As anyone who has been in my house will know, I have a lot of fabrics squirrelled away.

They live in two cabinets in the rear half of the living room. Well, in two cabinets, several large wicker baskets and a stack of vintage suitcases. Also, in a selection of paper carrier bags (containing little scraps) that live under the table where my sewing machine sits. And also on a trolley in the kitchen (which is where I sit to hand sew, because it’s warmer than the living room). Oh, and there might be a few more stashed upstairs.

Well, you get the picture…I love fabrics.

I love to look at them, to pull them out and hold them against one another to see how they go together and to fold them neatly in colourful stacks.

It is fabric that inspires me more than anything else – the softness of a faded vintage velvet curtain, the cheery 1960s florals that inspired me to start making cushions (and inspired the name “modflowers”) – even the utilitarian corduroys and plain cottons that are so handy for making the “bones” of a creature.The problem is, I hate cutting into them. Which, when you’ve bought them to make stuff with, can be a problem. It turns you from a maker with a decent fabric stash, into (whisper it!) a hoarder.

I haven’t actually bought any fabrics for quite some considerable while now, but I can’t feel overly pleased with myself at this, given that I still have more fabric squirrelled away than I could ever use in my lifetime.

As you may have gathered from my previous post I am not a big fan of minimalism and clearing stuff out for the sake of it. But equally, neither am I a fan of never being able to bloody find anything, which is definitely a problem.For example…
I think I’m finally starting to get over my winter “maker’s block” – hopefully! – having been inspired to make a couple of little squirrels. The first was a bit of an experiment, inspired by the sad sight of a real dead squirrel I spotted the other day on one of my walks with Brian the dachshund (it called for some swift distraction techniques, I can tell you).

I marvelled at the squirrel’s sad, limp, little body, the tail fur so fine it was almost transparent.

When I got home, I started to hunt for an old hat (a charity shop find) made from a greyish-brownish fur fabric very reminiscent of a squirrel’s tail.

Well, suffice to say that Mister Squizzer very nearly didn’t get made at all, as it took me so flipping long to find the materials I wanted to make him from.I have had a similar experience this weekend, after deciding that I liked Mister Squizzer enough to make another squirrel, but a red one this time. I wanted to have Mister Squizzer there in front of me to refer to when making my new squirrel, before he goes off to his new home.

I had no problem getting going, as I had already spotted a scrap of ginger velvet (left over from my cinnamon lion) in one of my scraps bags. But the scrap was pretty darn small, and I wasn’t sure there was going to be quite enough of it. I’m sort of sure that there is more of that ginger velvet… somewhere… somewhere…?

Anyway, luckily I didn’t make any mistakes and there was enough velvet to finish my red squirrel, whom I have given the rather grand name of Corylus, which is the Latin name for the hazelnut tree, just because I think he is rather grand.But the whereabouts of the rest of that ginger velvet still eludes me.

So the long and the short of it is that I need to have a clearout. I have been considering this for a long time actually, given that although I love fabric, a lot of what I’ve got squirrelled away is no longer suitable for the kind of things I make now.

I actually did a lovely swap last summer with a couple of friends, which was great for replacing some of the unsuitable fabrics with more suitable ones, but didn’t actually reduce the overall amount of fabric I have by very much at all.And reducing the volume is, I have come to realise, actually quite necessary, as there is only so much folding and fondling you can do without the annoyance of not being able to find the things you want getting in the way of the enjoyment.

So watch this space… as I am going to have a destash sale. A full-on, fun, fabric fair, filled with those lovely collectable fabrics that are currently just squirrelled away. And possibly other bits and bobs, should any be unearthed during the de-squirrelling process.

I will post details here on my blog and on facebook and instagram when I have got it all organised. It will be online and I will post overseas, but the rest of the practicalities and details are yet to be decided.

Hopefully, at the end of it I will know where that ginger velvet – and everything else – is.

Because if it’s squirrelled away so deeply that it’s become lost, there’s no point in having it at all, is there? ♥