Stash Upholstery Leaves for Its New Home

Sending stash out of my life makes me happy. It makes me happy not so much to just get rid of stuff, but to know that this stuff, that I collected, scavenged, was given, bought for a crazy-cheap price no telling how long ago, turned out to be useful after all, and off it goes to its new home.

Hence my happy goodbye to my early-in-the-week project, 24 crayon rolls that I sold wholesale through my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop (way less money for each crayon roll, but way more money total than I'd usually earn at one time--does that make sense?) to a tourist shop up north:

The inside of each crayon roll is made from stash fabric that I was given by a women who saw me at a craft fair and thought of me when she cleaned out her own sewing space; the thread is stash, a combination of large spools bought at 50%-off at Joann's and smaller spools in prettier colors that I inherited from my partner's grandmother; the stash elastic is also a combination of some bought on sale, some inherited, and some picked up for free at a local garage sale; the crayons are stash, bought for anywhere from 20 cents to 24 cents for a 24-pack at various back-to-school sales this summer; and, finally, the upholstery fabric for the crayon roll fronts is stash, of course, leftover from the several large books of upholstery samples that I bought from a local thrift shop.

How much do I love those upholstery fabrics?

So much.

My favorite thing about my stash is the myriad of uses that present themselves solely through its existence in my life. That fabric from a craft fair friend did sit for a while on my shelf until I needed a nice, sturdy, plain fabric to back the wild patterns of the upholstery, but the crayons have made themselves a luxury in our home, accompanying gifts, being taken on car trips, being opened any time it would just be a nice treat to have a new box of crayons. And that upholstery fabric? It's been art rolls, birthday crowns, monogram wall hangings, scrapbook embellishments, bookmarks, and I don't even know what all else.

My newest idea, now that I've been scanning everything lately, was to scan some of those upholstery patterns as I was sewing up the crayon rolls:

Isn't that kind of cool? I'm thinking I could use it for digital scrapbooking, which I'm not that into (right now...) or other kinds of digital design work.

So now it seems that I have an electronic stash, as well.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!