5 Ways to Sew From Your Fabric Stash

Podcast Show Notes

• 
  Episode 85: How Can I Use More of the Fabric I Buy?


• 
  Design Your Wardrobe: Our popular course helps you plan the sewing projects you'll love to wear.


• 
  Podcast listeners get half off an unlimited Seamwork membership when you use this link, plus you get to keep that price as long as you’re a member!


• Tell us your idea for the next icebreakers for makers!

Podcast Transcript

Welcome back to Seamwork Radio, where we share practical ideas for building a creative process so you can sew with intention and joy. Haley is out on parental leave with her new baby right now, so I'm going to be flying solo today, giving you some practical tips and tricks.

We've also got a whole bunch of interviews lined up with some pretty incredible guests from the world of sewing that you will not want to miss. So stay tuned all summer for that, and we'll welcome Haley back in the fall.

All right, today we're talking about how you can sew from your fabric stash.

We're going to cover five tips that It'll help you to use what you have, buy less, and clear space in your sewing room by sewing with fabric you already have and love.

All right, so most of us have fabric stashes that just seem to get bigger and bigger. I know that I do. If you've seen videos of my sewing shed on YouTube, you've seen how I organized mine. I have this cutting table. It's a Koala cabinet, which I absolutely love, and it has drawers in it. It's a cutting table with drawers underneath, and my fabric is stored in those drawers, and all the drawers are labeled by the type of fabric it is.

It's a really nice system, but I actually ran out of room in those drawers, and I have this big basket that I got at an antique store, it's a giant basket, and I've had to use that as my overflow basket. I'm looking at it right now, and it's stacked very high. I'm out of room in that basket as well.

Yesterday, I was just in the office and we were filming some videos, and I've got even more fabric there that's just stored at work. I have fabric stored in my garage. Just thinking about this, I have a lot of fabric.

I think sewing from our stash is something that we can all probably get a little bit better at. I feel like just when my closet starts feeling really crammed, I start running out of hangers. Everything is starting to look like I don't have room to even add one more thing. That's when I know it's time to use more of what I have and maybe even do a little bit of a fabric buying hiatus if I need to.

Let's talk about that. Let's talk about some ways that you can actually use your stash more, use what you have more, because I think a lot of us accumulate and accumulate.

We find something we really, really like, we buy it even if we don't have a purpose for it right away, and then it's very easy to forget about it, and you just don't use it. Let's talk about some ways to do more of that.

So tip number one is to take inventory of your stash and notice how much yardage you have. I think it's really the easiest to shop your stash if you always know what's in your stash and have a pretty good idea of what's in there.

There are a lot of different ways of organizing your stash. I mentioned the way mine is semi-organized. I feel like the core of it is organized, but then I have a few other solutions for the overflow. But there are a lot of different ways you can organize your stash.

In episode 168, Haley and I shared five ways to manage your stash. That's something you can go back and listen to that can help you with that.

But one thing you can do is just to swatch and label your yardage. Just cut a little swatch from each piece, and you can keep it in a binder, for example.

You can just tape it to paper or glue it to paper, staple it. Staples work really, really well, and just label what you have and how much you have. You can create an online inventory. I personally like this because to me, it's very easy to edit. When you use something, it's easy to remove what you've used. If you use only part of your yardage, you can very easily do that. It's easy to add stuff as well.

You can just grab a picture. For example, if you buy a fabric online, you can just use the picture from the shop and add it to your online inventory.

You can also organize by type and weight, which I find really, really helpful. I've actually been thinking, so I'm a big Notion user. I love using Notion, which is an app that is like Evernote, but with a lot more capabilities to it. You can create little databases in it, and you can also create templates in it. I've been I'm thinking about making a little Notion template for organizing my fabric stash. If I do, I'll share it with you guys because I think it would be useful for a lot of other people, too.

There might actually be something out there for that that is pre-existing. I don't know, but I think it would be really cool.

Just keeping that inventory is so incredibly helpful for using more of what you have. One thing I used to do is I used to keep all my swatches on a little card on a keyring, and each one had a label on it that described exactly how much there was and what the fabric was. I just kept them all on a little keyring.

We even had, I think back in the day on the Colette blog, we even had a free downloadable template for those. See if I can dig It goes up again. But I think there's just so many online solutions now as well.

Tip number two is to give yourself a stash sewing challenge of some kind. This is my favorite way of really getting through more of what I already have: setting a goal to sew a certain number of projects from your stash.

There are a few different ways you can do this. You can go on a fabric buying fast until you sew through a certain amount of your stash, for example.

You can plan a seasonal collection only using your stash, and a lot of people do that for Design Your Wardrobe. They go through the Design Your Wardrobe class, and one of their goals for it is to really only use what they already own. I think that's a really great way of getting through more of your stash. Personally, one of the other things that I like to do is to alternate projects. So I try to alternate something that maybe I need to buy fabric for, and then another one where I can be inspired by what I already own and use that to decide what to sew. And that can be a really fun challenge for yourself.

I really like starting with fabric and finding the right pattern to go with that fabric I think having access to all the Seamwork patterns really, really helps with that because you have just so much to choose from right off the bat. That really helps me to sew more from my stash because I can always find something that'll suit the fabric and the amount of fabric I have. I end up using a lot more of what I have that way.

I really like that alternating approach to things, especially if it feels too restraining to only sew from your stash for months at a time. That can be a little bit hard.

Next is to make a habit of shopping your stash first. If you do prefer to start with a pattern and then pick fabric, make it your policy instead to shop your stash first.

Each time you pick a pattern to sew, go to your stash and see if you have enough yardage in a suitable fabric before you look outside of your stash. I think this is a very simple thing that you can do that a lot of people, including myself, really overlook.

Whenever I have an idea for something I want to make, I always immediately start shopping for it.

Oftentimes, I have things in my stash that would be wonderful, and it might not be exactly what I had in mind to begin with, but sometimes it's even better. Sometimes I have fabrics in my stash that I've completely forgotten about and that are absolutely beautiful. I bought them for a reason. I bought them because I loved them, and they can be made into these incredible projects that I hadn't thought about because I hadn't thought about that fabric in a while.

If you shop your stash first and make it your habit to look and see what you already own before you're allowed to buy any fabric, I think you'll find yourself using a lot more of what you already own.

Number four is to get creative with scraps. If you are short on yardage, you can create patchwork yardage or you can color block fabric.

This is another thing that is really easy to overlook. I think sometimes we're like, Well, I don't have enough of this fabric. I'm just going to buy something totally new. But a lot of times, you can really get creative with your fabric and find ways to piece it together and do different parts in different colors and really create some really interesting patchwork looks.

We even have a video on YouTube that's all about creating patchwork yardage. Taking whatever straps and pieces you have and creating basically a new fabric out of it, that's patchwork, and then cutting your pattern from that fabric. That's a really cool way to use as much as possible of what you already own.

I love patchwork personally, so I've been keeping as many straps as I can. I have a lot of quilting cotton straps, but then I also have a lot of other straps that I'm just holding on to because I enjoy the challenge of putting these things together and making something from nothing, really. I like to really get creative with my straps, and it's something that you can do, too.

You can also, of course, use them for smaller projects as well. Even if you're creating that patchwork yardage, you can use those for things like tote bags and small bags.

Then number five is to only shop for fabric that you're actually going to sew. This can be a really hard one. But if you use your current stash to identify the kinds of fabrics that you use the most and the least, then you can make a list of the fabric qualities that you like, and you can stop buying fabric that doesn't have those qualities.

For example, if you find that you sew a lot with linen and the linens in your stash, you go through really quickly. But other fabrics, maybe you keep buying quilting cottons because they have these really cute prints on them, but you have no idea what to do with them.

So they sit in your stash for a long time. You don't really want to make clothing out of them. You just bought them because they were so cute and you thought maybe you'd find a purpose for them.

If you figure out what fabrics fit into those two columns, which are the ones that you use the most, which are the ones that you use the least, you list those out, and then you know to buy the ones that are in the most used column instead.

You can break this down even further. I mentioned linen and quilting cotton, but you could also break it down into the actual qualities of those things. Maybe for linen, it's something that's really breathable. It's something that you really like the texture of, whatever it is for then you know that maybe there are some other fabrics that fall into that camp as well. Not necessarily always linen, but you know what it is about them that you really like, and you can buy fabrics that fit that genre for you. This really helps to keep your stash in check for the future because you're actually using the things you buy.

So even if you buy something that doesn't have an immediate use to it, you're a lot more likely to use it in the future. So if you need help with this, you can listen to episode 85, which is How Can I use More of the Fabric I Buy? So that's a related topic, and we have some really good tips there that can help you as well.

Well, I'm just going to recap the tips for you today.

So we had five tips, and the first one was to take an inventory of your stash and note how much yardage you have. This is really, really, really helpful.

Number two is to give yourself a stash sewing challenge of some kind, whether that's only sewing from your stash, alternating, having a fabric buying fast, or planning a seasonal collection that's really just based on your stash.

Number three is to make it a habit to shop your stash first. Before you go out shopping for a new project that you have in mind, start with your stash.

Number four is to get creative with straps and think about ways that you can create patchwork looks or you can reuse straps. You can do color blocking and do some creative things with the straps that you already have.

Number five is to only shop for fabrics that you'll actually sew. You can do that by identifying the kinds of fabrics that you use the most and the least and what the qualities are of the fabrics that you use the most and the least and sticking to those ones that you're actually going to use. That'll just help you to cycle through your stash instead of just accumulating and accumulating.

Okay, well, I mentioned a few things that I think could be helpful for you. One was the Design Your Wardrobe program, but we have a free sewing planner, a printable tool to help you design and plan your sewing projects. It's what Design Your Wardrobe is based around, and you can get that for free.

That includes pages for sketching looks, for planning out individual projects with sketches and swatches, and you can print as many pages as you need. It's a really, really helpful free tool, and it's available at seamwork.com/go/planner.

All right, if you liked this episode, we would love it if you would leave us a five-star review.

We love reading your reviews every single week. I have one here that I wanted to read from Elisa the Green, who says, “Seamwork provides a beautiful online pattern library, tutorials, and workshops. This podcast is the icing on the cake, teaching you how to approach wardrobe planning, style, and sewing.”

What a sweet review. Thank you so much. Haley and I both really, really appreciate reading your reviews. It just lights me up and makes my day every single the whole time. So thank you so much, you guys. I really, really appreciate the reviews.

If you have a moment and can leave us a five-star review, it really helps other people to find the podcast.

That does it for us this week. I'm Sarai, and this is Seamwork Radio.