Instagram Destash

Hosting an Instagram Destash starting next weekend. Will be auctioning off 14 Tula Pink OOP/HTF bundles. And selling a bunch of FQ bundles - low vol, rainbow, misc.

Trying to cut my stash by half because I haven't done much sewing in years. But I'm keeping a little bit because I still have hope :)

Follow me @halfstash_destash on Instagram!

Baby Quilts in Progress

Here's a tiny update from the peanut gallery!

I did manage a tiny bit of Christmas sewing and got stockings finished for my husband, daughter and myself just before the actual holiday. Thankfully my daughter is too young to know that something is supposed to be inside of them on Christmas morning!

In retrospect, maybe I should have made my daughter's red but the letters are fused and appliqued (though not really well - I need a lot of practice turning those corners!).

I am the proud aunt of what seems like a million nieces and nephews! And in Feb-April of this year, I'll be adding three more lovelies to the set. So, I thought I had better start getting some baby quilts together.

I have four options for baby quilt pattern.

 



The fourth is yet to be determined but maybe a tumbler quilt or maybe two really large shoeman's puzzle blocks (a la Denyse Schmidt). We'll see!

I once again tried my hand at paper-piecing and once again proved that I am the world's worst paper-piecer! The LOVe blocks above are about 16x22 altogether and are from a tutorial on SewMamaSew. They would have been very easy to improv, but I'm trying to get better at PPing. Alas, even these simple blocks brought me aggravation.

The paper boat looks pretty good, except there was one piece that I sewed three times, maybe four? And I just could not get one tiny little corner to work out, so I fudged it. I'm super good at that. It's something about sewing the pieces on the proper angle, right-sides together and then flipping it over and having the proper coverage. I honestly do not have good spatial relation/manipulation skills. Oh well.

I have a couple divided baskets and poolside totes on the to-do, so hopefully I'll have a little time this week to sew something!

Selvage Placemats

 

We were in need of some placemats and I decided to take some time last week to make some.

I didn't want to do anything pieced, I wanted to keep it fairly sensitive. And I thought I'd try to use up my selvages. I had been collecting them for a while and I have seen some amazing projects (especially at the Selvage Blog). I Googled for inspiration and found some great ideas. I settled on this layout.

One of the greatest things about this project - minimal pressing! I keep my selvages in an oversized plastic tub that had cheese puffs in it. So, they were scrunchy and had to be pressed, but otherwise, it was just sew, sew, sew!

I separated them out by color, as much as possible. I looked at both the printing on the selvage and whatever remained of the actual pattern, for the color. I ended up with enough for four placemats. I did three color family ones (blue/aqua, pink/red/neutral, and citrusy colors) and one random leftovers.

 

  

Most placemat patterns seem to be 13"x17." I decided to go bigger and these ended up at about 14"x19," but it would have been better if I had made them a couple inches smaller. There's a reason most patterns called for 13"x17"!

I sewed the first one "wrong" in the sense that I was making more work for myself. So you can see that the pink/red and the random one are a similar layout and the blue and the citrus one are similar. The red/pink one was the first one that I did and for some reason I tucked each strip underneath the previous. I'll blame it on my left-handed brain. Sometimes I just do things backwards. And, for the center strip, I had enough of the print to put right sides together and fold the strip back down towards the batting. So for the bottom two, I worked from the center out and for the top two I worked from the corner in.

Even with the size issue, I am super happy about how they turned out. And who knows, maybe they will shrink a little in the wash.

So, I was able to purge some fabric and I was able to use up some materials I already had and that is a win-win-win situation!

A {Fabric} Weight on My Shoulders

So... I bought some fabric. The giddy, pleased-as-punch euphoria has since passed, as it always does, and as I look upon my fabric empire, I feel simultaneously overwhelmed and underwhelmed. Clearly, I have a self-control issue. I'm a fabric manufacturer's dream! I also have some on pre-order that will come in next month... After being pretty good for a while, I have fallen off the wagon. And since I have not sewn much in the last two years, the purchases are completely unnecessary. What is the solution?

Stop.Buying.Fabric.

Easy. Right?

Anyway, moving has also opened my eyes the the sheer volume of what I have and how I would feel about having to move it again (I really wouldn't). I definitely have fabric that needs to be re-homed. I have a gorgeous stash of batiks (my first quilting love). And while I don't want to get rid of all of them because I'd like to try my hand at some watercolor quilts in the future, I do not need a whole 20 gallon bin full (ok, it's about half full, the other half is a sad attempt at a quilt-as-you-go braid quilt that needs fixing).

I also just have some random pieces from swaps or grab bags or odd purchases, that just aren't my favorites. I don't want to keep things that I don't really love. And while there is something to be said about working with the non-favorites to change them into useful items, I think I'd prefer to use my limited sewing time to work with fabrics that I really inspire me.

Here's the first purge. Pretty good. The batiks, minus the 48 strips are about 16 yards. So, I'd guess that's over 30 yards total there! (Barely a dent, alas....) I plan to donate to Green Bag Lady, who takes scraps 3"x18" (for handles) and up. And I'll also be sending some to Margaret's Hope Chest.

I've seen a lot of successful destashes on Instagram and I've bit the bullet and joined on the off-chance that I go that route. I don't want to open an Etsy store just to de-stash and I'm not sure how many crafters really look to ebay for fabric purchases. A lot of successful Instagram destashers are bigger-name bloggers with a legion of faithful followers. So, I don't know if that route would work well for me or not. I've looked at Faith's suggestions and Allison has a whole podcast about it, both of which are very helpful. On the other hand, I've done a bit of destashing right here on the blog, which went ok. I suppose a multi-pronged approach would work best. We'll see. Once I get the donate piles out, I'll have a better idea of what might be de-stashed. I may just decide to donate it all - less work for me and a good deed to boot!

 

All I know is that it would take several lifetimes to get through the fabric I have with the projects that I've been doing (shark bag last week and this 1-hour wonder - the plastic bag holder - this week). The bag holder is a really fun, easy, useful project. There are a ton of tutorials out in the blog-o-sphere. I looked at Jeni's tutorial and Anne Marie's. In the end, I used what I had on hand and I think my rectangle came out to be about 19.5" x 28" before I made the tube.

It hangs in our kitchen, hence the toaster fabric. (I do tend to bring re-usable bags to the grocery store, but I still get produce bags and we also solicit from family members for dog walk bags, so we always have quite the stash of plastic bags). This is way classier than the larger plastic bag they were in!

I've decided to ease back in to quilting by working on quilts that are already in blocks. That way, I can tackle some UFOs and still get some sewing in each evening. Here are my triangles on the wall (again). I've got about six or seven projects of various ages in blocks, though at least three require trimming (blech!). And I need to make a Christmas stocking before mid-September. So that should be enough to be getting on with :) I'm excited to get some of these older projects checked off the list!