January fabric stashbusting - and the Stashbusting Sewalong!

When I wrote that my goals this year were going to include some fabric stashbusting, I never really intended to do it alone.  I knew that there'd be the perfect stashbusting challenge out there for me somewhere, but I don't follow a lot of sewing blogs, and I didn't have a lot of time to go looking.  So I figured I'd get started, and find a challenge to join up with later. 

Lucky for me, my sister has caught the stashbusting bug too, and has done the homework for me!  the challenge I'm joining is called the Stashbusting Sewalong, and you can read more about it at Tumbleweeds in the Wind.

It's the sort of flexible challenge that I'm more than happy to play along with, pledge to sew as much as you want, freedom to join in specific challenges or not, and most importantly, new friends to meet in the journey!

So here's my pledge:

I, Julie Hearn, of spendlesscraftmore.blogspot.com commit to completing 12 projects from my box of fabric lengths and unfinished project box, as well a minimum of 6 other projects from my stash.  I further commit only spend money on items directly related to those projects from the stash.

OK, so the first length of fabric I have to tell you about is a length of white waffle weave, about 3.5m x 1m.  There it is, second from the right:

I originally bought this fabric, too many years ago, to make a summer-weight dressing gown (does that make it a brunch coat or something?) with some embroidered flowers on the collar.
White dressing gown?  With embroidered flowers? WHAT. WAS. I. THINKING?
First of all, when I bought it, I would have been knee-deep in the messy baby-and-toddler-stage.  Even now, I can't imagine keeping a white gown clean for more than 5 minutes.  I'd just be blaming the morning coffee instead of the baby cereal.
Second of all, the summer dressing gown I currently do own gets worn so rarely that a second one would be ridiculous.
And thirdly, embroidered flowers?  Back then, maybe.  Now . . . just no.

So anyway, I was having trouble sleeping one night in early January.  It was one of those nights that was like - doona, too hot, no doona, too cold, doona with leg sticking out, still too hot.  And I was thinking about that white waffle weave fabric . . .

 . . . Have you made the connection yet?

Happily, I did!  The next day, I cut the fabric in half, sewed the two lengths together and hemmed it to make a summer blanket! It is the perfect weight and I've used it almost every night since.

The January challenge at the Stashbusting Sewalong is to use small pieces of fabric.  I actually managed to achieve this as well.
 My old pincusion was pretty grotty, and full of rusting pins to boot, so I chose this, as inspiration:

 

 and here's my version:

Thanks for dropping by, and I hope you are managing to bust your stash as well!

P.S. If you're new to my blog, and want a quick catch-up on my recent fabric stash-busting, click here for my original goals for 2013 post, here for a skirt and finished mini-quilt, here for another skirt and here for some musings on stash-busting in general.  (Or just scroll back through the last month or so, if you don't mind a bit of papercrafts mixed in!)