Here's a blackbird pie funnel for Meggie, I can't remember where this came from ; I don't think it's old, but I certainly used it when I cooked for a family. Now I just think he's cute.
It seems everyone is examining their stash and the reasons why they built it in the first place. Judy explained here and Keryn in this post. My stash started to be enhanced in the early '80's, when I decided it was allowable to buy new fabric just to use in patchwork. I can still remember the shop and the fabrics I bought when I made this groundbreaking breakthrough, and the three fat quarters (I sent the other half to Keryn) were the start of my 'good' patchwork stash. By the way, no-one had ever heard of a 'fat quarter' back then, we just bought skinny little slices of fabric, sometimes 10cm (3") if the shop would oblige.

They were 'poor' years, when the boys were little and the family farm my husband helped to work was battling with dreadful stock prices and interest rates were 18%. I've always been drawn to the idea of self-sufficiency and so I threw myself into raising vegetables, making nearly all our clothes, cooking everything from scratch, preserving and bottling the produce from my huge garden.

Patchwork fitted right in there, and I had huge stashes of not just cotton fabric for piecing but corduroy and denim and fleecy for clothes. I look back and wonder how I ever did it, but I loved the activity; there was always some project vitally interesting to fill my time. I knitted, I sewed, I baked, I dug in the garden and picked the produce. If only we hadn't been quite so strapped for cash it might have been an idyllic time.

Imagine my delight when I discovered the Actil Factory in Adelaide. They made sheeting and if you went round the back you could go in this little door and just about choke with the fumes of new poly material and the bargains to be had. I knew it wasn't cotton, but there was so Much of it!!
They used to sell rolls of it for a few dollars, up to 15" high and hundreds of metres long, and I staggered out to the car with all the colours I could find. I learnt to park close to the door, because those things were Heavy. This stuff turned up in my sewing for years and years afterwards, it was gifted to Keryn and other patchworking friends, who likewise were so poor that they fell on it with delight. And still the rolls didn't seem to diminish, there were borders aplenty and I began piecing the strips together to make laundry bags, mattress covers, backings, whatever needed huge swathes of material, and still it wouldn't die. The damn stuff didn't wear out either, I suppose the poly gave it unnatural powers of endurance.

Eventually, as I came to have more money to indulge serious patchwork, I gave up on the sheeting and relegated it to the back of the stash. I realised that the effort you put into quilting is wasted if the fabric isn't good quality to begin with.
This is what became of the last of my sheeting stash, two huge braided rugs that gobbled up all the blues and browns and a few other bits. I couldn't tell you how much fabric is in these, but they are seriously heavy and solid. I adore these and appreciate the power of poly in them because they don't ever look like wearing out either.

All the other sheeting I just quietly put in the bin.....

I shall continue "Stash Through The Ages" in another post, I have more to say on the subject.