I bought two fat quarters of this fabric at my local store in green and purple, and just my luck–no identifying words on the selvage. Anyone have any info about them?
Tag: Fabrics/Textiles
Six-Step Process for Fabricaholics
To every addict comes a time when they must admit they have overstepped the line and must seek help. Hence, a fabric-aholics Six-Step Process, condensed down from a 12-step process therapy.
1. Take everything out of your fabric closet, your fabric shelves, and leave it in a heap while your husband/spouse/other walks in and says nothing. Their eyes say it all. Like, Wow.
2. Refold the fabrics because we all know that really helps. Because you can always get more in the closet after you refold them, right? And because scientific studies have proven that working with tactile items keeps the old blood pressure down. It’s a health issue.
3. Start putting them back in. Realize that you’ll never get your stash back in its “box” after its been sprung. Organized fabrics take WAAAY more space.
4. Re-think your organization plan. Try sorting them by color groups — only six: yellow, green, blue, red, purple, grays (see photo). Browns? Decide if they are a yellow-brown or an orange-brown or a yellow-orange brown because that’s the basic three places brown comes from. (I learned this in college. I give it to you now, free of charge.) Or you can group the browns/blacks together. Put the darkest of the colors on the bottom of the color stack. Or try organizing by theme: like those food fabrics you’ve been collecting since you learned how to thread a needle. It was always going to be a “basket quilt” and now you look at some of them and wonder if you could stand to see them in a quilt.
5. Realize that you have accumulated enough fabric for 20 years worth of quilts. Why? We need to subdivide this category. These observations are not all autobiographical, but come from almost forty years of being a quilter/involved with fabric (before I was a quilter, I was a sewer and don’t even kid yourself — they’re stashers too):
a) you were at a quilt show and we all know they spray fabric pheromones in the air at those events, or
b) you were shopping with friends and they bought some, and you didn’t want to be left out, so you did too, or
c) you were feeling blue and needed a little cheering up, or
d) you were taking a class with _________ (fill in the blank) and needed more yellow-green, or
e) it was a beautiful day (weather or other) and you just felt like a stroll through a fabric store would be a great thing and you noticed the clearance racks, or
f) you are doing your part to help the economy and your local fabric store, or
g) the online email that your favorite online shop sent you had that new line and while you were really excited about only four of the prints, their fat-quarter bundle of nine prints would be a better bargain, or
h) it was a really horrid day (weather or other) and you just felt like visiting those people who you have made friends with at your local shop would cheer your day, or
i) you were in the mood for some new fabric, or
j) you saw a quilt on the blogs or in a magazine that you wanted to make, and of course, this required new fabric, or
k) you are a blogger and have to have something new to show on the blog, or
l) ______________ (fill in the blank).
6. Realize that you will probably always buy fabric (here’s where we differ from traditional 12-step programs) but that a little restraint now and again would be a good idea. And if you are going to buy, consider making a quick quilt or two to give away to a woman’s shelter, or the Quilts of Valor , Home of the Brave, or other such charitable and worthy causes** such as 100 Quilts for Kids because they don’t need the latest fabric and you can use up the stash at the back of the closet.
But most of all, enjoy the process! Enjoy the new idea, the cutting out with friends or while listening to a great book, the stitching (gives you time to think about your loved ones) the colors coming together, the design working, and the glorious finished quilt top. Because if you fill yourself up with high-quality experiences while creating out of cloth, it will satisfy you far longer than a stack of fabrics in your closet. I love my Come A-Round quilt, and I still savor the many months it took to create. I have stories associated with all my quilts, and they are my legacy.
They’ll be yours, too.
(**Caveat: don’t give the charities junk! I worked with a woman’s shelter quilt drive once and we had to pitch a few smelly quilts (think: mildew) and quilts that were made of sub-standard fabric. Just throw that shoddy stuff away and don’t acquire any more.)
Wordy Fabrics
I love word fabrics. I know they aren’t really a design, but I love text and fonts and writing and blogging and reading, and I teach English. Need any more qualifications? Here’s some of my latest fabrics, all washed up and pressed and ready to go.
And I love to travel to interesting places. This is Sweetwater’s latest word fabric (they seem to do one in every line–I don’t mind) and they’ve arranged the words in blocks, as if this were some sort of word-plaid of some kind, sprinkled with numbers. A local town is on here: San Bernardino, and Flagstaff is visible right there in the middle. That’s where my daughter used to live. They also have Montreal (where we will be traveling to this fall) and Paris and Rome and London–all great cities that I have a memory with. So maybe that’s why I liked this fabric with words–it triggers lovely memories. And yes, I’ve even been to Lehi (up there in the upper third, middle, in red).
And I’m getting ready for our little quilt group’s Halloween fabric swap, coming up in a few weeks. I think sometimes we quilters like to touch and play with our fabrics, looking at them, enjoying them. I happened on a couple of posts yesterday for WIP where the bloggers talked about that very thing. They liked to get out what they had and arrange them in new color combinations and monkey around with them. I imagine those of us who buy fabric are like that.
But I’ve also wanted to reach out and touch the jacket of the woman in the pew in front of me in church. Or when I sit behind some teenage girl with long beautiful hair and she’s fiddling with it during the service, I’m jealous, because my hair is short, and doesn’t lend to fiddling. I like feeling fuzzy things, soft things, corduroy or the hair of my grandchildren, or my husband’s tweed wool jacket. I guess I just like texture: both visual (the words) and tactile (fabrics).
A Japanese designer, Yohji Yamamoto, said: ‘Fabric is everything. Often I tell my pattern makers, “Just listen to the material. What is it going to say? Just wait. Probably the material will teach you something.” ‘
Amen.
Dusky Tones on the Comeback Trail?
Over Labor Day weekend, I headed up to my nephew’s wedding and was completely entranced with the flowers on our tables. No brights anywhere. Dusky hydrangeas, mossy-textured greens that were soft as baby’s ears, pastel roses, grayed down tones everywhere. The bridesmaids’ dresses were a pinky-tan color. The bride was in a rich ivory dress. This is a couple who is on the cutting edge of everything, including fashion and design. Now consider this:
This is the latest from the Moda design team and the collection is entitled “Little Gatherings.” While the tones and colors are similar to what I bought in the 1970s, what I noticed was the design: little bitty designs.
So the question that some are asking around on the blogs, as they drag out those uncompleted quilts from the 1970s is: are the dusky tones from that era making a comeback? I would have said yes to the colors and the tonality but no to the itsy bitty calico-type prints, until I saw the Moda line above. So, are we returning to that era? Have we tired of the brights and bolds and large scale prints and heading back to the 1970s? 1880s? If we look to fashion for inspiration, it’s often said that short skirts are a sign of a healthy economy and that long skirts indicate that we are all in for tough times. Since our economy is pretty much in the tank, I wonder if we can make the same predictions based on fabrics.
And by the way, here’s a view from the runways. Even those with shorter, body-conscious clothes had a few longer skirts in their line-up. In many shows, that’s ALL they had. And judging from some of the fabrics being used, looks like we’re still in love with large-scale prints, although in fashion, I think only those who are 6 feet tall pull them off really well. That lets me out. And the colors? They trended to the dusky, darker tones, but hey–it is the FALL fashion shows, which of course will be shown in deeper-toned fabrics. (Designers’ names are under the picture, newspaper-caption style.)
L’Wren Scott
Chloe
Vuitton
Missoni
Missoni
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 