I leave today to attend the Fat  Quarterly Retreat in London!

I am very excited. I feel like I miss out on retreats and sewing with other people since we move so often and now are living overseas. I don’t know anyone here who sews, though I have found a couple of fabric shops, and a shop that teaches sewing. That shop seems to focus on clothing and bags, though they do have classes for kids. I am hoping to find others that sew, but I need to work on my french so I am able to communicate with people and at this point speaking the language is more of a priority between the two.

The classes I picked sound great – at first I signed up for familiar things and then I thought okay why take a class on something I am very familiar with! So I am taking screen printing, an applique class, a quilt math class (I’m hoping to learn a few tricks!), how to design with an ipad app, and a class called modern knots. I think I am most excited about the applique class in the hopes of learning something new to help me love this technique (or at least like it enough to make a few projects).

Mug rugs for the swap!

Strips to swap

I can’t find my box of embroidery floss anywhere! Of course, who knows if it is good anymore (does embroidery floss get old and ruined?) because I admit I’ve had a lot of it since before I was a teenager, so over 20 years. Oops.

I fly in a few hours and I had a heck of a time reserving a taxi once I land. I’m just going to play it by ear and see what happens.

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.

 

I have been sewing an insane amount. Seriously. Well, I was until a few weeks ago. I am in a sewing slump. I haven’t sat and sewn anything in all that time! After four or so months of sewing every single day, a slump had to come at some point right.

Anyway, moving here has changed my day. All three kids are in school (even the just turned four year old – more on French education/schools soon) four days a week, and so I am free to do whatever. Once I got a sewing machine (because I plugged my American one in here and boom, wrecked it), there was no stopping me. I love sewing so this has been a new feeling for me, I am even late on a swap! I feel terrible about that, it’s the first time I’ve ever been late.

Over the weekend I cleaned my sewing room, thinking that cleaning it would motivate me. And it sort of worked! I found what I think is my oldest WIP, here are the strips for half of the blocks –

I started this in I think 2008 or 2009. It was a class at a LQS when we lived in Texas. I love the main fabric for this. I put the finished blocks up on my ‘design wall’ (really a piece of batting stuck to the wall) to remind myself that I loved it. It worked. I am very excited to finish this.

I often download patterns and just save them. It’s like pictures that live in your computer – patterns live in mine. I decided I needed to just print one off and do it. So I printed the Cargo Duffle and forced myself to pick fabric. I love what I picked, but I need to decide if I like the flaps for the pockets. I’m leaning toward yes, but also just leaving them laying there (only since yesterday!) to decide. I cut the fabric and sewed Monday and Tuesday. I need a zipper though, I bought one but it isn’t big enough so I need to go looking again.

And I have so many projects I decided to pick one out that is close to being finished and just finish it. This starquilt (that is actually either a large wall hanging or a large table runner) needs the corners and triangles cut out before the top is finished.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday

I have a few things in currently working on, and hoping to finish within the next few days.

First up are the last three of my Toes In The Sand BOM! We got the mail last weekend so I now have all three, plus the rest of the fabric to finish the top. I am all caught up with this one so a top will be finished soon.

I finally quilted the little mug rug/wall hanging I made recently. I just need to finish the binding. It took a second to figure out the hexagon binding, but that went quickly once I got started.

And last, the back for my March Finish Along quilt. This one is proving to be more difficult as I first pieced the leftover cuts, which ended up taking longer than I expected. I suppose it’s not more difficult as it’s just taking some time. This is almost all of my leftover fabric so I need to figure out what else to add to it. And the binding!

I need to finish this one so I can get it quilted and finished by the end of the month! Linking up over at WIP Wednesday.