Stashing

When I was packing to move house, I crammed a lot of extra fabric into the fabric crates willy-nilly and the crates were hurled into a closet in my new place. Once I had settled in it was time to take charge of the stash.

 

It took me a couple of days to fold and sort everything and place the crates neatly in the new shelves in my studio. Well, I have to admit this is not everything - I have a few larger crates for backing fabric and solids in the closet still, but at least I have things sorted so I know where to find what I want. And it looks kind of neat too, doesn’t it? 

Yes, I bought a few things...

 Oh, yes - I did manage to spend a bit of money at The Knitting and Stitching Show, but not too much I think... In a show devoted to knitting and stitching I had hoped for more of a selection of special wool for knitting and exciting threads for embroidery and machine quilting, but the selection was more of the garden variety. Having said that, there was plenty of fabric, wool and notions to choose from, though, so I'm not complaining! I found some lovely wool that I just couldn't leave behind. I have no plans for it yet, but I'll find something lovely on Ravelry, no doubt!

 I can't seem to leave good polka dot fabric behind, so a few dotties came home with me along with a special London fabric to remind me of the trip.

 At Fabrics Galore they had a lot of fabric with big patterns printed on home dec weight fabric. I have been searching for this stamp fabric online for a while, so when I came across it I couldn't leave it there, of course. A panel with a map of the world can always be useful...

 ... and a fabric with lots of windows is just perfect for a house-obsessed crafter, right? There are several different windows and they are quite large, so I imagine using these as the center of a design and "building" a house around them. That will be fun, I think!

I got a set of these interchangeable circular knitting needles at half price - there are four cables and eight different sizes of wooden needles, so you should always have the size you need at hand. I have been coveting these a while, but thought they were too expensive. Half price was still pricey, but I made a big saving on new blades for my rotary cutter so I'm pretending that makes up for it, ;-)!

All in all I came away with some nice things that I really can use, instead of hoarding all sort of stuff just because I could. The big stash waiting for me at home played a part, of course - I can't really claim that I NEED anything anymore - first word problems...

The most important thing I brought home with me, though, was lots of inspiration along with lovely memories of good times with old friends, and that's worth it's weight in gold!

X-ing off my list

I've had a pile of the new Lotta fabrics on my work table for a couple of weeks and started slowly adding more fabric to it without a real plan. Until I came across this tutorial. Fun quilt - why not use the fabrics I already had piled up? I took advantage of  the bright Saturday morning light and got to work rifling through my stash today adding more blues and greens. I think I have come up with something to work with here. I would like to use the text fabric as a feature, and so far this first version with the dark grid and text behind the crosses is my favourite.

 Or maybe lines of text crisscrossing the quilt? I'll have to make a few trial blocks I think...

And then I really must get to work on sorting my stash or coming up with a new storage solution...

But, really, nothing of this will happen this week - I have a big day coming up on Wednesday - half a century, oh my!

Stash building

Look at these beauties! I just couldn't resist Reunion from Sweetwater and bought a whole stack of fat quarters + yardage of the black and white check and that lovely red - great for binding and borders respectively, I think. I have a pillow in mind for some of them, but I will need to come up with some ideas for the rest, and maybe some other fabrics to play with them.
It's funny, I never used to keep fabric from one single line together, but would sort them by colour and include them in among the rest of my stash to be used randomly. But recently I have found it hard to separate such groups and have come to use them together. Maybe I need to get back to being more adventurous, but I need to do some serious sorting and organizing of my entire stash to make that happen, and February isn't the right time for that. Too cold in my bedroom where I do my sewing, I guess.
And that's also why there hasn't been too much sewing either. I was beginning to hope for spring, and actually saw some daffodils sprouting their first green leaves out on the balcony yesterday, but wouldn't you know it: today everything was covered by King Winter's white blanket. Sigh. I'm so ready for spring and warmer weather.
Ah well, I have a comfy sofa a pile of quilts to huddle under, Poirot on TV and some hand stitching to keep me occupied. Not a bad way to pass a Sunday evening, really.

Ah, let the sewing begin!

Christmas decorating creates a lot of mess elsewhere when there is little storage space. I place my christmas tree in a corner of the living room where I usually keep a small table with this lamp on. The table serves as a stand for some of my santas in the hallway and the lamp usually ends up on my sewing table along with a lot of other stuff that needs to be put out of the way during the holidays. Today the tree went back to the basement and everything else got put back where it belongs.

I much prefer the view of the sewing machine today. There's still a lot that needs sorting, but right next to the machine: a tempting pile of new fabric which arrived yesterday! I have other projects on the go, and these need a go in the washing machine before I start using them, but the image is a great inspiration to start sewing again after a couple of weeks' rest.

I couldn't resist the typewriter fabric and just had to make sure that I got me some ;-) And why waste the time, effort and postage of ordering just one fabric, so I added a few more... I'm gradually building up my stash of solids, and also found some other inspiration along the way. That pie fabric might look good on an apron perhaps. The film strips are for a special project, but the rest - who knows what they will become? Let the sewing begin!

Summing up

Here I was thinking that I had bought hundreds of yards of fabric during 2011, but when I started looking through my photos, there isn't a terrifying amount of new fabric in my stash. There might be a few more purchases, but the truth is that since my local quilt shop moved away and my shopping went online, I don't buy as much fabric as I used to. Another change I see, is that instead of buying random fabric in colours that match, I now tend to buy groups of fabric from designer lines . That might influence how I plan new quilts as well: there has certainly been more quilts from single lines lately. I need to dip into my older stash and come up with new combinations to keep things exciting. Some of them might not be willing to play with others, though, but then there are always neutral solids. We'll see what 2012 brings...

Good buys

One of the dangers of not having time to sew, is that I get more time to search the net and end up shopping instead. I have been waiting for Lotta Jansdotter's fabric collection since I saw the first glimpse on a blog ages ago, and I couldn't resist buying the full fat quarter selection.

I don't know what it is about this, the retro patterns or the slightly "off " colours - I'm not sure they go with anything in my stash - but I just love them. Now I just need to find a pattern to show them off.

Some lovely Kate Spain and Sandi Henderson fabrics also found ther way into my shopping basket, and I have been sneaking in some solids with every fabric order lately, Raisin and Nightfall from Kona this time.

These three are my favourites from the latest Amy Butler collection. I don't think they will be used together, but I can't wait to play with them - the scale is quite large, and I have great ideas about how to enhance the motives with quilting - such fun!

Meet my thread stash

Sew, Mama Sew are inviting us to show off our thread stash, so here goes!

I have been quilting for years, and have amassed a lot of this thread over the years. I mainly use neutrals for piecing (ecru, white, black, grey and tan) and stock up on these whenever I come across a good deal. I still have a lot of hand quilting thread from when I first started out, but rarely use it these days.

For machine quilting I use a lot of rayon, but I buy interesting thread whenever I see something I want to try, so I have sliver thread, metallics, cotton, linen - you name it... I also have a lot of cotton floss ( I used to do a lot of cross-stitch) and sometimes use that or perle cotton for hand quilting and embroidery.

I don't always match the colour perfectly to my projects. For backgrounds and large areas I generally go for matching thread, but if I sew a motif that I want to stand out, I might use a contrasting thread, or if there are lots of colours and I'm doing an allover pattern, I usually go for something that goes with all the colours, maybe some varigated thread. I prefer to use the same colour in the bobbin, but I often choose cotton thread if I'm using rayon for quilting.

I store my thread in these little drawer units from IKEA. They keep it dust free, and if I'm doing some kind of machine embroidery or something which involves a lot of colour changes, I can just pull out a drawer or two and bring them over to my sewing table for a little rummage. I have them sorted by colour and type of thread, so it is relatively easy to remember which drawer to look in.

My floss is stored in precut lengths threaded onto cardboard strips sorted by numbers. I keep them in a storage container (also IKEA) and have room left over for a plastic bag with bits and pieces left over from other projects.

I have some single skeins of silk and linen thread in there as well. These are precut and braided so they don't tangle. It's easy to pull a single thread from the braid when I need it.

For embroidery I also have some of these sweet little tins with magnetic lids. The each hold one ball of perle cotton, and the end can be threaded out through the hole in the lid and onto a needle. The magnet holds the needle in place for whenever I need it.

So there you go - I seem to have lots of thread, but I'm always on the lookout for more - how can you quilt without thread, after all ;-)