Saturday, August 10, 2013

You Can Never Have Enough Fabric

Let's face it.  Many of us have enough fabric to make quilts for the rest of our lives, myself included. Sometimes you make a promise to yourself not to buy any more fabric until you use up a bunch of what you already own. I call it a fabric diet. But there are analogies to a food diet. 
 It starts to get boring after a while and sometimes you just fall off the wagon, especially when you enter a quilt shop.  The problem is that there are trends with quilt fabric.
  When I first started quilting, fabric designs lasted for years.  Now, it has become such a competitive industry with such tight profit margins.that a particular fabric may only be available for a season.  So if you see something you love, you better buy it. And conversely, if you have been on a fabric diet for a while, there are many new fabrics to tempt you. 
 
A friend of mine had surgery.  She has a very cute dog named Roxy and she loves Bailey.  To cheer her up during her recuperation, I thought she would enjoy a special pillowcase.
I came across this adorable fabric and knew this was the one.  I could not resist.
 There was a co-ordinating brown fabric with dog biscuits that I thought would be perfect for the cuff.
 This brought a big smile to my friend's face. 
 
Many fabrics have dots of color printed along one of the selvages  with the manufacturer's name and the name of the fabric line.  The colored dots are representative of the dye colors used to print the fabric.  They are helpful when searching for other fabrics to make a quilt. 

The selvage of the dog prints were another story. 
Someone at Robert Kaufman Fabrics has quite a sense of humor.
Paw prints!  I need to save this.
Some quilters save all of their selvages (and their friend's selvages) and use them for fabric projects.  (Most of us just throw them away.) 
You can see some of these fun projects on The Selvage Blog.
 
Then much to my surprise, I received a package in the mail from my friend Kathy.
How perfect is this?
 
Who can stay on a fabric diet with so many temptations?

3 comments:

  1. It is so hard not to buy and they just keep coming out with more new fabrics that we just have to have, lol. Love the paw prints, that would be fun to use in a selvege quilt.

    Debbie

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  2. I'm not on a fabric diet, but potluck spree. I've been going through my stash and making pillowcases from some of my novelties and oldies, and trying not to "save" anything unless it's big enough for a backing. That said, I'm off to the AQS show in Grand Rapids next week and I'm going to buy something!

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  3. My daughter says there must be a support group for that :)

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