Stash Report Sunday 4/19/15

What a wonderful surprise to discover that my stash report totals are still in the black, even though I added over 20 yards of fabric to my stash. Now that's a good week!

I hadn't purchased any new fabric for almost two months, but have been wanting to get some more light neutrals to use as backgrounds on a variety of scrappy projects. Most of the time I can delete the fabric store emails, but a recent one from Hancock's of Paducah was too tempting to ignore. They were having a batik sale, and there is a line from Timeless Treasures called "Lace" in shades of cream/ecru. I ordered a piece of almost every fabric in the line. Here are a few favorites.

Of course, once I had chosen those, I had to look around their website and see what other trouble I could get into. It would have been foolish not to check, right?! I ended up buying a total of 26 different light background fabrics, plus a variety of other bargains. New fabric is such a wonderful treat!

Once my purchases arrived, I washed them up, then processed the neutrals for my scrap drawers. I organize scrap fabrics similar to Bonnie Hunter's Scrap User's System, cutting them into basic strip widths that I know I use often. For me that usually means 1.5", 2", 2.5" and 3.5". The new neutrals were all 1/2 yard pieces, and I cut them in half along the center fold, leaving me with two fat quarters of each fabric. One fat quarter got folded up and put away on the shelf, and the other was sliced up into strips. Now I'm ready for any scrappy project that calls for light backgrounds, which is currently my Rainbow Bowties.

The only reason my purchases didn't destroy my stash report total is because I pieced the backs for two different quilts this week. One was for the Bowtie Chevrons quilt that I put together last week. I decided the back should have chevrons on it too. 2.75 yards used for this.

The other back is for the Dutch Tiles quilt. I bought this lovely blue and brown striped fabric in Paducah a few years ago, knowing it would become the back for this quilt. It's funny how I have such strong memories of where and when I bought some fabrics, and others I don't even recognize as coming from my stash. This quilt is very big, and the back used over 8 yards of fabric. You can read more about the Dutch Tiles quilt here.

My purple hexie star got the background hexies stitched on this week, using another 1/8 yard of fabric.

TOTALS:
Used this week:                  11.125 yards     

Used year to date:              49.625 yards

Stashed this week:                22.5  yards

Stashed year to date:         46.375 yards 

Net year to date:              3.25 yards used

Check out more stash reports at Patchwork Times. 

Julie in GA

New month, new color

Our August color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is light/bright green. We already did the deeper greens earlier in the year. Unfortunately, I haven't had any time to figure out what to make this month, but I did pull out my two drawers of green scrappy strips. 

I used to keep my scrap strips in bins. They were sorted by size but not by color. Whenever I wanted a specific color, I had to go through all the stacks of strips in whatever sizes I needed. Not very efficient, and my strips were getting frayed from the frequent movement. I still like keeping my strips organized by size, but sorting them by color is very helpful too, especially for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects. I bought three sets of these drawers at Joann Fabrics in the spring, and now my scraps are all beautifully organized. I love that I can pull out whole drawers of whatever color I need.

My only show-and-tell for this week is my collection of LeMoyne Star blocks in red, our color from July. I finished the 12" star a day late, but I am enjoying it with the 6" stars.

Check out this week's Rainbow Scrap Challenge posts--lots of amazingly beautiful rainbow projects to inspire you!


Julie in GA