Bypassing the stash - the lightning quick project

After many weeks of cleaning up my sewing room it's almost back to normal. We had used it for storage during the last 18 months while our house was being rebuilt so it was full of furniture, books, clothes, bed linen etc but now I finally have unimpeded access to my fabric stash once again. And while I continue to find my stash a thing of beauty, it turned out that the fabric I've bought in the last 18 months didn't quite fit into my shelves, and I knew I had to have a clear out. Here is my stash now:

That's the stash after I've pulled out a big bag of fabrics that I love but know I'll never sew with and will instead give away at the next Spoolettes swap day / donate to the Fabric Cave:

So keeping in mind that first photo, I really have no business at all buying more fabric. None whatsoever. But of course I did. I haven't really bought much at all this year and had done so well ignoring all sales at the various fabric stores that I would usually flock to at the merest mention of a sale until Wednesday this week. I happened to have a work meeting down near The Fabric Store in Surry Hills and I popped in to have a look at their sale on my way back to the office . I was however a bit restrained and only bought these three pieces:

I haven't even put these into the stash yet - the bottom fabric is a medium weight linen that I'm currently prepping Sandra Betzina style (hot iron + hot wash + hot dryer to minimise wrinkling) to make into some wide leg pants, and the top fabric is a silk cotton that I'm going to hand wash this weekend and probably make into a dress. The middle layer is a medium weight knit that went straight into the wash on Thursday morning, line dried during the day and got sewn into a new top Thursday night!

It helps that I made a pattern that I've used twice before so I already had the pattern traced out, knew how it fitted and knew how to assemble it. It's also a super simple top with three pattern pieces - front, back and sleeves. This is Burda 9/2010 #121, a funnel neck top with super long sleeves:

I've made this twice before - once in a French terry fabric (blogged here) which I still wear quite a lot and another unblogged version. I found the original neckline is a little too tight to fit for my liking so I have widened it by 4cm and shortened it by 4cm which was pretty simple to do:

Now the neckline sits wide open so I don't feel like I'm being strangled, but it comes up high enough to cover the back of my neck to keep me warm and doesn't sit too high either which is exactly how I wanted it.

I also shortened those sleeves by a huge 15cm to remove that scrunched up look that the original pattern is drafted for since I found readjusting those sleeves supremely annoying and this fabric is quite thick for a knit and it just wouldn't have worked.

Because that neckline folds down in half there's no fussing around with a neck band - all that it needs is to sew the side seams, sleeves and hem the bottom + cuffs and it's all done. It makes for a very quick project to sew.

If only I could make something so quickly out of all my other fabric purchases I wouldn't need to worry about the vastness of my stash!