Show Notes

• 
  Design Your Wardrobe.


• Style Workshop


• 
  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

Sarai
I'm Sarai.

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio. Welcome back to Seamwork Radio, where we share practical ideas for building a creative process so you can sew with intention and joy.

And this is our fourth episode in our Quick Tips series. We're sharing quick episodes full of tips to answer your most burning sewing questions, and today we're talking about your fabric stash.

So we're going to cover five ideas to help you manage your stash. All right, our icebreaker for today. Haley, what's the black sheep in your fabric stash? The one that doesn't fit in with all the other fabrics in there?

Haley
Okay, so I have this silk fabric. It's red. It's like a beautiful, warm tomatoey kind of a red, and it has this bird of paradise print on it. It's, like, very large print, but airy. There's, like, a lot of negative space.

It's cool. I like it. It's, like, vintage. It's from the think. Someone gave it to me. This is always the case with the weird fabrics in my stash, and I always thought, like, oh, I should make, like, a little slip dress or something for vacation or something like that. It seems like it would be perfect, but I never get around to it. But it's kind of fun and quirky.

But I don't know. It's still there. It's definitely not a color I typically yeah. Or, like, I never really go for any kind of tropical you know, I love theme, especially when you're on vacation, you're like, yeah, why not wear things I wouldn't wear?

Sarai
I have a really pretty tropical silk that I bought when I was in Japan years and years ago. That is so pretty. But again, like, you I don't really wear tropical. Not that I wouldn't wear it. It's also only a yard or a yard and a half, so I don't really know exactly what to do with it. But it is very pretty. I just don't know what to do with it.

Haley
And it's like silk. So it’s nice quality.

Sarai
It's lovely. It's really lovely. I keep thinking I should give it to somebody who would have a use for it.

I think mine. I have this fabric in my stash that is it's really cute. It's just not me, and it's because I bought it to make a gift. So it's like a rayon fabric, and it has little kind of abstract vase shapes all over it in different colors. It's very colorful, and the colors are very pretty, but it has a lot of color on it, and it has sort of a mid century look to it, like, kind of like a Charles and Ray Eames sort of look to it.

So very cute. It's just not me. And I bought it because I was going to make a scarf for somebody, and then when I got it, I realized for some reason when I bought it, I had thought that I didn't realize that it was printed and not that the reverse wouldn't look very good. And so when I got it, I realized that it wouldn't really make a good scarf.

So it's just been sitting in my stash ever since, and I'm just not sure what to do with it because it's cute, but it's not me. I think those are the hardest things for me to part with.

Haley
Yeah, totally. That's tricky.

Sarai
Yeah. Well, if you have an icebreaker for us for a future episode and you're a Seamwork member, you can leave it at seamwork.com/go/icebreakers. That'll take you to a thread on our community where we collect all of our icebreaker questions to use on future episodes.

All right, so into our topic for today, I think sewing and buying fabric are two different hobbies, and they're both equally enjoyable. I love doing both of those things, but it's also important to marry the two hobbies so that your fabric buying habits and your sewing habits can match up and you actually get use out of all that fabric you're buying. Because we don't want to just shop for the sake of shopping.

As fun as it is to buy fabric, I think a big reason people sew is to create meaning in their wardrobes and not just buy for the sake of buying.

So I have a question for you, which is what is a fabric that you feel like you just can't pass up when you see it in a fabric store?

Haley
Ohh, merino jersey. Especially, like, the high quality stuff that's really just, like, yummy, feeling against the skin and in a good neutral color, like camel, dark gray, navy. Because I know I'll use it, and I know I can use it for a lot of different things, but I just love nothing more than a merino T-shirt.

Sarai
Yeah, a merino tee is so nice, so practical. You can wear it hiking. You can wear it all winter long. It’s breathable. I mean, merino is just a great textile.

Haley
Luckily, my cannot pass up fabric is, like, highly specific.

Sarai
You don't come across it every day.

Haley
You don’t. That's why it's like, I cannot pass up.

Sarai
Yeah. When I went to Australia years ago, we had did a sewing meetup there, and we went to a bunch of different fabric stores, a whole group of us. It was so fun. But we went to the fabric store in I think it was in Sydney, and, oh, my goodness, there was just so much merino there. It was incredible.

Haley
They used to have a location in LA.

Sarai
Yeah, I've been to that one, too before they closed.

Haley
I would go frequently, too frequently.

Sarai
They have wonderful, wonderful things. Not just the merino, it’s great, great store.

I think, for me, something that I have trouble passing up when I see it in a store. It used to be, I would say, like, really pretty silk prints. That used to be something I would shop a lot, but less so now, I think.

Now if I see, like, a Liberty fabric, that's a good deal or something Liberty-esque. There's a lot of really pretty cottons now that have kind of that look to them. I love a ditzy print. I love a packed floral. Those are things that it's hard for me to not buy up and buy all the variations because I just love them, and they're just really usable. You can use them for garments. You can use them for bags, quilting, projects, all kinds of stuff.

So that's one that's hard for me to pass up. But especially if it's like a nice, lightweight lawn, obviously, the Liberty Tana Lawns are just incredible. They feel so good. And I have a few that now, looking back on them, I bought them because they were pretty, and they were Liberty. But now I've had them in my stash a while, and I'm like, this is not really, like, my favorite Liberty print.

I just bought it because it was Liberty, and I thought, well, when I get it, I'll probably love. I guess there's a lesson in that about brand names and really following your heart instead of what you think you should like. But generally, I do love those fabrics.

Haley
What about on the opposite end of the spectrum? What about the things, the fabrics that are on your do-not-buy list?

Sarai
Okay, the thing that comes to mind, first of all, is because I just got a swatch of this in the mail. I had ordered some fabric, some corduroy fabric on Etsy, and they sent a bunch of other swatches, and that is a polyester chiffon or Georgette. It's like the worst of all worlds. It's polyester. So it's not going to hold a press very well. It's going to shred like crazy, and it's going to be hard to work with because it's so lightweight.

So you don't get any of the benefits of silk. And it doesn't really look like silk in the end either.

Haley
Yeah.

Sarai
That's what I try to avoid at all costs. Less so about the looks and more so about how incredibly difficult it is to work with. What about you?

Haley
I mean, really? Just synthetics in general. I practice extreme caution. I am not saying all synthetics are bad. They have their place, and they can be beneficial when blended with other fibers. But most of the time, 100% synthetic fabrics just are not for me, personally, I don't enjoy working with them. I don't enjoy wearing them.

I don't want to be smelly. I'm very self conscious about being—I don't want to ever be sweaty.

Sarai
Yeah.

Haley
Synthetics are made from plastics, so I think of, like I always feel like I'm Saran Wrapped, not very ventilating.

Sarai
Yeah. I just find them often difficult to work with.

Haley
So challenging.

Sarai
Yeah.

Haley
So a little pivot. How is your stash organized?

Sarai
I organize mine by fabric type. So I have a cabinet which is sitting right over here, so it has cabinet doors on it, and then there are drawers inside. And I have the drawers labeled for different types of fabric, which is really important for me, so that they don't get mixed up, because otherwise they would be all over the place.

So I have one for silks. I have one for and silks and rayons. I think I have some rayons in there too. I have one for cottons, I have one for wool fabrics, and I have one for knits, which is a larger drawer that has knits. I also have a drawer for interfacing, and that's how I keep mine organized just by fabric type, because usually that's how if I'm shopping my stash, I'm looking for a specific type or weight of fabric, and typically something that's, for example, a silk that's going to be lighter weight. So I kind of know where to look.

Haley
Yeah.

Sarai
What about you?

Haley
I have two sets of drawers. They're like plastic, Rubbermaid drawers. One is for my knits, one is for my wovens, and I sort them by weight.

So the heaviest ones are at the bottom, lightest at the top. So when I'm looking for fabric for a project, I know, obviously, whether I'm using or a woven, and then if I want lightweight, medium, or heavyweight. So it just makes it pretty easy to shop.

And then I keep my interfacing in a separate spot, my scraps in another spot, and that's what I found works for me because it's very flexible. Based on what's currently in my stash, I find that if I have too rigid of a system that I have to rearrange it too often.

Sarai
Yeah, it has to be flexible. I agree with that.

Haley
Well, let's dive into our tips here. I am going to start us off with tip number one, which is really a mindset habit shift, and that is to shop your stash first.

I think that when you start a new project, it can be really exciting to hop on your computer, start shopping for fabric, jump in the car, go to your favorite fabric store. But really shifting yourself to seeing what you have in your stash that will work for the project that you have in mind is, like, a really great first step to managing your fabric stash, because a well managed fabric stash is a stash that you actually use.

Sarai
Yeah. And as I was planning my fall sewing—so if you're watching this on video, you can see it behind me here. When I was planning my fall sewing, I really tried to make use of my stash as much as possible. So I only have a couple of fabrics that I'm actually buying, and I think it's so easy to forget about the great stuff that you already have.

All right, the next tip that we have for you is to make your stash look nice. So for you, this might mean storing it by color or by season or by fabric type or by weight. It really just depends on what's useful for you. But making sure that your stash is organized and just looks inviting is going to really help you to get more use out of it. I think if it's just a tangled mess and you can't find what you need when you need it, then that's, I think, a huge barrier to actually using what you already have.

If you want to have that experience of shopping for fabric without actually shopping for fabric, I think having your stash really pretty and well organized can help a lot with that.

And you can also download an app for cataloging your fabric. If you have a lot of fabric and feel like that would help you to get more use out of it, you can go to the community and ask for people's recommendations for current apps. I know there's a lot of stuff out there that you can use, and there's some all-purpose apps that you can use that aren't made specifically for this, like, Notion or something like that.

There's lots of different things that you can do, but I know in the past, my stash is a lot smaller than it used to be, but when it was bigger, having a way to catalog everything that was in it. I used a Swatch book, but I think now I'd probably do it digitally. It was really helpful.

Haley
All right, our next tip is to get to know your colors and your prints. I think that beautiful, vibrant colors and exciting prints can be so tempting when you are shopping for fabric. Like, I get it. I've totally been there, but do you really wear them? And for you, that answer totally could be yes.

But kind of getting real with yourself and figuring out your own style identity and the colors and the prints that you love to wear that you feel good wearing is going to help kind of curb your impulse purchases in the future.

So you can use a wardrobe planning tool like Design Your Wardrobe. You can use our Style Workshop if you need to take a step even further back to analyze what your core style identity is. But getting honest with yourself and getting to know that about yourself can be so helpful.

Sarai
Yeah, absolutely.

And kind of going along with that. Tip four is to identify your favorite textiles. So one way to do this is to look at the garments that you wear the most and make a list of the fibers that you really, really like. And this is also a good way to help prevent impulse purchases if you know what you like and what you enjoy actually wearing. So not just what you like to buy, but what you actually like to wear that goes a long way to making better decisions about adding to your stash.

I think for me, I like cotton a lot. I like a rib knit a lot. I wear that a lot. I'm wearing it right now. It's just comfy year round. I know that when I see a rib knit in a pretty color, that's something that's more likely going to get used and actually worn than, let's say, a beautiful silk brocade or something like that, which I have already in my stash and has been in there for years. And it looks beautiful, but I never use it, so knowing what those things are can be really helpful.

Haley
All right. And our final tip is to kind of get to know and understand what your yardage needs are.

If you find a fabric that you really love but you don't have a project quite in mind for it yet, how much yardage you should buy is always kind of the big question. A lot of people swear by three yards. Granted, this is not an exact science. You'll have to base this a little bit off of your own personal experience, but lots of people find three yards to be or 3 meters to be pretty adequate in most cases. But if you're more of like a jumpsuit or a pants or a long dress person, 4 may be a better count for you.

You can also kind of narrow it down as you are shopping. So if you find something that's really ideal for a blouse, then you may only need a blouse quantity, a long sleeve blouse, depending on your sizes, is usually in the ballpark of three yards.

Sarai
Yeah, I usually buy three personally, unless it's something that screams out for four.

Haley
Yeah, if I know I'm going to make pants out of it or like a coat, then I'll go big.

Sarai
Yeah. Also depends on the width, obviously, but three to four is, I think, a good ballpark.

All right, so I'm going to quickly recap for us. So we had five tips today to help you with your fabric stash.

And the first one is to always shop your stash first before going shopping.

The second one is to make your stash look nice so it feels more shoppable.

Tip number three is to get to know your colors and prints the ones that you actually wear.

Tip number four is to identify your favorite textiles. So similarly, what are the textiles that you actually get use out of?

And tip number five is to understand your yardage needs and maybe have a kind of idea in mind of a default amount that you might need if you've come across something you absolutely love.

So those are our tips for today. And I wanted to mention something that might be appealing to you if you're looking at your own fabric stash and thinking a bit about shopping, which is that Seamwork members get discounts at some of our favorite indie fabric stores.

So if you're not aware of this, our Seamwork members can save anywhere from 10% to 20% off purchases as a member.

And a lot of people say that these discounts alone pay for their entire membership.

So you can see a list of participating fabric stores at seamwork.com/deals. There are dozens there, and there are some absolutely fabulous shops in there. Some of my absolute favorite places to buy fabric are listed in there and offer deals for our members.

And if you like this episode, I would love if you could forward this episode to one of your sewing friends, somebody that you think would find it helpful. That's how people learn about the podcast. It really helps us to grow the show and keeps us motivated to keep making episodes, of course. And we just really love to hear when somebody has recommended it or somebody has come to the podcast because a friend recommended it to them. That just makes my day. So we really appreciate all the recommendations that we've seen out there, and we'd love to invite you to keep it going, because, again, that's how the show grows.

And that does it for us this week. I'm Sarai.

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio.