Sunday Stash: There were tears (and a GIVEAWAY)

Welcome Glitterati!

I'm so honoured to be hosting Sunday Stash for Ms Sparkles this week.  I've decorated the blog header especially for it - what do you think? 

This week I'm sharing my stash of Charley Harper from Birch.  When this arrived in the post, there were tears - I had hayfever at the time and my eyes were streaming but, you know, it could just as well have been because of the fabric too, it's so beautiful.  I have cut into this already and am part way making through a quilt for Pepper-Mae (my youngest).

Most of my Charley Harper stash came from the lovely Lela at Cedar House Fabrics, have you browsed through Lela's fabric lately?  Some lucky person will be able to buy some of that beautiful organic fabric for themselves soon!  As part of my Sunday Stash hostess duties I'm having a giveaway - everyone who leaves a comment here will go in the draw to win a $20 Cedar House Fabrics gift certificate.

To enter the giveaway, leave a comment here letting me know how the weather is in your part of the world.  The giveaway is open to anyone who leaves a comment, regardless of where you live and regardless of what the weather is like in your neck of the woods.  You'll also get an extra entry for linking up to this edition of Sunday Stash.  The giveaway is open until Thursday 5pm (NZ time).

Here's the rules, as decreed by Ms Sparkles:

Sunday Stash: Meow

I've seen catnip popping up all over lately so I was pleased when this little bundle arrived this week, it's one of Fabricworm's custom bundles - @Tikimeow - which includes a couple of prints from the Catnip collection.

At the moment it's beautifying my "fabric inbox".

Linking up to:

Sunday Stash - happening this week over at Sarah's place

My scrap storage: it's not pretty (Scraps 101)

Hot on the heels of Sarah's fantastic scrap storage system is my own ... ah, not at all pretty but cheap and functional scrap storage.

I use old 2 litre ice-cream containers for my scrap storage, one for a colour or group of colours, as well as one for novelty/multi-coloured scraps and one for felt scraps.

I also use a bigger container for white scraps (which I use a lot of), and an even larger container for batting scraps.  The long strips from trimming a quilt before binding end up in here, anything larger than about the size of my laptop is folded and stored with my batting yardage.  I also have a WIP scraps bin, which sits on my worktable - I throw bits in there as I'm working on something and then sort them into colour in a batch.

The advantages of using ice-cream containers are that they are stackable, they have lids, they're free and it's easy to change the number of containers you're using.  You could start with, for example, four containers but as your scrap stash grew you could extend it to eight (for example), and it wouldn't cost you anything other than maybe a few inches around the waist and half an hour to re-sort your scraps.  The downside is they're not pretty.

Some tips I have for scrap storage would be to trim off loose thread and odd pieces that aren't of a usable size, and press them so they're (hopefully) usable straight out of your scrap bin.

So that's mine - it's not pretty, but it works really well, and so long as you've got someone in your house who eats an awful lot of ice-cream then in no time at all you'll have enough containers for your scrap storage.  I totally agree with Sarah when she says it's worth keeping your stash beautifully organised, it really does help you actually use it.

I'm very excited that I'll be linking up, for the first time, to Sunday Stash at Molli Sparkles - hello Glitterati!!  If you're new here, why not take a look around my Scraps 101 series to see what I've been up to lately.