't excite me much, but back when I did a lot of fabric swapping around Y2K, I got a lot (and I mean a lot!) of 10" squares and so for 20 years I've been trying to think of things to do with them. The first top will be Gentleman's Fancy, basically a variation of Rambler (Rambling Rose), or a lot of tiny triangles. It will be entirely scrappy, trying to use up as much of those 10" squares as I can so I'll have to sort and cut by values.

Here's the thing, although I mostly work with scraps, I don't typically do the all over scrappy thing. For me it's chaotic and breaks down the design too much. I'd rather do something with a lot of block each with different fabrics, like the purple quilt earlier this year. But I think it's the best use of those little squares. I also have enough fabric to make probably 3 tops and backs. I have some old VIP/Cranston prints I want to use on the backs, maybe not civil war but close enough! This is a picture I took earlier this year. That's the Civil war prints to left, one of my boxes in the middle, and the metallics to the right.

Have to work more with the metallics this year too. I've decided to reduce the remaining Asian 10" squares to a 6.5" rectangle for the future modern project (need to start a designated project box for it) and put the rest in the scrap box to be sent out when I'm done. I'm well on the way to a medium flat rate box filled with nothing but little bits of metallics and my crumb quilter has said no thanks. I need to come up with 1-2 more ideas to use what's left. After the end of the year though, I think what remains will all be given away.

allthingzsewn

I think I'm replying to the original thread, not sure about anything. Just joined today.
I feel like the Country girl going to the big city.
I'm also organizing my stash. Which is a big problem because I'm really a scrappy quilter. Good thing is the guild ladies pass their scraps to me, Bad thing is I can only organize is size so I still have totes. And alot of figuring block sizes. I must enjoy it, been doing this way for three years.

oksewglad

The 2020 thread hasn't started yet, so you are on the right track! Welcome to the QB, so many ideas to see.

I have lots of scraps given to me, too. And I love to make tiny quilts. My sis tells me there's a problem with that...I don't get much of my yardage used.

I finished the center of the tumbler quilt today, now to trim the left and right sides before border is added and then to the long arm.

Battle Axe

My buying is a mirror of everyone's. I have a large drawer full of jelly rolls, and another of layer cakes, tubs and tubs labeled with the color. I came to a startling conclusion a couple of days ago: There is NO reason to buy anymore fabric. I've taken the mistakes from a Smith Mountain morning and almost have enough for the back. I'll post a pic when I figure out Windows 10 on this new computer.