Stash Management

How do you manage your stash? Your projects? Your UFOs? Are you a finisher? A starter? a middle of the roader? What is your least favorite component of quilting? Your favorite?

Where do you sew? Do you have your own room? or a little corner of the living room? Do you sew on the dining room table, or do you have your own reserved space?

I'm just wondering...I have lots of changes going on here at Queenie Quilts, and I am contemplating how I store all of my quilting stuff.....I use the containers from the Container Store to help me manage everything. From stash (items that don't have assigned projects) in sweater boxes, to projects (in flip top containers), to tools in jars and desk top containers. Give me a day at the container store and I could find a use for every item in that store (not to mention how much I love to wander the uber-organized aisles).

So, back to projects....How many do you have? Do you actively work on all of them, or do some just linger? Do you over analyze your projects? I DO. I have 40 project boxes in the top of my stash closet. So I can have 40 projects going at one time. Some time earlier this year, I decided that I wanted to get that number down to a more manageable number. I wanted to be a finisher (or a completionist), as I am a natural starter (one who loves to pick fabrics for a project and get all of the cutting done, before putting it away in a pretty box and promptly forgetting about it). I would really like to be down to about 10 in-process projects and no more.

I also want to reduce my stash, significantly, I've realized that as much as I like specific fabric lines (and have collected several of them), I'm not doing them justice by buying a fat quarter tower, borders, and background and then storing them for 5 years. My fabrics deserve to see the light of day, not be collected in beautiful containers. So, I'm really trying to decrease my stash....use the fabrics I have. Not that I plan to get rid of all of my fabric and only buy when I have a project (that would be just a little to confining for me). But, I need to balance what I buy and use some of the stuff that I already have before I go buy new stuff....will I still have a fairly large fabric stash. Definitely, I need it for applique projects. But only fat quarters, not yardage...I'd rather have 40 fat quarters than 10 yards of a single fabric, or a small set.

My other issue -- size. I take a class and instead of making the baby or lap, I commit to making the queen size, and really, how many people want a bed size quilt? Most people want a quilt for the couch or a wallhanging or a bed runner, not a huge quilt. Yet, still, I have made the large ones....so I'm changing my tune and working on smaller quilts....

And now that you have seen my resolutions, I really must get to work, I've committed to quite a bit, and must really get started.