I've been spending

I confess. I've been doing a little shopping lately but complete truth be told.....it is all for planned projects, not just new additions for my stash. The bonus tidbit about it is the fact that a lot of this was "free" because I sold a bunch of pantos and used that cash.  

First up are the Kate Spain Charm Swap cuts. Half of these are mine and half are my sister Tina's contributions to the swap. These are all from Kate's Solstice line.

There are still some spots open in the swap (surprisingly) so it's not too late to join in on the fun. All of the details can be found here.

I wasn't looking for this at all but when I saw it on a Facebook group I just had to buy it.  I have a friend who love the Disney Villains and this soon will be turned into a fun little quilt for her.

Halloween prints has been my shopping focus lately.  These are for a really fun upcoming project (that you just might want to make too).  Details to come soon.

In preparation for that project, I took all of my Halloween prints out of my stash dresser and put them in this tote.  As you can see, I really need more prints with White, Yellow and Green backgrounds.  This project will be a scrappy riot of Halloween colors and I don't want the Orange and Black prints to take over.

If you happen to come across some great sales on White, Green or Yellow background Halloween prints, please let me know.

This little kit I didn't spend any money on at all.  It was actually part of my birthday presents from my BFF. Yes I know that my birthday was in the fall but we hadn't seen each other since last summer.  This will get made into a wall hanging for hub's train room.

My other new purchase was a "just so happen" surprise.  You see, my scraps were all crammed into this 3 drawer bin along with the other items that you see...the best press, the extra fabric markers, the stabilizers, etc.  Finding anything in there was certainly a challenge but thanks to a recent purchase, this is how the 3 drawer bin looks now.

This is the reason for all that space for accessories above.  It is a 5 drawer bin on wheels that I snagged off of Craigslist for a whopping $10.  Now each bin only holds 1 or 2 colors instead of 5 or more.

On Saturday afternoon, once we were home and dry from marching in the rainy July 4th parade, I maneuvered this one next to my bookshelf and slipped the shorter one next to tit tucked right under my cutting table.  Much better!

Of course, that means I have plenty of space to store more scraps.  In fact the basket you see in the corner of the picture is almost full from the most recent projects so soon it will be time to sort them into the bins by color.  I made a great dent in cutting some colors into usable sizes over the winter but have stalled on that project recently.  Now that I can actually open the bins, I'll probably get back to doing that in the evenings when I'm not in the mood to sew.

Having great storage solutions is so important to maintaining a relatively neat studio because I can't create in the midst of chaos.