People keep giving me fabric.
In the heyday of usenet, I used to get frequent emails to the effect of "hey, I've got too much fabric, would you like some fabric?" and after I said yes an improbably large box would arrive at my home and I'd get to gleefully dive in and see what treasures had arrived. And then, when I was moving into my current home, a friend who was one of the previous occupants gave me her entire stash.
Oh my.
By this point, I had more fabric that I hadn't selected or purchased than fabric that I had selected myself.
I put my friend's stash away and ignored it for a few years, and have never counted it as part of my stash, until I could process it and decide what stays and what goes. I just didn't have the time and energy to deal with it. What little sewing I was getting done was coming mostly out of my stash of stuff I'd selected.
Recently I pulled out my friend's stash and went through it. It has divided into:
- One large shopping bag full of plain white woven cotton that I'm keeping. I'd guess there must be 30 or 40 yards of it. She clearly bought white like I buy black. I guess it'll bring a lighter tone to my sewing for a while.
- One large shopping bag full of other basics that I'm keeping.
- One large shopping bag full of mixed fabrics I plan to give to a friend I taught to sew about a month ago.
- One large shopping bag full of kids' fabrics and solid color basics that match with them, which I intend to mass-produce into baby clothes for my two pregnant friends.
- One large shopping bag full of stuff that looks vaguely vintage. I can't really tell if any of it is actually old or if it's all just retro prints, but it might be old. I need to call a friend whose friend makes his living selling vintage fabrics, and see if he's interested. Otherwise some of it is going to become more baby clothes, and some of it is going to get given away.
- One grocery bag of tiny scraps, which I threw away.
- Half a grocery bag of assorted lace edgings, some of which look like vintage hand-made lace. I haven't a clue what to do with those, I'm not the lace kind of guy. Maybe my friend who likes to make victorian stuff will want them.
Then I got given a huge garbage bag full of scraps from a professional seamstress. It was difficult just to carry it in the door. I dug through it for a while and decided there was nothing big enough to be usef for anything but quilting, and I couldn't tell what any of the fibers were without giving every individual scrap a burn test, and without knowing anything about the fabric I had no idea how to wash it or with what or if it was even washable or if the dyes would all run... ugh. So I threw it all out. It was a nice gesture to try to give me an opportunity to get something out of the scraps of what I'm told were fairly expensive fabrics, but I just couldn't make anything of it.
Of course, then another friend's mother came for a visit and offered me another shopping bag full of wool fabric. I don't use wool, I can't wear it in anything but a suit. But, I took it in so it wouldn't get thrown out, and I'll give it to my friend I just taught to sew. *sigh* Fortunately, it's in his two favorite colors. I also plan to go through my stash and weed out other fabrics I was given in the past that my friends might find more useful than I do.
So, does everybody else keep getting given large quantities of fabric? And how do *you* deal with it?