Iceblossom

Welcome back people who are checking in and those looking to join. And stay strong, my Fabric Moratoriums because we are going to have a month or two of sales that will try our souls and resolutions (as well as the pocket books of those that fall)!

I have given myself an exemption for thrift store fabrics which I shall keep into the next year but I'm getting fussier and fussier about what I pick up. I think I did very good this year in not buying new fabric and bought less thrift fabric than I could have (I think that it helps that I do admit to what I buy here), will have to lay in a couple yards of solid black and white to have on hand. Might have to get some muslin too...

I already did the first of my metallic projects (Scrap Metal) and I have pieces pulled out to work with the modern cat/Asian/black project that will someday be made, and I found someone who would love a couple of pieces of the metallics I have... but I still have another quilt to make out of what I have left and no ideas yet. Then I have at least 2 Civil War quilts coming from stash, one is already planned the other is still unknown.

I'm still considering my Barn/Harvest Quilt as on-going, it's otherwise known as "make those darn paper pieced blocks already" and when it is pieced, I have a whole box of fabric that I will consider surplus. I have fabrics collected for one of my "quilt of the month" projects, which is January and will be a lone star sampler with 9 stars made to look more like snowflakes. That also has metallic fabrics in it and so should be done before I send off the left-overs from the other projects. I also have fabrics collected for a string Christmas quilt, but I don't think that's on the list to be made yet. I no longer buy Christmas fabrics and have already given away an entire box just keeping some that were very true red/green/white so that box is there on a corner where I see it and I tell it "some day". A couple of years ago some ladies were making stockings for the Forgotten Children's Fund and I gave them more fabric than they thought they'd get from that ad on Craig's list.

The "potential" projects box has all sorts of fun things to work with and then there is the rest of the stash... I have a box of striped fabrics and might pull out something from there to work with, been thinking of the Lover's Knot sort of thing where you sew strips together and then slice them as triangles, you put the triangles together as a miter (so fun with stripes) and then arrange the blocks so they intersect. I think Eleanor Burns among others has a book on it.

This year I'm going to be working on purging out non-fabric things I've kept but nobody wants, like I'm allergic to down and my son is Vegan... so time to get rid of those sleeping bags. My goal is to clear out the closet in the sewing room so that I can put my fabric in there. In the last 10 years I will have gone from a room full of fabric to a closet stuffed full -- but I think that's a major improvement. If I had more space I'd have more fabric but right now I feel that I have plenty of fabric and I want the space more.