Starting a Fabric Audit

This week, I decided to embark on an audit of my fabric stash. It was an idea that I got from Karen of JustGetItDoneQuilts on YouTube. She posted a great video the other week, about counting your fabric. It is something that I've never really thought to do, but I figured that it might be useful to know how much yardage I have, as it would allow me to monitor how much I use. It is also useful to keep myself accountable in terms of buying any new fabric, which I try not to do these days, but I do very occasionally succumb to temptation.

I decided to make a start by going through a couple of the drawers where I keep most of my fabric. I started with the drawers that held the least amount, just so that I wouldn't get overwhelmed and give up. 

To aid me in the task, I gathered together a brand new notebook (to write down a description of each fabric and document how much I have of it) and a metal rule (to measure the length/yardage of each fabric). Most of my fabrics are full widths, but where they are not, I calculated the yardage approximately by measuring how many fat or thin quarters they contained. 

The process involved a lot of unfolding and re-folding and the first two drawers did take longer than I intially thought they would. I then moved on to measure some of the fabric that I keep in plastic boxes on the sewing room shelves. These didn't actually take very long, as there weren't too many different fabrics in each box.

At this point I decided to finish for the day. There was still lots of fabric left to measure, mainly in the fullest drawer, but also stored away in other places. 

There are also the fabrics that I currently have out for use in different projects. Karen, herself, doesn't actually include fabric that is currently in use on projects, probably because you're actually using it and until the project is finished, you won't know how much is left over, which does make sense. These leftovers will need to be added into my audit once the projects are finished or once I'm not using any more of them.

By the end of my first session of auditing my stash, the total yardage of the fabric I had counted was over 90 yards, which equates to approximately 82.5  metres.  These figures actually only include full width yardage and not fat quarters and other off cuts, so the actual figure of fabric counted so far is actually much higher than this.  I must admit that I was quite shocked at the amount.  It is quite scary to think how much I have, especially when I haven't yet tackled the fullest drawer. Thankfully, my one time obsession with collecting and buying fabric has abated in recent years, so it shouldn't really increase in the future. I probably have enough here to last me for the rest of my life. I just need to get creative about the projects I choose to use it up.

Here's a picture of some of the entries in my stash book (please excuse my handwriting, it is notoriously bad): 

I think this kind of record could be useful, as I could look through this book when I need a specific yardage or fabric width for a particular project and see what my options are, without having to rummage through all of my fabrics. (I made sure to put the width of each fabric in the book)  I will also know where to go to find the suitable fabric lengths, as I listed them by location. I have left room in each location for more fabrics to be added once projects are finished and I hope that this will allow me to account for everything in the book eventually.

It was quite an illuminating process.  I imagine you could do the same sort of thing with wool stashes or stashes of other crafting materials.  With much more fabric still to count, it's left me wondering what the final total will be. 

I think I may need to seriously think about selling or donating some of it, but I sometimes find it quite hard to motivate myself to do this.

I'll keep you posted as I progress with the audit. Wish me luck.