More Fabric

Here are some pics of the rest of the new fabric that came in the mail. These are from Sew, Mama, Sew and I just love them! I already got to playing and picked out the coordinating fabrics so all that is left to do is pull out the rotary cutter and start slicing it up. Oh, that sounds so cruel. That might be what my problem is - I anthropomorphize everything. Yes, I make the animals talk but everybody does that, right? The problem goes much deeper than that though (like here for instance). People who know me get used to it, or ignore it, or think it's quirky that I'm having an ongoing conversation with the soup. So, it makes sense that I sometimes get the jitters when it comes to cutting up fabric. It's been welcomed into my home, washed, dried, ironed and folded. But it has also been petted, adored and a little life has been created for it. Then there is the future and aspirations of what it wants to become. It is just a matter of me making it so. That's a lot of pressure, but I have to believe that the skills are in me to pull it off so the transformed fabric can be sent of into the world in his new incarnation.

Oh yeah, I was going to show you fabric pics instead of rambling on!

I just love the spirals in that one, and the colours. He wants to be a skirt of some kind.


Frogs? What can be better than frogs? I'm going to cut the fabric on the bias like its shown here because the frogs seem to have more movement this way. They were going to become a bag for the tutorial I'm working on but the progress shots would have been too dark. So it's becoming a skirt too.


I just love this little pattern, it reminds me of something from when I was small, but I can't quite remember what. I think it might be similar to something on my grandmothers everyday dishes.

Alright, now I'm going to go work on that bag tutorial.

What a Haul!

There was an awesome sale on at Fabricland this weekend, everything was 50% off unless it was already on sale. So it was stocking up time! A bunch of 100% cotton solids both for accent fabric and more applique came home with me. I was a little dismayed at the available colours of the cotton solids, while if you walked to the other side of the counter there were three times the amount of poly/cotton broadcloth. Ah well I'm tingley with the lot of them.


Once everything got home and washed and ironed, it was time to pull it all out on the table to start playing with colour combinations. I love how much fabric changes just by switching accent fabric.

I'm still having a hard time deciding which of these I like best.


Or this


Or maybe this


Oh decisions, decisions. Then there is this new fabric that came in from Equilter (it was hiding in the picture on the post about that) and I must admit to having an almost indecent love of it. I paired it with the turquoise and a teal because there was no matching greens to be found.


It's hard to decide whether the two solid colour combo is too heavy or not. There is also the option of adding an accent colour using ribbon on the solid fabric and there are more options for ribbons than there are for 100% cotton fabrics.


There is way more to show but this post is already picture heavy as it is. Time to go finish stuff instead of planning the next three sewing months away. Mom's bag is almost done, I would have finished it up last night but either the light isn't good enough or my eyes aren't because I couldn't even tell the right side from the wrong side of that black fabric!

If you whine enough

your fabric will come. My package from eQuilter came in today! And I am loving all of it!Yeah, very purple and green. If you didn’t know they were my favourite colours you would by looking at my fabric choices. Orange is my other fav, I live for Hallowe’en!

I am growing to prefer shopping online rather than brick and mortar stores. I have to prepare to go to fabric stores because I get so overwhelmed that I rarely bring home what I went in to get. Lists are written, plans are made, patterns are picked out and then I walk through the door and all of plans go out the window. I wander, I fondle, I design on the fly. I have actually walked out of a fabric store and stood outside for a few minutes to cool down enough to try again. Crazy. Maybe this isn’t you, you are one of the lucky ones, I have seen your kind in the stores - the quiet calm, the relaxed posture, the composure – and I aspire to be like you when I grow up. But that’s not me. To shop online, everything is organized, I can search for a particular colour, pattern or style without having to wander past hundreds of others which inevitably lead to distraction. I can relax, drink a coffee and compare choices rather than running around in the fabric shop like a crazy person with a bunch of bolts in my arms trying to find matches and make decisions. It’s true, you can’t fondle, but it’s a fair trade to save myself from looking like a fabric manic.

So with the cool-headedness that online shopping affords I picked up 4 different purple patterns with plans to make a baby sized quilt based on the Iroquois Confederacy Belt for the Mohawk Fair this year. Not to be confused with the Confederate flag. I am thinking of strip piecing it with one strip representing one row of the wampum beads. The hand quilting will just be stitched in the ditch to accentuate the beaded look of the original belt. In my brain it looks great. Sorry the picture isn't great though, but those beads are all made from drilled quahog shells which are deep purple with colour variations that's the reason for needing so many purple fabrics.


As for all the green fabrics the plans are a little more open. I’m thinking skirts and maybe a bag. I still need to take a trip to the fabric store to pick out some coordinating cotton solids for trims and white for the quilt and thread but that I can handle, they are all in one area.

Thanks Mom for the early birthday presents!

*crosses her fingers that the other package makes it before the weekend*