The RWB quilt is 41" square. I know, a weird measurement but it is what it is and a good baby size. https://cdn.quiltingboard.com/images/smilies/hug.gif This pattern would be easy to expand to make it larger with minimal additional work.

Great use of stash wmuteach!

Bought fabric, new even! Two (1) yard coordinating cuts for an upcoming round of the Round Robin. Ended up ordering from Jordan Fabrics which is most likely to still be closed when I'm going by in a couple of weeks. I'm keeping my birthday exemption and might just use it at Jordan's if they are open by then.

I only bought what I felt I needed after search my heart and stash :p no extras found their way into the package. But many fabrics have joined the lusted in my heart club -- that's ok, that's better than in my boxes.

As long as you bought what you needed for the project in front of you here and now (seriously - 2 yards is a blip) and only added to the "lusted in your heart."

Iceblossom: Great restraint! Enjoy your upcoming trip.

I finished my Marine quilt, but didn't use as much stash as I would have like. I sent all my patriotic fabrics to someone on the QB who does QOV, so I had to purchase the RWB stars, dots and backing. Pattern was Bricks and Stones by Bonnie Hunter. I made it a carry bag, but didn't get a picture. Size is 72x90. Twin size when he gets an assignment or beach blanket size. It's his quilt.

Looks great, Irishrose2! Will have to think of this pattern when I work on my patriotic scraps. Thanks for sharing.

Another finish for the week. Someone on another thread was asking about snowball blocks and I got inspired. I had a charm pack of reproduction prints in my cupboard and by adding some other reproductions prints and odds and ends of white on white corners, I finished another donation quilt. I found enough 1930's print for the back and binding and of course, pieced the batting. I can actually tell that my pile of batting pieces is diminishing. Yippee!

Irishrose2: Congratulations on a great finish. I started a kit for this pattern earlier today. I am using solid black and a variety of neutrals for the 4 patches. My neutrals were in the 2” drawer and were extras from a former BH quilt.

WMUTeach: Another great finish. Send your sewing mojo my way please. I have been working in my sewing room but just haven’t been sewing much.

Irishrose2, that is beautiful!

WMUTeach, such a cheery, pretty quilt! It's inspiring to hear about your stash reduction!

Irish and WMU - great finishes both of you and inspiring use of scrap/ stash. Round of applause.

Irish....I love your Marine quilt. Beautiful balance of color setting with the black/white 4P. I love using black and white for contrast...

WMU......Huge Pat Sloan fan...She inspires me.....Your quilt is adorable...love it for a baby quilt. Great job on stash bustin...

I've been making pillows, again, in addition to quilts using pre-cuts. I just picked up a layer cake quilt from LA'r as well as powering through some CW fabrics for pillows for my neighbor. Their new home is almost complete in construction so I made some house warming gifts/pillows for them.

I went to 2 LQS last week and only bought WOW needed for my current project. However, I did buy a couple of patterns. Patterns....ugh!

Teen, may I remind you that this is a "fabric" moratorium. No one said we couldn't by patterns! Tee-Hee-Hee. I purchased one last week online. Now I just need to root through my fabrics for what is needed to make it for a Christmas gift. A little wisdom and a little restraint and we are all OK on this journey.

All of you have been doing great on using your stash. Congrats!

Everyone seems to be powering through their stash. My friend K & I are using lots of her huge stash of sheets & fabric pieces as backs or binding for the UFOs we've completed. We can actually tell that her stash is smaller. But, this weekend she found more sheets! Luckily we have earmarked at least 2 for backs that coordinate with UFO tops her daughter left.
Meanwhile, I'm still sewing blocks for Pat Sloan's Scrappy Stars. I have 15 of 20 blocks completed, with all 9P & star points units made. I simply need to sew them together. Then it's on to sashing, the only thing I bought to put in this quilt. So I used 180 2.5" squares, 320 4.5" squares, & 80 3.5" squares. I also plan to use my string blocks, cut & trimmed to 3", for a border. The back is still undecided. But that's a lot of stash!

Well, I found a box of fabric that I thought I had sent to a charitable group never actually made the trip to the post office... probably already took credit for that but if not, a large box is about 14 pounds of fabric whatever that turns out to be in yardage. These are mostly nice but dated 80s prints that work well together and are going to a hospice project, mostly half yards to big enough for a back, a few fat quarters but these are really from before there were fat quarters.

Was talking about that with a friend, "hey, remember before there were precuts?"

I sent one of the ladies in the round robin project some greens, then ended using the same box of greens for my round, lots of trimmings in the crumb quilter box and using up last little bits.

It's starting to happen more often now that I start to look for a fabric that I've given away or used up. It's ok, I still really only really regret giving up one piece and I knew at the time it was a test on my commitment level to reducing fabric. Now when I realize the fabric is gone I just smile and nod my head and tell myself the reduction project is working! And then I look for something else that will work and usually find something pretty quickly even if I have to rapidly change directions.

Conchalea and Iceblossom- y'all are doing great at reducing stash. I am going to use you two as role models to help me reduce my thread stash. So from now on- no more thread purchases- unless it is needed to finish quilting a quilt. I have nearly 1,000 spools and cones of thread that is all good quality, great colors and eminently useable in quilts of all sorts. I do go through a lot of thread, but, then again, I also buy a lot of thread off eBay because I can get it for pennies on the dollar. So, no more eBay thread purchases for the rest of the year- I have all the thread I need to finish out the year's quilting. Then when next year starts I am going to pledge to not purchase any more for that whole year either- I'm pretty sure that I have enough thread in a variety of colors, weights and materials to quilt any quilts I will be completing in 2021.

Y'all rock!

Rob

Although I don't have the number of spools you do, Rob, I've been using up thread in piecing. I'm looking forward to the space saved with all those emptied spools!

OKSEWGLAD, I have been saving my spools since January, just for the fun of it. Well I now have a two quart green canning jar full and have started on a new quart jar. Stash comes in many forms! (How many spools of pink thread can one really need?)

Rob can answer that : ALL THE THREAD!!

Great job in reducing items in your sewing rooms.

I donated 40-45 yards of mostly Christmas fabrics to a fundraiser. I only bought a few yards of it and that was at garage sales. The rest was given to me through donations either directly to me or to my church group. If asked by the organizers if I want the unsold fabric back, I will definitely say no thank you. With that said, I will pick it up from them and donate it myself if that’s their wish. The area in my sewing room with the Christmas fabrics sure looks nice and organized.

I was amazed how many yards were squished in 2 medium sized tubs.

I only finished one quilt top this month. 🤷‍♀️ Better than none like in April.

https://cdn.quiltingboard.com/images...es/biggrin.png

I have a Lego building Gson who loves to modify the spools for Lego's and other "building" projects. the small spools become wheel axles for carts and vehicles. He loves Jenga blocks, too. Love watching his creativity bloom...he just turned 10.

I continue to fight the urge to buy fabrics. I saw some to die for pieces this week and I walked away knowing the perfect quilt for those fabrics. Working from my stash has been fun this year. With only a couple purchases in the last 12 months I figure I am doing this challenge pretty good. I have another stash quilt sitting on the floor right now. I made a jelly roll and am now using it for a strip quilt. It is coming out pretty good. Another simple but very nice top to add to the list.

Yesterday and today I'm working a bit with the stash. The various things I pulled since the last major clean up (year and a half ago??) have to be put back if they aren't already, and decisions need to be made on some pieces, I have too many boxes of miscellaneous which are really "I was trying to neaten things up by shoving things out of sight" and it didn't get any better when a large box I bought at an estate sale a couple years back collapsed about 2 months ago. Before they were a box in their own right, but now they must be integrated.

I think I might have to make one box of "miscellaneous difficult to categorize fabrics". I love novelty fabric and some are there, but I end up with some fabrics that are harder to fit in. Or the problem with two-color pieces, is that red or is that black? As it is, I have a stack of red and black fabrics together, it's enough for a quilt but I don't know what quilt that is yet...

I'm also putting things into collections or groups, last year some of my now-out of order fabrics had been put in a box of potential projects and that worked pretty well for me, but I need to label the box that way, and maybe separate the groups with tissue paper. These are mostly crib-twin sized juvenile collections for fun quick projects. There is a subtle difference for me, if I put the fabrics in their own box they are then "kitted" and are now a UFO instead of a potential project :p

I have enough spongy textured sort of pieces (brighter than grunge mostly) that I decided needed to be kept together as a collection and not separated by color, I do have a box for small collections, like sewing themed and they can go in there. I'll have to look at my "food" box, most of that is gone now and they should go there too if they can and separated out by color if not.

My solids box was my last remaining "paper" box, the sort that reams of paper come in from when I was working. One side finally collapsed, time to go to the office supply store and buy some new banker boxes and retire some old ones. It's just not worth it to get the cheaper boxes unless they are just for temporary sorting of things, they just don't hold up -- especially the lids. For sorting things or going through closets and do set up donate and keep boxes next to the trash can. Any box works for that, but for me I like to have a nice clear label that maybe I'll stick on the wall above the box so it's clear.

I want to get all my fabric in consistent boxes and stack them up... I think what I have now will fit in the closet of my sewing room, if I can clear that out. Then I will have an actual sewing room with room to move instead of a fabric storage room. Some things are harder to let go, like the rocking cradle that was mine when I was a baby and which wasn't used for my own grandbundle. Some things like the down sleeping bags will be easier -- turns out I'm allergic to down!

I know a closet of fabric is still a huge stash, but seriously, it's gone down from a room packed floor to ceiling. I've lost track but visualize 10-20 large black plastic garbage bags stuffed full (accumulated over 30 years) is about what is now gone.

Oksewglad...I love that your grand is so into LEGO and doing his own thing with it. Although I think the kits sold now are pretty cool I believe it takes away from the creativity factor that LEGO encouraged when I was a kid. Of course LEGO was out of my parents price range....I played with friends LEGO ‘stash’. Now that everything is made offshore they are more affordable so kind of a win/lose situation.

Irishrose and WMUTeach, very nice projects.

Iceblossom....If I had your huge stash I would need inventory sheets and numbered totes. Little swatches of fabric glued to paper with tote number and size and placed in a binder. Otherwise I would lose my mind trying to remember what I had....or to find it!

I finally sat down at the machine to sew up borders for this top I posted a few weeks ago. It took hours to work out how to use up as much of my leftovers as possible. I wanted a pieced border however could not get it to work, just not enough fabric. I used up another 2.5m and ended up with about .3m each of the brown and beige blender which goes back into stash.

I like the borders you came up with, Cattitude- good job on keeping most of those fabrics out of stash.

Rob

Well done with the borders Cattitude! They are so well proportioned to the quilt!

Re: Legos--we had three boys and they all played with them, but the youngest probably the most. (He's in construction as an adult.) I have had an accumulated batch of them. They have been gradually disappearing as Gson has found just the right piece to work with his current project. The family was here one afternoon a couple of years ago watching The Amityville Horror. We thought Gson was just busy playing with the Legos and not watching. Ha! Next day at our house he showed me a replica of the house complete with quarter arc windows on the second floor and a hinged trap door to the basement! He looks at the boxes in the store to see what parts he can use for his building projects and bases his wish lists on that. And yes in many ways they have taken the creativity out of it. FYI, I'm a preLego era kid.

Cattitude your precision is amazing. The border is perfect for the quilt. Now, how to quilt it?

My grands are so into Lego they could start a store. They have a few large sets that made a specific structure such as some of the Star Wars ships and BB8 and a pirate ship but most of their vast collection is just a pieces from many, many, many kits that they made then took apart and used in new ways. Last fall one of the kiddos was into a game of making me guess what he was illustrating using Legos. He would make a scene from a movie and I had to guess the title of the flick. He was 8. He made a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know the big ball rolling down the incline. He made it with Legos, a tennis ball and a Lego man with hat and a homemade whip. He also did a reconstruction of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Creative used language, recall memory, small motor skills and a lot of silliness trying to trip up his Grammie with movies.

Enough about Legos and extraordinary grand children and back to quilting. I have a quilt top all cut out from stash for the Virtual Quilt Weekend on the QB. I hope to finish the top this long week-end and will post photo when the top is done.

I still have the Legos that belonged to my boys. The oldest was into building with them more than his brother.

Iceblossom: I was chuckling as I read your post. I just finished going through my boxes of “I was trying to neaten things up by shoving things out of sight". There were way too many of those boxes in my sewing area. I also have fabrics that frustrate me as to where they belong in my tubs sorted by color. I am excited to see your closet stash when you are finished organizing.

Cattitude: Very nice finish!

Oh but it's so much fun to hear about them and watch those minds at work!

Cattitude, gorgeous quilt!

I just found out a grandson recently married is moving to Japan in a few weeks, so his quilt jumped ahead in line. I don't want to pay postage. I found a UFO well started in red, black and white. Quite floral, but that won't bother him. It will be completely from stash unless I have to purchase batting. I found a Hobbs batting in one of my sewing/storage rooms for the patriotic one. Maybe I'll get that lucky again. I have king size Warm and Natural, but I may donate it as I just don't like mine that thin.

Although I have sent a lot of UFOs to quilter this year, I haven't bound all of them. I used up a good bit of stash in the backing, sashing and binding. But I did replenish solids and "reads solids" right at the beginning of March. I have been cutting less than 1/2 yard pieces into strips and smaller to go into my leader/ender and scrap system boxes. But I finally fell totally off the wagon and splurged on some fabric that I just liked with no project in mind. I am back on and working through my stash.

Our quilt guild has a sew-in each year at the Iowa State Fair where we sew strip quilts for children's charities. We usually get 500-600 done during the 11 days of the fair. Since the Fair was cancelled we are working on the quilts at home. Last Month I took 11 finished quilt tops for this project to the guilds drop off event. I picked up 6 kits to make more of these strip quilts. So far i have 7 finished quilts and 14 pieced and others cut ready to piece. All but the 6 kits were from stash fabric so have been making a dent in the stash. My daughter spent the afternoon today pulling fabric for the project and organizing many of my bins of fabric. I bought 20 inches of star wars fabric for one of the quilts and a roll of batting so more yards out than in.

I did purchase some fabric yesterday, but I don't consider it falling off the wagon. The new quilt is too overpowering the way the pattern reads. I need to add sashing and cornerstones. Went to the LQS, the only thing that really worked was basic black. The owner has been able to get several bolts of our favorite black. Northcutt Black Ultra. Very black, very smooth and silky and a good weight. It does fray, but I can deal with that. I needed less than a yard, but I bought two in case we get shut down again. It makes the best masks for my grandson who has to wear black to work, so I need to have enough.

Irishrose2- since you purchased fabric for specific purposes, it does not count as a fall off the wagon! You did good resisting other fabrics in the store.

Rob

The old Marine (my son) delivered the quilt to the new Marine this morning. They are both thrilled. Do I need to make the old Marine one now? I wasn't quilting when he was in. He loves his sister's Carpenter Star. Would it be too much in RWB? It's a hard color combination for me to visual. As much as I like red, I'm not a fan of RWB.

Well done, LindaJane. Lucky you to have a "fabric coordinator" on staff!

I pulled a QOV off the LA last night. It used 3 2/3 yards of scrap stash fabric. I bought 2 1/2 yards for borders and binding so a net loss of 1 1/6 yards. QOV group gave me the backing. Will try to post pic from my phone.