2021 ANTI-HAUL | I Got Rid of HALF of My Fabric Stash!

hi it's colleen welcome back to my sewing channel so today i'm going to start a project that i expect will take me several days and i might be a little crazy for doing it but it's time i'm going to go through my entire fabric stash and try to get rid of things that i no longer need or want or plan to use so i have a lot of fabric and i'll show you that in a minute but that presents several problems one is you know as i said in my last video my wrist doesn't work very well which means i can't open and close the drawers that are so full of fabric so that's one problem second problem is i just have more fabric than i can possibly use i don't sew as much as i used to so it would take me forever to get rid of everything that i have in this room then the third thing is i've changed the type of sewing that i do i used to have a little business that i did as a fundraiser for a ministry in haiti and i made lots of little fabric craft projects and i just don't do that anymore so what used to be useful to me maybe you know a small square of fabric like this you know to make a small project is really no longer useful to me and then finally you know when you sew people tend to give you a lot of fabric if they clear out you know grandma's house or their mom's house or they clear out their own craft room and they know you so they'll say hey can can you use some fabric you know you don't say no to that when you're starting out or when you're building your sewing room or building your stash but eventually you do have to say no or you have to be very selective about what you keep a friend of mine a couple years ago was cleaning out her parents house after both of her parents had passed away and her mother was a huge sewer she had a very well endowed sewing room and my friend let me keep a lot of that stuff for helping her and it was a huge huge blessing to me but it really is it's a lot of fabric it's somebody else's stash joined my stash and i just have too much so what i'm going to do is go through each drawer and right now i roughly have things sorted by color and just sort through that drawer and try and cut it down by half that's my goal and i'll take you with me but first let's take a look at what i have and where i keep it and you'll see the volume the the size of the task ahead of me so the first place i store fabric is in this antique chest of drawers my grandma bought this at goodwill i don't know 30 years ago maybe and then gave it to us when we first got married and who needed furniture for our apartment we've been married 26 years so it's been a while but it's a great piece of furniture i love it to pieces but you know it doesn't want to pull really easily the way a modern piece of furniture would and um you can see how full the drawers are that it's a struggle even to get it open so this up here is where i keep uh greens and oranges and yellows more or less but you can see how hard it is to get into and then closing it is equally tough i've got to shove everything back in there and i can't use my left hand so i end up doing this to get it closed um the next row down has blues and purples and then down below has browns and grays so this whole chest of drawers needs to be sorted now underneath my sewing table you can see i have several little chest of plastic drawers and so these pink and purple ones i actually found on the side of the road they were out for trash day and so i was able to pick them up for free so i've actually put them to very good use but they're also really really full and you can see it's kind of awkward to get underneath here to even get into anything so this top drawer is all felt and then i have reds and i continue my rides down below but you can see that's quite full here is a bin of two drawers and the top one has clothing items that i think i might want to salvage or use as pattern pieces and then down below here is all vintage fabrics quickly these vintage fabrics make great craft fabrics here's my real problem child this little chest of three drawers has white fabric this is black and then down here is all my utility fabric so things like interfacing and and netting and stuff like that but i can't get to this very easily at all and you can see they're overstuffed and i can hardly open the bins at all so this one really needs to get sorted out for sure it's even worse because of the side of my table that it's on it'd be nice to be able to reach my left hand down there and open a drawer and grab stuff and i can't do that with my left hand so i have to kind of get on all fours to get underneath here and it's just not very practical that cabinet there is an old entertainment unit that a friend of mine uh she was moving and downsizing and so i bought that off of her for fifty dollars up there at the top i have some mizzou fabric which i am going to hang on to there's mizzou and cardinals fabric and that's because i make little snowmen as part of my craft fair and even though i'm not doing the crafter anymore the snowmen are great gifts and so i do make those and i will make little hats and scarves out of those fabrics i'll show you that later in the year and then i have some mock-up fabrics right here so those are just old bed sheets and and some canvases and things like that that are great for mock-ups here i have a linen tablecloth that actually was mine and had a stain that i couldn't get out so now it's going to be turned into perhaps uh historical costuming pieces so a shift or something like that which i'm super excited about but down here you can see those are fabrics that are on a bolt so one of the storage things that i have tried to do is if i have a lot of yardage of something i try to put it on a bolt and if you go to joann fabrics they'll give you the bolts for free but the problem that you cannot see is that that is actually two stacks deep so behind what you see there is a whole other stack of bolts and that's a lot of fabric down below the section i just showed you i have two drawers and each of them are full of fabric there's the other one i'm keeping these fabrics i have window pane cotton on the left colonial williamsburg great buy from goodwill and then i have black cotton i have two drapery lining fabrics and then i have an exterior fabric for a drapery project and then behind that is a roll of upholstery fabric i'll be loosely following marie kondo's popular konmari organizing philosophy which is to get rid of things that are not meaningful or purposeful another philosophy that i like to follow is swedish death cleaning which is basically getting rid of stuff so your kids spouse don't have to do it when you die it's really morbid but oddly motivating especially when you look at the volume of stuff that's coming out of just one drawer in my space you know when you are a creative person and a seamstress everything has potential but obviously i can't make everything that i have the konmari method takes you through your house category by category so you can evaluate what you have for example you would take all of your clothing and touch every single piece that you own and then you'd ask questions like do i wear this does it fit is it in good condition does it make me feel good to wear it if you answer no to any of those questions then that item no longer has a place in your life given the volume of fabric that i had pulling it all out at once would have been overwhelming but since my stash was already somewhat sorted by color i went drawer by drawer instead so for each piece of fabric i'm doing the same thing that konmari suggests i'm asking myself do i love the color pattern or type of fabric do i have a specific project in mind for this fabric is there enough fabric to complete that project and can i commit to making the project in the somewhat near future if not i'm getting rid of the fabric and remember that we're only focusing on decluttering at this point that's not the same as organizing just figure out what you're going to keep and what you're going to get rid of and you can organize it later so i was wondering about the fiber content of some of this stuff and there is a burn test that you can do for example this i said oh if i had to guess i think it's probably silk well if you take a lighter and you burn part of it if it creates a hard bead on the end of it it's probably got polyester in it right that's plastic but this kind of crumbles into ash and it smells like i've burnt hair or singed hair it's got a very organic smell to it so that means that this is natural fiber which given the feel and the weight of it it's silk and i also tested this piece that i thought might be silk too this really pretty embroidered one and it also is silk so those are good ones to keep this one however is definitely polyester so when i burnt it it smelled like plastic was burning that is a bead of burnt plastic right on the end it doesn't flake off or rub off as ash it's just burnt plastic so that doesn't necessarily mean that this is bad fabric it just means it's not silk so that's how you can kind of tell if you have a natural fiber or something that's got synthetics in it is you can do a burn test you can also do a bleach test bleach will eat away organic fiber and leave behind non-organic fiber i didn't show you the entire sorting process because this video would have been way too long but that's what i have left to put away another decluttering strategy is what i like to call the container method in this room for example each drawer or storage unit is a container and the room is a container for my containers when the doors start overflowing it's really tempting to think you need more or bigger containers a bigger dresser another set of bins some new shelves a bigger selling space maybe even a bigger house but really what you probably need is less stuff once you organize your space tell yourself that when the container is full you either have to stop buying or you need to get rid of stuff to buy new stuff the third drawer of the chest of drawers is coming out now and it's a lot of brown and tan and gray i think there's quite a bit of wool in there so let's see what's in there decluttering your sewing stash offers other benefits now i can easily see what i have too much of and what i may need to restock that helps cut down on impulse purchases at the store also less stuff means less to maintain store and move we plan to downsize soon and i don't know if i'll have a space this large in our next home decluttering now will make that move easier i don't know now look at all that space the kamari method has you fold your fabric so they can sit on end that way you can see everything you have at a glance this all came from the drawer that i could hardly get to on the other side of my table it's the fabrics that have black in them and i've cleared off enough space in this dresser that i'm going to try and get my black and my white fabrics in here but i'm gonna have to get rid of quite a bit to make that happen so let's see what we can do now it's time to do the whites these are all lining fabrics these are all beige fabrics and that's beige so this can all go in the dresser and this can all go for utilitarian so that's actually really great i feel good about that when i say i hadn't seen a lot of these fabrics for a long time i really mean it the last time i kinda sorted my stash was 2019 and i also gave away a lot of fabric for mask making back in the early part of the pandemic but i haven't done a complete overhaul in years and it was long overdue if you're a sewer a crafter or hobbyist i recommend decluttering your stash once every year or two just to keep it under control also get rid of anything that you bought for your fantasy self in december i finally purged scrapbooking and stamping supplies because i realized i was never going to be that person and that's okay i don't know there's more here than i thought might not fit but we'll see what we can do so this is my felt bin and it is filled to overflowing so i think what i need to do is be ruthless about that as well this will all be donated i'm getting rid of all of this fabric and it came out of my chest of drawers and the two bins under my table i haven't even touched that cabinet yet this filled four black trash bags and i was able to pass it on to a friend that feels great what i have here is vintage hand embroidered or hand crocheted um textiles that i thought would be useful to make crafts out of you know i think i'm going to keep a lot of this i just don't know how many of those crafts i can actually do again um and i'm also you know i'm a sucker for this hand stitch stuff so i really don't want to get rid of anything but it might be time to be honest with myself about what i can actually do this is a quilt top that i bought really inexpensively from a thrift store but you know yeah it's it's another one of those like that first quilt that i showed in my first video that is just you can't use it this way something needs to be done with it and it's just the quilt top so i thought that i could cut out pieces of this to make other other projects i'm gonna hang on to it because i'm sure i can use it for something okay here's a quilt that has already been cut into so when i bought it it had been cut like this again i think i could certainly repurpose this this this quilt's actually in pretty good shape there's not a lot of pieces that are torn or missing from it i think i could use that for a project down the road the quilt from my first video here are some additional pieces that were whole so in the bunting project i used the ones that were half circles that were you know half the circle was messed up and the other half was intact that's what i used to make the bunting now this these are all circles that were not damaged in any way oh i actually had quite a few of these i didn't realize so that's a lot of quilt squares that are still intact and might be able to be repurposed into something else these are diamond shape quilt squares that i bought you can see it's 13 quilt blocks i bought it says 10 i tend to buy things when they're even cheaper than the tag so whether i gave 10 or not i don't know but this is very old um diamond pieced quilt blocks are all hand hand sewn and this is perfect for some of these small projects that i do a lot of people will buy an antique quilt and cut it up and it just kills me so don't cut up quilts that are actually intact use them in your home or sell them or give them to somebody who can appreciate them as they are whole quilts don't buy them and cut them up that drives me crazy so if you find pieces of a quilt or a quilt that's shredded or a quilt that's already damaged that's one thing but like that first quilt i showed you somebody has hacked into that to make some other craft and then they left the rest of the quilt damaged so nobody can use it as a quilt it just drives me nuts so don't do that don't be that guy it's the next day and i don't have very much time because it's kind of late but i'm going to tackle a few more sections of my fabric today now these are all the things that i currently have on bolts and i think i'm going to um take them off of the bolts that they're on and make smaller bolts so i can use the space in my cupboard more efficiently so if you remember that picture of the cupboard in the beginning i actually have two stacks of bolts but one is behind the other so i can't see what's back there and so i think if i resize the the bolts themselves so that they can fit upright i can probably get everything across in one layer so that's my goal probably get rid of a few things but mostly i'm going to cut down the bolts and make it a little more efficient use of space so that's going to take a while but first i'll just start by looking to see what i can get rid of so everything's got to come out so it's day three and i'm at the point in the project where i'm kind of wondering what i've gotten myself into i'm doing really good on getting rid of stuff but now i've got to figure out how to store what i have and so let me show you where i'm at i realized that i could lower that shelf from where it was to the next spot down and so i am working on getting all of my big yardage on bolts so that they can sit perpendicular rather than parallel with the shelves problem is a standard bolt is much too wide for that and so i'm having to cut down the bolt the cardboard bolt itself and then refold the fabric and rewind it so that is taking forever but i think it's gonna be much better in the end this is black satin and it was folded in half salvaged to selwage and wound on a bolt but now i've cut the bolt down and i'm folding it in thirds and winding it i'm really excited about the transformation on this cabinet this was just stacked full and i couldn't get to half of the material that was in there because i had two rows of bolts stacked in there so i was able to lower a shelf and get all the fabric onto shorter bolts and they now fit really nicely i can see what i have and everything i have is what i want which is nice corset making fabric is here that's stuff that doesn't have any stretch so this is great for mock-ups and for finished corsets which is good because it saves me from buying stuff this is felt and embroidery floss up here which i had in one of those pink drawers that's now here and then i have all of my buckrum and interfacing in this bin here so that was great um this is a paper cutter and i have a rotating organizer thing that i was using on my sewing table i'm using something different now we'll see if i come back to this i'm not going to get rid of it just yet down here i've repurposed these two drawers to again get rid of those other bins that i had so this is all mock-up fabric so i have some sheets that i bought on clearance some sheets from the thrift store and just scraps of muslin and white cotton so mock-ups and linings and things like that can come from here and then below that three bolts of tulle and some scraps which is great anyway that saves me from having to get kind of on my hands and knees to get in these drawers that were underneath my table and it just looks so much cleaner and it's great so next i'll show you how the drawers look in the chester drawers over there if you remember i could hardly get them open and now they're super organized and clean so in this top drawer i have all of my reds pinks yellows and oranges folded nice and neat and i can just kind of slide it back in there down here i have browns purples greens and blues so once again just all nice and neat and organized and there's actually room to grow in all of these drawers i could fit in some more fabric if i had to but i'm not planning on buying any and this bottom drawer contains gray black white and beige fabric it feels really good to have all that stuff in one chest of drawers it's really convenient for me i sorted this drawer off camera because there wasn't that much that came out of it but these are all items that i'm either gonna take patterns off of or refashion down here now it's nice and neat and everything's stored on end so i can see what i have um it's the embroidery stuff that i can salvage some quilt stuff that i can salvage back here are handkerchiefs for handkerchief crafts and some additional embroidery pieces so now it's really easy to open and close with one hand so there you have it it was a project that was long overdue and it only ended up taking me about four days off and on plus a little bit of a fifth day to finish up the filming and editing and i couldn't be happier with the results so what left my sewing room six full bags of fabric that is no longer useful to me it no longer fits my style it no longer fits my capabilities and it doesn't fit the plans i have for the future so all of that fabric is now in the hands of another very creative person who can build her stash she can sift and sort through those piles of fabric and decide what she wants to keep and what works for her and pass the rest on to yet another person i also was able to get rid of two three drawer units that were really hard for me to access they were under my sewing table and it while it looked neat it was really not practical and so i was able to get rid of enough stuff that what i did keep out of those drawers fit into the other places that i store fabric i think i really did end up getting rid of about 40 to 50 percent of my entire fabric stash and i feel like a weight's been lifted off of my shoulders so konmari method is all about what sparks joy and an organized space sparks joy but just because something's organized doesn't mean that it's really been decluttered and the the clutter within the drawers was really weighing on me and kind of hampering my creativity so being able to clear all of that out and now knowing what i have and knowing that what i have is what i can use does spark joy the next thing i will tackle will be my patterns and i'll show you how i store them but i'll also do the konmari method and get rid of a bunch of them that i don't think i'll ever use so that'll be another video though and in the future i'll give you a tour of my sewing room and show you some other spaces that i have decluttered in the past before i got my camera and decided to do a youtube channel but in december i actually went through a lot of my supplies and purged those too so that's what's behind this curtain right here and i will show you that in a future video thank you for joining me leave a comment down below subscribe if you like what you see and i'll see you next time

Channel: Colleen Marble

Views: 2,856

Rating: 4.965517 out of 5

Keywords: KonMari, fabric destash, sewing room declutter

Id: 9WJBDEZnR9g

Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2021