Immersed in Fabric

I finally finished!

I have been cataloging and reorganizing my fabric stash and cleaning up my sewing room. Whew! What a job!

I struggled motivating myself to sew after the holidays. I realized it was because my sewing room was really (for me anyway) a mess, with piles of fabric, patterns, magazines, fabric matched to patterns, books, and videos all around. I am, I think, a pretty neat & tidy seamstress. I operate on the philosophy of everything has a place and everything in its place. Where I fall down is in the planning stage. I look at my patterns, then match them to a fabric. Then repeat the exercise. So I end up with, as I said, piles of projects placed everything.

Recently I was looking for a particular fabric and for the life of me I couldn't locate it. Since this has happened more & more frequently of late, I decided to put away all the piles and re-catalog my entire stash. Part of the problem with the stash is that several years ago when my fabric buying was out of control, I did a pretty poor job of keeping track of what I purchased. So I had lots of fabric that wasn't on my stash list.

So I made up a Swatch Card on 5x8 index cards and began to catalog & swatch my entire stash. Mmmm, wow, had I underestimated my stash! At first I was overwhelmed by how much fabric there was. Then I felt guilty for having spent all that money in accumulating all that fabric. But as I made up a card for each different piece, I came to terms with my over abundance. It is what it is and you can't cry over spilt milk. So I started to enjoy all the fabric. I dreamed of what would be the perfect garment for a particular fabric. I realized I no longer need to accumulate and hang on to fabric for dear life. I realized the best way to deal with all this fabric is to create beautiful garments!

I was surprised there are only about 5 pieces that are in the "What was I thinking!" category. There are maybe 5-10 more pieces that are beautiful fabrics, but just not right for me. I need to find a way to sell these. But overwhelmingly I love every piece of fabric in my stash and now that I have my sewing room neat and tidy and all cleaned up, I can hardly wait to get back at the sewing machine!