From stash to giveaways..................

I love my stash of fabrics and trims but even I realize it is time to disburse some of the 40 years worth of treasured fabrics and such that I have accumlated(not all of my stash will go, just enough to make it "manageable" and then it'll give me room to add more!). I've just been visiting Judy Laguidara's blog and read about "stash reporting". So here's my "Stash Report" for the past week - I spent $4.10 on a lovely piece of pink floral stripe fabric that I had to have last Friday at Hobby Lobby. Now I need to report about what have I used up - hmmm, not doing so good in that department. I keep dragging out quilt tops and adding their photos to my blog which also adds to my list of "projects I want to finish in the next two years" which, of course, is humanly impossible.
Does this depress me? No, not at all. My quilts and my fabric are to me what collecting Hot Wheels cars are to my grandson or what baseball cards were to my son or what Barbie stuff was to my daughter. I was married very young and my daughter was born when I was 20. We joke that "we grew up together". The two of us like to craft together and she has loads of cross stitch stuff and her mother-in-law has passed along her huge collection of rubber stamps to Collette. My son, Devlin, collects CD's and he has every CD produced by some of his favorite bands/artists. And my husband, well he likes cars and so he has a big workshop and tools. We all have interests that keep us creative and are blessed to be able to have jobs that allow us to do this.
So where am I going with all this. Oh, yeah, depleting my stash. While all of this fabric and craft stuff is fun, I'm feeling a little glutenous. When I discovered blogging I also discovered this whole Giveaway thread and I thought - aha! I can do Giveaways and all I have to do is go to my stash for items to giveaway! I do a lot of volunteer projects so I do use a lot of my stuff with those projects but I think too much stuff keeps one bogged down (and my husband would be the first to say, "you mean you finally figured that out!!!"). So to report what I have used from my stash, I can say that the same day I bought one yard of pink floral, I sent off five yards of fabric in two giveaways. More fabric will go "out the door" tomorrow because someone has finally come close to the right measurements for my little nine-patch quilt with the red border (click here to take a peek at it). Scott from bluenicklestudios made a second guess that was very close so I awarded the win to him and I will send off something "fallish" that he can add to his stash! :-) His guess was 19.5 x 26.5" and the quilt measures 20.5 x 24.5". It's not as small as some guesses nor as large. And since only seven of you offered up measurements, just e-mail me your snail mail address and I will send you all a little something from my stash. Tell me your favorite color and you might actually use it one day!
I do need to tell you why it took me 25 years to make it but I have to get off the computer and get some actual sewing done so I'll be back later this afternoon to tell you about the little quilt. In the meantime, here is a lovely old quilt top that also used mini nine-patch blocks. I absolutely love this top and all the wonderful fabrics that have been used in the quilt top! Double-click on the pic and you can get a close-up view.

Have a great afternoon!!