Fabric Stash: Stretch Fabrics, Blends, Synthetics, and Miscellaneous

If you've been keeping up with my blog, you'll know that one of my goals for the year was to document my fabric stash. Then I found a stash busting sewalong that I joined. One of the tasks that was suggested was to share your fabric stash on your blog. I have been doing this in parts as I get around to sorting out my fabric, working out what everything is, and measuring it so I know what I have. I am going to all this trouble so that I can actually see what I have, get some inspiration to make something out of them, and actually use up some of it.

This is the third and final installment of my fabric stash walk through. Hopefully you'll see some of these fabrics coming up in future posts!

I have been surprised at some of the fabric that I have been hanging on to. It isn't uncommon to find fabric that I've had for more than 10 years!

Some of it is a lot newer than that to my stash, such as this assortment of stretch fabrics:

Stretch Fabrics
The Fabric Store had a sale last year on stretch fabrics. They had a large assortment of fabrics going for $8 per metre, with some for $4 per metre. At the time I really needed some new tops for summer, and so I bought 6 different knits, walking away with more than 6m of fabric for $44. Despite having used some of each of these fabrics and made 6 tops, most only used between 60 and 70cm of fabric, so with that bit extra that you often get when buying fabrics, and a couple that were the end of the roll, there's enough left of all of them to make another one. If not for me, I'm sure I could get shirts for one of my kids!

I also have some stretch fabrics that I specifically bought for my daughter to make the tops of dresses, and some fabric leftover from the dress that I made her, and the jumper that I made myself.

Here's some of the things that I've already completed from this fabric:

Fabric Blends and Synthetics

The first of the fabric blends are stretch cottons. Not much to say about them. Some I've had for a long time, some  not so long. I think the top stretch pink denim I bought originally to make something for my niece. She has now outgrown the pink phase, so I'd better do something for my daughter before she outgrows the pink phase too!

The top 4 of these are poly cottons, while the bottom of these is a great printed cotton with cut out sections, attached to a thin tulle, and decorated with sequins. I'm pretty sure I picked it up at the Remnant Warehouse, and have already made one top from it (although it doesn't fit properly now - who would have guessed that your torso doesn't go back to normal after having kids!) There's still enough left for another top or two, or perhaps a dress (which I'm leaning towards).

In this next pile, the top fabric is a black stretch bought in Hong Kong. It will make a really nice dress one day. (Probably not in the near future though). Next up are 2 stretch wool blends, while the bottom 3 I don't really know what the composition is.

Miscellaneous
Rather than try and work out what all of these fabrics are, I have now lumped them all together in a storage box. I have no idea when, where or why I bought most of them. Most I suspect were offcuts, remnants, or seconds. Some have flaws in them. There are a couple of chiffon-like fabrics that I conveniently bought matching lining for. I was going to make some kind of tops out of them, and I actually did make a maternity top from one, and there's still enough left for another! There are a few pieces that I was perhaps going to make suits from (no need for that now!) These fabrics will probably stay in the stash for a bit longer yet.

So, apart from remnants, linings, things I couldn't find, fabrics that have been put aside for specific things and fabrics that I have bought specifically for work purposes, this concludes my walk through my fabric stash.

Here's a few stats for you now.

• In all the photos I have shared with you, there are a total of 100 pieces of fabric (what a nice round number!) 
• For the fabrics that I actually measured, it came to 109.4 metres.
• If I add 1 metre for each of those that I didn't measure (most would be at least that much), that means that in my personal fabric stash, I have more than 142 metres.

That's a lot of sewing to be done!