Good evening, dear quilters! I hope you've had a creative week. Mine has been. I finished one quilt top and got a running start on another. I'll show you photos in a bit. First this:
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Quilters Love Fabric
Some quilters love fabric so much, they buy more of it than they will ever use. Where or when did you develop your love of fabric? My love comes from my mother. My mother could make anything. With a very limited budget and five young children, she sewed, built and refinished furniture, upholstered, painted rooms, rewired lamps, and generally did anything she could to create a comfortable home for us. When I was little, she made dresses for my sisters and me. When we were married, she made the bridesmaids' dresses. She paid a lot of bills doing alterations and custom sewing, and for several years, she made costumes for community theatre productions.
Her creativity was well suited for costume-making. I remember shopping expeditions to find fabrics. How many little girls can identify moiré satins and taffetas and brocades, twills and crepes and organzas? We spent a lot of time feeling the fabrics, as that was part of how she could tell how well it would drape, how it would reflect the stage lights, and how rich or poor the character would look.
I still love fabric. I still go to the stores and fondle the bolts, unroll a yard or more to check the drape, stand back to “ooh” and “aah” over the beautiful colors and patterns. I sort through my own small stash before beginning each project, and I enjoy touching each piece.
Quilters love fabric. Some are fabric collectors, seeking out new treasures wherever they go and building a stash that would last several lifetimes. Others buy only enough for the project at hand. It’s likely there is a happy medium.
Sewing From Stash
Since mid-June I've been using up stash. Some people account for yardage purchased and yardage used, letting them know just how much they have in "inventory." I've never done that, but I do have ONE cabinet in which my fabric lives. (All of my quilting stash is in the top of it.) I can tell when the cabinet is getting fuller and emptier. Unlike Old Mother Hubbard, my cabinet is far from bare. But the bins are getting a little lighter.
So what have I been doing the last couple of months? I'm making quilts for my husband's siblings. He is the seventh of nine children, and all of the eight others are still alive. I thought I'd express my appreciation for their roles in my life by making each of them a lap quilt. The quilts will NOT be Christmas presents, though I expect I'll be done with them near the end of the year.
One of the things I like about sewing from stash is the push to greater creativity. Figuring out how to make things go together, what blocks I have yardage to make, whether they'll need to be scrappy or not, are all creative decisions that are different when sewing from stash than when buying new yardage.
But after the sibs' quilts are done, and my cabinet is even emptier than it is now, I plan to do some major stash replenishment.
Is your stash making you happy?
Recently I read an essay that suggested thinking about the kind of fabric you used when you started quilting, what you are using now, and what you would like to use as your art develops. Then over time, deliberately move your stash toward the art you want to make. What should you do with the “old” stash? Use it, sell it, or give it away. Free yourself from caring for things you no longer need. Remove reminders of projects you know you will never make, and the guilt that goes with seeing them all the time. Reduce the time it takes to dig through stacks of fabric you don’t even like. Allow your creativity to expand when you are not weighed down sorting, folding, and storing the old stash. When you are no longer moving around the old, you will have time and space to try something new.
The Sibs' Quilts
Here are the five quilt tops I have done so far, plus the start on the sixth. You've seen some of these photos before. These are all going to be lap quilts.
For the oldest, #1 of 9
This is made from reproduction fabrics, faux-repros, actual feedsack, and just a couple of things that worked well with it. And yes it was all stash!
#2
For Janie the gardener. I bought most of these fabrics (the floral border, the background printed muslin, and the greenish-blue inner border) at my local quilt guild auction.
#3
I've always loved double 4-patch and I like how this turned out. Jim was my color consultant for the posts between the sashings. He picked red, and it surprised me he was right. He almost always is.
#4
For Joan, the musician and singer, I started with the inspiration of the cinnamon brown, which has a small detail of musical notes in it. Also she has a little more interest in the exotic than some of the others, so I thought she'd enjoy the bold paisley.
#6
Churndash is one of my favorite blocks and I put these together from scraps. When it was time to choose the alternate blocks, I tried one after another. Again I had to call in Jim to do color consultation. When we saw the double pink, we knew it was right. Double pinks were used 100 years ago just like this, as a neutral against all other colors.
#8
Here is the start on the next one. I'll show you how to make this great star block in another diary. It needs borders! The colors are odd and I do NOT have stash to help with this. This is the first new purchase I'll need to make. Please color consult for me -- what colors/patterns should I be looking for for the border?
6:45 PM PT: Thanks, Rescue Rangers, for the Community Spotlight! I'm glad more kossacks have the chance to discover our community group.
8:26 PM PT: Heading for bed now. I'll be back in the morning to respond to comments. Thanks for stopping!