Grandma's fabric stash

I know almost every crafter I know has a stash, some small, but most of the times really big. I did a minor cleaning to my stash not too long ago, and it was so nice to be able to fit all of the fabric I had into one dressser.

This weekend I told my grandma I'd help her whittle down her huge fabric stash. we had some of the old cabinets from the kitchen put into the garage to hold all her fabrics. We just hadn't filled them up yet. After some breakfast, we go into the garage (which is her sewing space) and got down to business.

This mess of fabric on the floor is not even half of what she had. Since she made custom clothing for so many years there were tons of different kinds of fabrics. Satin, crepe, piques, poly blends, organzas, silks, tons of linings, and even some heavy duty cotton (from when she made scrubs). Since I make mostly aprons, wallets and pouches, I only have scraps that are less than a yard sometimes. But grandma had tons and tons of yardage. We found one cut of home dec fabric that was over 20 yards!

 

As she pulled out the fabric we had 4 piles: keep, trash, give to her sister and keep to make clothes for us. When we were done we filled up an entire pantry sized cabinet. We spent all day sorting and folding, but it was well worth it. We found so much stuff we didn't know we had in there. I found enough fabric to make myself 3 or 4 dresses. We also found tons of notions and a lot of lace. 

Anyone jealous of her stash? We're affectionately calling it "the store" now, cause we have almost enough fabric to open our own fabric store.

In the sweatshop

Forgive my terrible mess of a craft room. The kitchen remodel had begun and I have my baking supplies, and my KitchenAid Stand Mixer, mingling with my fabrics.

I did make one major improvement in my work-in-progress craft room. Last weekend I was sewing up some pouches and had my sewing machines on the 6 foot foldable table I bought to use for shows. I thought it would be the perfect solution for my sewing station, but I was wrong. This table was way too wide. In order for me to reach the pedals, the machine had to be pushed way back or my pedal was way too far for my little feet.

I could have lived with that, but then there was the shaking problem. Now I consider myself a pretty experienced sewer. So when I'm making up a batch of aprons or pouches, I can basically make them in my sleep. This means when I get to the sewing part, I put the pedal to the metal and let my machine go as fast as it can. Well my foldable table didn't like that one bit. The whole table shook as I sewed and slowly things started falling off as I was working.

Luckily my parents were taking a little trip to Ikea last friday and got me this table. It perfectly fits both Sewphia (my sewing machine) and Merry (my serger) on it and I even have room for my scissors caddy. This table is also narrower and lets everything fit perfectly on top without making me reach. Plus, no shaking! I highly recommend the Vika series tables from Ikea. They come in a variety of sizes (mine is a little under 4 feet long) and tons of colors, and being from Ikea, are totally affordable. I had a smaller version Vika table before, which I'm now using as my computer desk. Unfortunately Ikea is in no way paying me for this endorsement, but I thought I'd share my great find.

With my new table, and a Harry Potter marathon on TV, I did get tons of sewing done for Odd Duck this weekend. Great new pouches and wallets are ready to go and I cut out some aprons too. I hope to squeeze in some sewing throughout the week after my Zumba classes. We'll see how that goes.

I'm also prepping for the Handmade Miami Etsy 101 workshop that I'm teaching on Sunday. So any of you etsians out there, feel free to leave any tips you may have about running an Etsy store in the comments.