I think I really started building a fabric stash about six years ago. We lived in Texas and up until that point I had made a handful of baby quilts, and sewn other things like a baby sling for a doll or a doll pillow and quilt. But I wasn’t really, fully, immersed in quilting the way I feel that I am now. I chalk it up to the frequency of our moves and not having friends with similar interests as me. Sure it’s nice to have friends with little kids so your little kids have someone to play with, but it has always been a bit of a search to find someone who also likes sewing or quilting.
When we got to Texas, I met someone who was (in my eyes) a hardcore quilter. She had a bedroom devoted to her sewing! Sewing table, fabric stash, lots of block of the month fabrics, projects bagged up and separated, ready to sew. I found my person. Thanks to her I got “into” quilting a lot more.
We went to the Houston Quilt Show, and we had a blast! She had favorite quilt shops already and they were there. I was introduced to patterns specifically for fat quarters. Boom, I was done. That started my fabric stash buying – fat quarters and fq bundles.
We lived near my Mom soon after, and she recommended I buy more fabric. I started buying half yard but still bought bundles of fq’s. And the more I sewed, the more I realized I needed more fabric. I quit buying fq’s. I moved on to only buying half yards. I joined a couple of monthly fabric clubs and picked the half yard option and enjoyed building up my stash. After all those years, I am starting to wander into buying yards. I’ve moved past buying an entire collection of fabric, one half yard of each print please, and am moving to buying a yard or two of my favorite from the collection. It certainly cuts down on the spending. I am lucky to be able to order fabric from the US and have it shipped to a US address, have you seen the price of international shipping lately! Yikes!
The cotton + steel fabrics are on my radar as something I need to have. I have been looking at shops and trying to decide which I will buy. I don’t feel the pull of having an entire collection, but they are super popular and I know to buy now versus waiting while I decide. And so a few years later and I have a healthy stash.
This post by Debbie is a few months old, but in my browsing blogs and catching up I thought it was a good one for this topic of how we evolve in our fabric buying.
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