Stash-Busting 2015

I’m really trying hard to participate in Jungle January, but I’m having trouble. I made an appropriately leopard-y (yes, I’m sure that’s a word) Lolita SugarPlum Dress. I took 132 photos of it, but absolutely none of them are post-able (that’s a word too, just roll with it). While I work out a strategy for better photos, beginning with not trying to take them during a time when it is both sunshiny and raining simultaneously, I’m going to throw out a quick post about my Stash-busting attempts last year and my plans for this year.

According to my calculations, I bought way too much fabric last year. I did some sloppy math while I was supposed to be cleaning up my laundry room and came up with a total of 227 yards purchased (more or less). Of that, 67 was used and another 8 was cut out but not yet sewn together. 75 yards not ending up in the stash isn’t too shabby, but I need to do better. According to my stash-busting stats from last year, I sewed up 111 yards for projects that were blogged. That’s a total of 186 yards sewn for the year. I know I sewed up some stuff that never did get blogged, mainly t-shirts and other such basics, but probably not 41 yards worth. It’s close to breaking even, but as far as I can tell, I ended up accumulating more than I used last year.

I did end up sewing some of my fabric as I accumulated it last year, it’s those extra pieces that were spontaneously thrown into the cart along with what I was planning to use immediately that have become the newest stash-fabrics. I can’t necessarily say that I really want to use up all my stash or that I won’t be buying fabric for the next year. Sometimes I need something specific and it won’t matter how much cotton poplin I have in my stash if what I really need is swimsuit lycra. I will admit that it’s a little bit difficult to see what all I have in my stash. I’d like to get it to all fit on the one set of shelves and I’d like to have enough space on those shelves that I can see what all I have, nothing stacked in front of other things. They pretty much still look like this, only messier.

So that’s my goal for 2015. I plan to keep track of projects made from the stash and yardage used, but the end-goal is to have things fit on the shelf. Since 2 yards of faux fur will always take up more space that 3 yards of rayon challis, I’m not planning to focus as much on the yardage in/out numbers as as I will on the overall volume of fabric.

Anyone else planning to work on whittling the stash this year? Maybe you’d like to join the group. Info can be found here.