Sunday Stash

Happy New Year, habibis! I hope you’ve all had lovely holidays. Mine were full of family and joy, but also rather hectic. Z and I attended four Christmas celebrations in three days, and then I spent a few days down south visiting my niece.  After all that running around, Z and I had a quiet New Year’s and I started 2016 with a sewing day – more to share later this month.

Today I’m sharing some lovely new additions to my stash.

First, my hive mates from last year’s Stash Bee generously sent me extra pieces and cuts along with the fabulous blocks they made.

Second, I’d ordered the “Sunshine and Shadows” scrap bag from Keepsake Quilting, for that grey and yellow quilt that’s on my quilting wish list.

Third, some Christmas presents: A Paradiso charm pack, a Modern Background Paper charm pack, and two Metro Living charm packs (All That Glitters and Dress Up).  (Yes the picture is upside down.  I was too lazy to rotate it.)

I also got some non-fabric quilting gifts for Christmas: a left-handed rotary cutter (yayyy!), new needles, some thread, Lori Holt’s Bloom applique shapes, Melanie Tuazon’s Peek pattern, the shopping cart cover pattern from Daydreams of Quilts, and the most adorable little pincushion shaped like an arm chair that says “Keep Calm and Sew On.”

My fabric diet kind of went by the wayside toward the end of the year, and already I’ve indulged in a couple of post-Christmas sales to buy fabrics for upcoming quilts – which you may or may not see in Sunday Stash posts, since some of the fabric is for presents.  I’d like to keep sewing from my stash, though, so look for continued monthly stash reports in 2016.

Sunday Stash

My friend A is an academic who currently works in South Africa, and for Christmas she brought me back some gorgeous fabrics.

She tells me the purple floral print was something she saw that she thought was pretty, but the other four are traditional fabrics.  I’ll have to ask her to repeat the details – the fabrics are produced by different ethnic groups in South Africa.  I think they’re all amazing.  I love the colors and the patterns!

First Sunday of Advent: Sunday Stash

Hello habibis!  I hope everyone in the US had a wonderful Thanksgiving; I know I did.  It was a white Thanksgiving, to our surprise – thankfully everyone coming to visit from out of town made it without too much trouble.  I had lots of family time and lots of sewing time.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent.  Happy Advent to those who celebrate!  (Happy Sunday to those who don’t.)  I’m kicking off my 2014 Advent calendar posting schedule beginning with my first-ever Sunday stash.

I don’t usually do Sunday stash posts because I don’t post on Sundays, but I have accumulated quite a bit of fabric this year.  Of the quilts I’ve made this year, three or four of them came mostly from fabric from outside my stash.  My goal for this year was to not buy fabric unless I needed it for a quilt or project, but I had some specific looks I was going for and I needed to buy fabric.  I’ve bought yards and yards of fabric this year – approximately 44 yards of fabric (plus 3.5 yards of 108″ wide fabric).  Also, my Aunt D, who also sews, gave me much of her stash for my birthday because she doesn’t want to keep a large stash.  I haven’t figured out how much fabric that is but I’m sure it brings my total to over 50 yards.  I also still have some scraps from my charity quilt, and leftover fabric from one of my friends in the guild who gave me what she had left from her quilt.

My yardage out has not equaled my yardage in.  This is a problem because I’m expecting to move next year and I had hoped to minimize the amount of fabric I needed to move.  My stash is huge.  Last time I moved I had eight boxes of fabric and I would prefer for my stash to be less massive this time around.   So far I’ve gotten about 21 yards out of my stash via de-stashing and charity work.  Christmas and winter birthday presents should help considerably, and I have some projects lined up for next year already.  I’ll try to keep track of how much goes out as I post about presents throughout Advent (and after Christmas).

Here are some pictures of my new fabric:

Fabric from Aunt D

Purchases from this year

This doesn’t include the fabric for my FMQ project and my magnum opus – but you’ll see them soon!

My aunt M gave me this Hungarian embroidery kit for my birthday – I want to learn to do Hungarian embroidery.

Tune in tomorrow for a post about Christmas stockings!  We’re going to have a loose schedule for Advent: Travel Tuesdays, Guest Post Wednesdays, and Throwback Thursdays.  Everything else will be posts about whatever Christmas presents I can show you.  I’m going to have some of my real-life habibis coming in for guest posts, to show you their own beautiful art.  I’m really excited to share that with you!