Six reasons why my fabric stash is so big

It's official: I'm on a fabric-buying ban.

I want to say upfront that I know I'm extremely lucky to have been able to buy so many lovely pieces, and I realise this might all come across as #firstworldproblems, but like a lot of people I'm trying to get my consumption under control, and to be open about how I'm doing it.

Also, while I personally want a little less fabric in my life/house, I'm not judging those of you who enjoy having a lovely big stash/ fabric collection. If you want to reduce it, though, then you might find some hints in this post. I'm only just starting to get on top of things myself, but I think I'm making good progress so far.

State of the stash

I've been telling myself, and my boyfriend, that my stash is "modest" for some time now. It fits in two drawers plus one shelf, and I know that there are loads of people out there with more fabric than me. But, number one, the drawers are big, and number two, I just figured out that I have about 55m of woven fabric. For the record, 10.5m are made up of gifts and freebies, but 45m is still excessive given my output. Also, I have another 9.1m on the way, because Maud's Fabric Finds is having a closing down sale (terrible news!).

To be honest, I'm actually a bit surprised that I've let myself accumulate so much fabric. I'm really indecisive when I'm fabric shopping, and I already make a conscious effort to try to use what I have first. After doing a bit of soul searching, I've identified a few factors that have let things get to this point, and have compiled a list of...

Six reasons why my fabric stash is so big

Overbuying

Obviously, but specifically buying too much of each individual fabric. I generally have enough leftover to make a top after each project, because I get nervous, and...

I buy without having a project in mind

This is an obvious one, I guess, but if I knew what I was going to make at the time of buying, then I wouldn't have 2-3m of everything, "just in case" I want to make a long sleeved circle dress, or something equally extravagant/unlikely.

Buying fabric online

I've always been hesitant to buy fabric online unless I'm already familiar with the content, but I've made exceptions for (what looked like) bargain jerseys. A couple of these have turned out to be see-through, and a couple are just not as nice as they looked online, or have the wrong stretch. Even when I've been confident at the time of ordering, some things haven't met my exception - eg. the "Liberty" fabric that's a lot thinner than the rest. This has meant that some fabrics have turned out to be inappropriate for what I had in mind, which is why they've ended up in the stash.

I don't buy what I need

On a related note, I think I've been burnt buying knits online so many times that I've just stopped, even though I make a lot of knit projects (and I've compensated by stocking up with wovens).

It's too nice!

I mean, this is the best problem to have, right? Because I like to try out lots of new patterns, I don't want to make up toiles with super nice fabrics, and until recently I didn't really have a clue about how to make things fit my body. Now that I'm getting to grips with "my" alterations, though, I should be less afraid to cut into the good stuff.

I haven't been sewing enough

Thanks to becoming disheartened about fitting, my productivity has been quite low over the past year. That said, the Stash shrinking app tells me that I've used 14.6m of fabric since the end of May - so if I carry on at that rate I'll be off to Ally Pally in October!

How to shrink a stash?

The next thing to consider is obviously how to get things under control. I've been giving this some thought for a while, and I actually started using this Stash Shrinking spreadsheet a few months ago after hearing about it on Love to Sew (I think most of my blogs are going to involve some pearl of wisdom from the hosts or their guests). It's really easy to use and doesn't require an inventory - you add in fabric as you buy it and as you use it, and set a target along the lines of "for every meter I buy I need to sew two". The spreadsheet will tell you when you can buy fabric, and how much. I was doing pretty well with this until Maud's sale, but now I'm not allowed to buy any fabric until I've sewn up another 10m! My pro tip is to save the spreadsheet in Google Drive so that you can access it anywhere.

Anyway, the tool is great and has helped me to make a start, but counting it all up made me want to be more strict with myself.

So, *drum roll*, here are my 2 rules, based on the list above:

• No woven fabrics until my stash is HALVED. To keep things simple I'm going to say that my stash is 65m, and I need to sew up 33m before I can buy more wovens. For me, that will work out at about 30 tops, or 15 dresses.
• No jersey buying without swatches

The only exception that I'm going to make is for stretch-woven fabric. I want to make the Sasha trousers and only have 2m of stretch denim - once I toile them and know exactly how much I need, I might let myself buy a little more stretch denim, but only after ordering samples.

I'll set up some rules for buying wovens once I hit my 33m goal, but for now I'm not going to worry about it because, let's face it, this is going to keep me occupied for the foreseeable future.

This is going to be...

... Great! I was pretty anxious when I realised how much I have, but I feel a lot better now that have identified my triggers and made a plan. If you're feeling stressed by your stash then I'd highly recommend sitting down and getting to grips with what you have, and why you buy.

Stevie and Nicky tackle fit adjustments.

If you've found your way to my obscure little corner of the internet, then I'm positive you'll have seen Tilly drop the Seren and Stevie patterns last week. Beauts, right? I would love to be a Seren-wearer, but I just can't let myself make another dress until I start wearing the ones that I have.

As soon as I saw a picture of the back of Stevie, I knew the top version was going to be a queue-jumper - and sure enough, I've made two this weekend. Both fabrics were from my stash, the sailboats were a gift (but came from Sea Salt), and the chambray was a Fabric Land leftovers from and Anna dress I made some time last year.

I'm not sure I've blogged about it before, but I've been looking for a "boxy" top for probably about a year. I think it started when I saw this white linen lovely on Randomly Happy, and yep, that was posted just shy of a year ago!

It's not the most intimidating project in the world, but I made enough dodgy New Look 6217's last year to know that it's not as easy as it sounds, either. My biggest problem was that I just didn't have a good enough idea of fitting, or more specifically, I didn't know what the right adjustments were for my body - it's hard for me to be objective when I look in the mirror. Everything in the top realm was just a bit dodgy - gaping neckline and tightness around the bust, and I have a hunch that I have a sway back, too. I toyed with full bust adjustments and pinching out the gaping necklines, but they all created more problems than they solved, and I was really just at a bit of a loss about what was wrong. This is a big part of the reason why I just haven't sewn a lot over the past year or so, it just got pretty frustrating spending hours on things that didn't turn out right.

Finally, something clicked when I listened to the episode of Love to Sew with Melissa Watson. First off, Melissa mentioned that she fit the back of garments before the front. This made total sense to me, but it really wasn't advice I'd heard before. And then one of the hosts (I think Helen) mentioned a broad back adjustment, and there it was! Of COURSE I have a broad back. Every time I try on a jacket or shirt I end up sizing up because I can't reach my arms forward. I'd say I've read quite a lot of blogs since I started sewing about 18 months ago, but I don't think I'd ever heard of a broad back adjustment, until then. The closest I'd come across before was a broad shoulder adjustment, but I knew that was wrong because straps are usually too far apart on me and fall off

So, I started to play around with broad back adjustments, and while it definitely seemed like the right first step, it had by no means solved all my issues. When I saw Tilly's new pattern I decided to use it as a basis for some testing since I've always found her patterns fun, and really trust her measurements. So, I sized down from a 4 to 3, did my adjustment, and made it up in this lovely sailboat cotton.

First off, the pattern is a lot of fun to make. There's also a lovely Tilly-tip for turning the neck ties that blew my mind, and now I really can't figure out why I've been faffing around with safety pins for all this time. The only changes I made to the design were adding french seams and top-stitching the front neck band - aside from sitting better, on the chambray one I really felt like it needed just a little more detail at the top. 

The back shoulder area was fine after my adjustment, but I was left with a weird mass of fabric around what I'll call my "front bra strap" areas - this is hard to photograph, but there really is a lot even though the fit around the neck, top of my shoulders and full bust looked fine. I figured I needed to remove some of the excess that I'd created with my adjustment, so I googled narrow chest adjustment and made another version, which was definitely an improvement. 

Now the fit looks better (to me, anyway), but I do think a sway back adjustment would help things along. A slight niggle is that the back neck band seems to sit quite low on me compared to the models, but I'm not sure how to fix that without negating the work I've done already.

Still, I feel like I'm finally on the right track to making things that fit. I bought some linen viscose from Sew Over It a while back, so I'm toying with using that for my next Stevie, but I might try out the button back for that one.