Stash in the stash

You know what that is, don't you? The stuff you set aside in your stash for a special reason. That you then forget.

In general I sort my stash by colour. Well, except I keep my flannels separate (sorted by colour though) and my Christmas and Halloween fabrics separate. Oh, and bright grandchildren-ish fabric is separate, too. And then my modern fabric is separate. And then the special stuff.

As you probably remember I sew mostly on the weekends. But sometimes I have time during the week and I cut. I don't sew because I don't like to turn my iron on if I am only in my sewing room for a short time. Dumb, I know, but there you have it.

Anyway that means I often cut several quilts long before I sew them. And I have learned the hard way that is a good idea to set aside the extra fabric for those quilts until I have sewn them. Because, otherwise I screw something up and need to recut something and, you guessed it, no more of that fabric.

The problem with setting these fabric aside, oh, and other ones that just look great together, is that when I am looking for a fabric I just KNOW I have in the stash I can't find it. Because it is somewhere "special".

Or when I need a particular colour or pattern and go through the ENTIRE stash, except for the stash in the stash and can't find anything.

Well, after that long preamble, let's see what I have been doing. First up is something a bit out of my normal zone. I had seen this fabric line, Wee Wonderland, and liked it. Then one day on the Quilter's Daily Deal the charm pack was really cheap so I bought it. This is the quilt so far. Using the solid sashing is also a little unusual for me. I meant to make it thinner, but oh, well, forgot when I was cutting, so it is a little wider then I intended. (Cue the "Twilight Zone" music -- when I just went to make the link today's deal is a jelly roll of Wee Wonderland!) And yes, it needs a border for sure. I am going to go back on the web and find some of this letter pattern on black for the border. It comes in brown, too, but I really like the black. Then I will get some of this pink stripe and also some in the lime green for the binding. I am not sure which I will like better so of course I need both. So much for the cheap, cheap cheap charm pack!

So since I need to order and receive the fabric to complete this top I decided to dig through the stash for something quick to do and found this ABC panel and several fabrics that go with it. I have had them awhile but remember that I got it all on sale. Isn't it cute? There was a free pattern on the web for the quilt that used it but I didn't have all the fabrics it used so I used something from my stash for the sashing. I added the purple skinny border again using something from my stash and now need to decide what goes on it next.

Here are some possibilities.

Anyway, back to the stash in the stash. While hunting just the right red for this little quilt and not finding it I realized that I had some cool fabrics cut for this quilt. I thought that there might be a good green in that stash.

Well, of course I will not make it in blue as pictured. I saw this pattern in a magazine some time back and fell in love. It was free on the web so I printed it out. I am not sure why I like it so much. It is kind of like a blooming 9 patch and I don't especially like blooming 9 patches.

Well, shortly after I saw this pattern I saw and fell in love with this fabric. There is a shop in Boise called the Cotton Club. It is mostly mail or web ordering but until last year they opened the shop on First Thursday every month as part of downtown Boise's monthly celebration of the arts.

I don't buy alot there because their fabric is not really my style. Lots of Fossil Ferns and batiks. Anyway I used to try to go as many Thursdays as I could and at least look around. They had this fabric. So I bought it for the middle of the quilt. It is a Susan Winget fabric from a line called Kansas Song. No wonder I like it. I love Susan Winget illustrations.

This quilt requires lots of half square triangles. They are finally finished. Don't you like all the fabrics? They look really nice with the center fabric, don't you think? So autumnal. No wonder I dug it out right now!

Lots of flying geese, too. They are now finished, too. Don't look too closely at the ironing board cover. I am brutal on ironing board covers. This one is not very old. You can tell because there are no holes yet. Mr THQ is always on the lookout for covers on sale just to try to keep me going.

Anyway, back to the theme of this post. While I was digging I also found this stack. Don't these fabrics look great together? I remember where I bought them, but boy do I wish I knew what I intended to do with them. I think I will go through my Miss Rosie's books and patterns and see if anything strikes my fancy. I like her stuff alot.

So anyway, I still haven't found the right fabric for the ABC quilt border. But I have decided to sew up everything I have pre cut so I can resort the stash totally by colour. Except for the flannels, Halloween and Christmas. Those deserve to stay separate.

So how do you sort your stash? Do you have a stash in the stash, too?