As the hoard of boxes were unpacked into the sewing room, it became more and more apparent that I had much more fabric in reality than in my head.
Much, much more.
There are 3 x 80 litre boxes and a Harrods hamper.
That’s too much fabric for my comfort. Quite a bit of it has been very kindly gifted to me, and there are some beautiful vintage wools that will force me soon to overcome my trepidation about coat making.
There are some bits and bobs for making things for the kids, which they’ve mostly grown out of as this stash has mouldered unloved, so will be used for cute pyjama bottoms for the winter.
But, lets be brutally honest here, most of it is stuff that I’ve bought on a whim over the past few years and has been scattered around the old loft and forgotten.
I was astonished at what I uncovered, so I took some time to catalogue and sort it all out.
I know there are several electronic options for curating your fabric collection, but I decided to go old skool.
A notebook and swatches.
I measured each piece of fabric and took a tiny snippet for the book. I’ve recorded what width the fabric is and how much of it I have
The beauty of this “system” though, is that as I leaf through the notebook, there is the tactile swatch that I can feel to remind me of the thickness and hand. Without the colour distortion that can occur with a screen.
At the back of the book is a total of the fabric I have at today’s date. It doesn’t include the 3 metres that are in the post to me. There’s currently 179.5m. I am mortified.
I’m going to track what goes in and what goes out. There needs to be more going out than in, for sure. I need to get the curtains and blinds sewn and then really dive into this stash and make some pretty things.
I’m off to sew curtains!