Stash Control

Since my stash started in the early '80's I have a very large stash with colors to depict each era, muddy browns, country blue and the early Hoffman's which I still pull today and enjoy incorporating into today's quilts.  But some of them just need to be out of my studio.

My "current" stash is neatly wrapped on plastic board and color coordinated for easy viewing.

But unfortunately there are more shelves of older fabric in piles than those that are neatly shelved.  It looks like a busy week for me with at least 2 students and some days 3, every day this week, so personal sewing time will be at a minimum, unless it is evening sewing, so this may be a good time to pull this fabric and start the sorting process.
My older stash has made numerous charity quilts and has been gifted to the beginning student for some practice.  But when it comes to searching through this fabric for a project it just doesn't happen.  Usually time is of the essence for me and searching through a pile of fabric piece by piece is just too time consuming, so while doing some piecing yesterday evening I devised a plan of attack for these piles.
First, I will divide them into three categories:
 1.  Those fabrics that will readily fit in nicely with what I work with now.
 2.  Fabrics that would make nice charity quilts without being too dated.
 3.  The fabrics that are so dated will be cut into 1 1/2 inch strips.  Being that small and mixed with       other brighter, newer fabrics will hopefully allow them to just go along with the crowd.

 Being a scrap quilt lover is beneficial to #3 because most fabrics play well with each other.
And yes, there will probably be a few fabrics that are just not compatible for any of the three groups and they will be tucked away to make kits for my volunteers to make rag quilts.  These rag quilts will be used as pallets and coverings for the babies of Haiti.  I have a friend that does a mission trip to Haiti each year and she and the others in her group hand carry these quilts to Haiti and hand them out to the mothers.  She tells me a lot of the mothers have nothing to lay under the babies or over them for that matter so the quilts we send are not pretty by our standards but appreciated by those that receive them in Haiti.  It is amazing how many budding quilters have resulted from doing a charity sew-in for these quilts.  The rag quilts are so easy and fun it takes the fear of sewing away for a newbie, while they do something for others.
I'll keep you posted how I get along.  Have a  great day!!