before retiring i would buy a yard or two of anything i liked...now i have fabric to sew with for the rest of my life. in a fabric no buy zone for 95 days now but i have to buy some red and some silver fairy frost today for a patriotic quilt in progress, so that is the end of my fabric diet....but i tried it. winning 100 fat quarters a couple of years ago really rounded out my stash.

My stash is made of 7 criteria's- The to pretty to leave here's--I can do something with that's-- I'll kick myself if I don't buy it's--I'm sure I have something to go's with this--If I don't buy it no one else wills --and then theres those gotta haves or I'll die without's--and the coupons I only use for batting....So far this system seems to work for me :-) ------As my MIL use to say ""If you gotta have a madness you better have a method""

I love fabric and just buy when I see something pretty

I tend to build my stash by theme and color. If I have some patriotic projects in mind, I add stars & stripes, etc. whenever I find something new. I love civil war reproduction fabrics and tend to add those to my stash according to color. If I'm low on blues, I add to that stash, etc. Then, when I'm ready to start a new project, I have a wide variety of colors to use. Works for me! :)

I have a large armoire that's full, now I'm working on bins. I have to quit........lol And my project I'm working on is going to be a hand stitched Baltimore Album quilt which will take me a while...

Let's see, I like all 4 of these fabrics, I need 2yds. each. Oh well, let's just get 3 yards each. I'll add it to my stash!!

About 5 years ago I attended my first quilt guild meeting and they were having a "Scrap Therapy" workshop. I was a guest and didn't own as much as a swatch of fabric. One of the ladies in the guild said "you need to buy some fabric, honey". I remember buying a few pieces and diligently practicing my cutting it up into 3,4 and 5" squares as the teacher taught us and storing it in the shoebox sized tote provided to us at the class.

A short while later, I started piecing my first quilt and found I was a 1/2 yard short of one of the fabrics I needed to complete this quilt so I made a promise to myself to never run out of fabric again. It was then that I started buying yardage...yards of everything I could afford.
Needless to say, I now have a stash beyond my wildest dreams.

Now had I started out with a simple kit which provided everything I needed, I doubt that I would have the fabric collection I do today.

Sometimes it pays to come up short!

I'm not sure that anyone really "plans" to have a stash. At least mine just sort of happened. I realized that I had a stash when it came time to sort the stack into colors (or values, or prints). When I had to put cabinets in the room JUST for the fabric, I knew that I had gone a little over the edge. But then I had more room in the cabinets so I got to buy more fabric. It's a blessing and a curse.

Right now I am in the process of loading my room again (we reorganized the cabinets) and my goal was to whittle down the stash. Darn it - I don't seem to be able to get rid of anything. Heavy sigh!

I think those who end up with stashes in many cases never intended to "build" one - it just happened! A combination of fabric on sale and not enough time to finish all your plans - that's how I ended up with a wall-full.

I've found a stash happens gradually when you buy faster than you can sew. Then when you go to make something, you may need something you aren't drawn to- because you haven't "over-purchased". So you have to go to the fabric store to get whatever else you need to complete the project. And lo and behold! There's NEW fabric calling you. It's really a vicious (but fabulous!) cycle!