On stashbusting

{I apologise for the length and silliness of this post ..., I got carried away!)



I have discovered that there is an invidious cult like group around called Stashbusters. They seem like normal people. Their blogs are wholesome and show cute babies and snuggly quilts. They have a button that looks like any other button and their doctrines as portrayed on their blogs look mainstream. They have bought a lot of fabric and they want to use it up. They want to support and encourage each other to do that. What nice, responsible people. When I first found them I thought, yeah, I'd like to join them.



But, lets look at their real doctrine. Not the stuff they are peddling door to door. The real theology as written in their Yahoo Newsletter group statement. Even that starts relatively anodine. Just a subtle shift from their blog statement about making quilts out of their stash. It begins:



"The purpose of this group is to support those quilters who wish to cut down on spending for one year, and reduce their stashes....."



but read on.

"You can join and start "not buying" anytime during the year..."



Not Buying? Now that sounds to me like it fits the definition of a cult I found online :



"A group generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner.....Obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle"



I mean how many quilters don't buy? And not buying for a year. If that is not 'especially faddish' I don't know what is. So I thought it my duty to warn you to resist the false teachings of this group.



Their gospel sounds perfectly plausible, laudable even. They are right that you have bought lots of fabric that is sitting in your cupboard. Enough that you could quilt for years without buying more. You are more a fabric collector than a quilter. You are hoarding the stuff. Hear those sibilant arguments seducing you into joining them. Or, if you push it, watch them move to threats of dire consequences if you ignore them. That fabric is going to kill you. It will fall on you and smother you. OK, OK, you cry. I want to live. I repent my hasty purhases of Moda jelly rolls and Loni Rossi Fat Quarter packs. I believe.



But lets take this to the logical conclusion. You sew up all your fabric and then what? You don't have any left. So what are you going to do? Sigh, and turn to trainspotting for a hobby? No, you are going to go shopping and create a new stash. But before you do that you are going to go through the pains of de-programming. You are going to have shaking hands, which long for somthing soft ( or crinkly or silky) to stroke, you are going to have headaches from carrying around half baked ideas for quilts in your heard that you cannot translate to planned projects. You are going to suffer.



And don't let them con you that you will find the succour of companionship in their midst. Because whilst you sit at home trying to find a way to get your neon blue spacemen novelty fabric to fit with the Liberty Lawns, your real friends are out draping cottons at the local quilt shop and razzing it up, bags a-bulging at the international shows.



So what do the leaders of this invidious movement stand to gain from sucking you into their schemes? I believe a careful examination of their practices reveals all. I found a blog testimonay recently in which a senior group member praised a neophyte for managing, for the very first time, to delete emails advertising fabric sales without even reading them. Thats it! The Ring leaders are simply out to beat us to the sales. It is a fabric grab!



But getting rid of a cult is not that easy. I bet, even as you read this, a little voice on your shoulder is saying, "Ha, funny. But you know, I do have quite a big stash. Maybe I should join the ring..." See, that's how cults work. They start with a good point, a legtimate premise and present a flawed solution to it. So the best way to combat them is to find the true solution to the stash issue. To that end, I commend to you the concept of..... Stash Rotation.



Here is a parable from the Book of Stash Rotation

Once there were two farmers. Both of them had one more field than they needed. The foolish farmer decided to use up the field and built a log cabin on it with courthouse steps leading up to it and dormer attic windows. The first year he was warm and snug in his house and he bragged to his neighbour farmer that he had made good use of his field and had no need to replace it because he had an heirloom house with a label on the back for good measure. The wise farmer however, just kept his field empty. Everynow and again he would go and rub his palm over the soft grass growing there. In the second year he did the same whilst the foolish farmer took another of his fields and built a Schoolhouse block on it. The wise farmer went out and bought another field that he didn't really need but, becuase the grass in this field was so soft he preferred to stroke this crop and started to use his previously empty field. In the third year the foolish farmer decided that he could live on even less food and decided to build a railfence around another of his fields and donate it to charity. The wise farmer bought another field and started to use last year's field. In the fourth year the foolish farmer's crops began to fail. He paid an international field teacher to appraise his fields. The teacher looked at them through a reducing glass then took an arial photo in black and white.

"Oh Dear," she said, "you have value blight. You have failed to renew your fields. You should let one or two lie fallow so that when you need the hue or tones found deep in the soil they are available to you. That is why your fields have lots their vitality and become monocromatic and inspid. You should be like the wise farmer who rotated his fields, using some new and some old and always keeping a range of hues and values available in his soil."

The foolish famer wept and rent his clothes but yea, he was still low on fields. The wise farmer however, having to fund all these fields was also working overtime as a Good Samaritan and, seeing the foolish farmer in need of half a meter of hedgerow did donate it to him as, in truth, the foolish farmer was not evil but, as I have been saying all long, only foolish.



And so, my recommendation is that you by all means use your stash but that you replace what you use. Because quilting is about fabric as much as it is about sewing which is why we do not have stashes of plain white cottons to make duvet covers with. If you really do have too much of the stuff then by all means make quilts a little quicker than you replace but do not let your stash dwindle to the uglies and the unmatchable. After all, you may well need a sofa sized stack of fat quarters to hide behind when the pair of clean cut white shirted Stashbusters come to the door to sell you a copy of FabricTower.........





{To all members of Stashbusters. Do not sue me. (a) this is a spoof (b) being a professional I can sue better than you can and (c) I really did want to join you but then I started to hyperventilate at the thought of not being able to shop for a year ....}