I love this goal. If i had a designated room for my crafts (or my dream: a craft shed in the yard) that’s how I would want things, too. The dining room is used as such and also holds the crafts so i’m creatively “displaying” and storing to keep the room from being too bogged down visually.
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Wow, that’s fantastic!! I’ve been making progress but I haven’t tackled the fabric collection yet - you are a real inspiration!
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And that was mostly just the cottons. Upholstery went last week, and synthetics, fur, leather, ribbons, embroidery supplies, zippers, etc are still untouched.
I added a meme to the meme thread…I craft, therefore I hoard.
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Hahaha … yep, that’s my Achilles heel too
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I am in several swaps right now and have accomplished almost everything entirely from stash. I even used something i have been hoarding for years! I only had to get one small tjing, and i ised most of that up.
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Finally made my first set of doll dresses for the year, this time out of a vintage scrap I’d been carefully hoarding for years but wasn’t sure how to cut to make the most effective use of the stripe pattern. I ended up splitting the difference and ended up with two cute but different arrangements of the motif.
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February
Flora Brooch by Madelinetosh, on Flickr
Color: Pink
Pattern: Spots
For: A loved one
Challenge1: What item has been in your stash the longest? Make something with it!
Challenge 2: Choose an amount of time that seems reasonable to you and spend it organizing your stash or craft space. Nothing overwhelming, just enough to make things a little bit better (by whatever you define as better). Feel free to share the before & after here.
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This is such a great example of how fabric placement can change a project! Both are super cute, but the first one is my favorite.
Man. This is a great question. 
If I can figure out what it is I will absolutely do something with it asap!
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These are adorable!
ooooh good question…
I am well into challenge 2, and may have just finished challenge 1 without even knowing about it!
I’ve had this tiny saddle for at least 20 years; it survived two major moves AND my current Purgeageddon. I may have something older on hand, but probably not by much.
Thinning out my stash makes me want to USE the favorite pieces I’ve hoarded so long.
And it makes it easy to put away leftovers, too.
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Longest is probably some bits of fabric. I have a rust indian pattern on white that I’ve had since high school. It’s over 50 now.
I’ve been procrasticrafting. Making quilt blocks, little house projects and furniture rearranging to avoid destashing and organizing the craft room and storage area. Most the work has been from stashn so that’s a win.
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Last weekend, I used some stash fabric I have been hoarding forever. It was perfect for the project, and I love how it turned out. But I have already been online trying to find more of that fabric. Nope, it’s gone, which is fine. If I had found it, I would have just bought it to put back in my stash. I found the perfect project, and it still wasn’t enough. It’s the color. I love that fabric. Ha! Anyway, it will go to a great home, and I am sure they will love it too, and in ten to fifteen years, I will not even think about it again. 
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It’s really delightful to witness how you can see the tiny dresses in your fabrics! I very likely would have dismissed that scrap, because of the scale with the stripe, but you saw the scale within the scale of that print and made it amazing!
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Ya, those are amazing. Are they fully lined? Do you sew them burrito method, all the itty bitty seams enclosed? Either way, feat of magnificence in minuscule scale.
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@steiconi - That is such a cool find! What was its original purpose? A toy that you held on to repurpose? Or was it sold for this kind of thing? I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
@marionberries - I definitely have some fabrics that have been hanging around since high school (why did I buy them? I didn’t even sew at that point.). Not quite as old as yours, but there are also other fabrics I inherited that are even older because various great-aunts couldn’t bring themselves to use the good stuff either.
@TheMistressT - Thank you! I should have taken a picture of the scrap before I started. There was also a very wide pink stripe that I couldn’t figure out how to use. Some very careful cutting got me that tiny pink edge banding from the larger pattern on that part of the fabric.
@Magpie - There’s a lining but not everything is enclosed. Basically I sew the bodice leaving a gap for turning, tack the underarms to give it shape, and then sew the gathered skirt on. The top of the skirt just gets pinked and the hem was zigzagged, turned, and top-stitched as the first step in the process.
(example pic)
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I think the saddle was intended as a tourist souvenir. I got it in Tombstone, Arizona; Wild West, cowboys, shootout at the OK Corral. But it was a perfect dollhouse scale, and I had it in a scene for a few years until I moved and just brought favorite bits with me. It’s nice to have it back in the light!
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One thing I like about scrap quilts is that they show off all the fabrics I love!
I made my very first quilt when I was in primary school, inspired by reading the Little House books (in which Laura and Mary make a bunch of quilts as young girls) and seeing my mother sew. What I really love now is that all the fabrics have memories attached to them. They’re all dressmaking scraps from my mum.
My oldest stash is much older than me, it’s the contents of my grandma’s scrap bag. It’s not that much, she actually hated sewing and mending (but did it anyway). She used up most of her fabrics by using them for mending, but some brightly-coloured fabrics from my mum’s early 1960s childhood dresses are still in it. I’ve been thinking about using a couple of them to make her something special but that’s still on the to-do list.
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The bag swap enabled me to use some items that have been languishing for years in my stash. (Yay!)
My oldest stash items are definitely older than me. I often buy cool antique/vintage supplies at estate sales or the creative reuse store, and I inherited some old things from my mom and grandma as well. I’ve got a metal needle holder and some wooden spools that are probably from the 1800’s.
But if we’re just talking about items that were purchased new, the oldest things are some embroidery threads and a little pink sewing basket that I got as a gift when I was maybe seven or eight years old. The basket is in terrible shape, but I can’t part with it.
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