Did mommy take away your wubbie or what?

[gurdymonkey]

Anyone who feels the need to hoard more fabric than they can ever possibly use in their own natural lifetime is suffering from some bizarre mental pathology and requires counseling. They are also preventing the rest of the fabric buying population from having a reasonable and legitimate shot at acquiring what we need for our own modest purposes, all because they have selfishly squirrelled it away in their home equivalent of the warehouse from the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark."  You know the ones, they sport bumperstickers bearing the legend "The one who dies with the most fabric wins!" They have an entire room - or more - devoted to their stash. I don't know which is scarier: the jumbled dragon's hoard which is so disorganized that they must go out and buy more fabric because they will never find the 80 yard roll of chemise linen they got on sale - or the anally neat rows and shelves with index cards that have swatches glued to them so they know exactly what's in each box.

I do not have a "stash." I have a project pile. It is the equivalent of two department store shopping bags full of uncut fabric. It is not allowed to get larger than that. If I buy something and do not use it for more than a year, I try to trade it to a friend because I obviously did not love it enough to make something out of in the first place.

I say "try" because I once traded five yards of exquisitely gorgeous silk suiting to someone. That silk had birthdays before she traded me back five yards of relentlessly plain blue linen so unremarkable that I am probably going to donate it to the next silent auction because I don't like it enough to make something out of it. Why? Because her stash had to be organized first. At which point, we kept forgetting. At which point, I didn't care what she gave me because I just wanted to get out of a room which was making me twitch on basic principle.

There is also another bag full of scraps and remnants, because you never know when you might have to dress a monkey.

I know what I have.
I know what I'm going to use it for.
I stay within my budget.
It ultimately gets used or goes away.
I can find stuff when I want it.
It's not taking over my home.
It's not taking over my life.  That's what the books are for.

Comments

A different point of view

[callistotoni.livejournal.com]

I have a stash. It is pretty well organized, and I know pretty much what everything will eventually turn into. I also have "consumable" fabrics that I tend to buy in bulk:
-- silk organza because I love to interline silk with it (especially for skirts),
-- canvases of various types (I just found a linen canvas -- which I haven't seen for a long time and love; still looking for the perfect hemp canvas),
--bolts of cheap muslin for draping (it's amazing how quick one can go through this stuff),
--white hankerchief linen because I and everybody else needs multiple sets of underwear/smocks/chemises/shirts.

Not to mention that when I have a chance I'll by boning in bulk.

Pretty much when I get the chance to acquire something that I know I can use for interlining or structure I tend to buy a lot of it. Of course, it is not uncommon for me then to give this stuff away to apprenti or such.

Given the limited time I have to sew, of course, much of this fabric is not going to get worked on any time soon. I do have a list of projects, however.

My point is that I have a stash, and I'm happy with it.

Re: A different point of view

[barone-antonio.livejournal.com]

True enough... there are those necessary items in my house that I pick up when I can find them at a good price, e.g. black and white linen for gambesons and underswear/under tunics. As for hemp canvas, Dharma has a very sturdy hemp canvas.

Re: A different point of view

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

There is a difference between using what you buy and shopping carefully for stuff you KNOW you use regularly and being obsessive compulsive. Like the woman who fessed up that she opens her nine Rubbermaid tubs "several days a year" just so she can fondle every item in her stash. (At which point I'm thinking what? Only nine? Is nine your lucky number? Do security guards escort you out of stores for lasciviously fondling the merchandise or is this just an at-home thing?)

There's also the factor that I have uprooted and moved no less than four times in the last five years thanks to the Gaius Auklandus See California Unintentionally Program. Having to pack and unpack one's worldly possessions repeatedly over a relatively short span of time will free your mind, Neo, and make you throw out or give away stuff that stayed in the box since the last move so obviously it's not all that important.

Kass is carrying hemp canvas these days:
http://reconstructinghistory.com/index.php?c=103&w=24&r=Y