to stash or not to stash

I have the top done for the wall hanging I am making for my friends' shop. I'm just going to put it together and do some outline hand quilting. With the 4 day weekend so I should be able to find some time to get that accomplished. Hopefully this gets the reproduction fabrics moving.

I'm OK with the way this turned out, but I think I would have liked it better if I had been able to use my stash. I had to make it all with fabrics I brought from the store and since I was making it small I didn't need much of each ... It would have been much more scrappy if I had my way, but my friend Jan said that whenever she even backs something with fabric from her stash a customer will turn the quilt over and come to her and want THAT specific fabric. So since I made this to boost sales I worked with what I brought.

There has been a lot of talk around about stashing and being crippled by your stash. I have always been a bit of a hoarder. Hopefully I never get as bad as those people on Oprah, but I can see myself leaning towards some of the people on Clean Sweep. I just have a hard time passing up a sale when it is something I think I will have a use for at some point. Personally I don't really feel crippled by my stash. My favorite part of the process is auditioning the different fabrics to find a combination I like best and for that you need a large variety. I feel my stash is my retirement account. At work we had a representative from our 401K management company come to tell us about how much we will need to invest for retirement (I could not believe how many MILLION they say is needed) and he said you need to save for hobbies after you retire. I figure the way it stands now I have a really good jump on that. All I will have to buy is thread and rotary blades and I'm golden. I do, however, feel it might be getting to be a slight problem when I buy new fabric and don't have a place to put it after it follows me home. My sewing room was so organized for a short time right after we moved and now is bursting at the seams. I do think I may have to live to be somewhere around 200 before I could use up what I have. Sooooo even though I love and use my stash I am going to use the support offered by JudyL and other quilters who want to reduce their stash and try very hard to pass by sales and not enhance my stash any further. I am not going to track how much I use, but I am going to try very hard to get moving on finishing up some projects and making a bunch of others that I have all kitted up and ready to go. We'll see how far I get. ;c)