My Fabric Love/Addiction History

I love this cartoon from The Big Book of Bobbins by Julie Icenogle!
My love of fabric began in junior high school, when Mom let me choose patterns and cloth for my clothes at Ellard's, the local "dry goods" store in our tiny town. Mom was an excellent seamstress and made most of my dresses. I think I learned the rhythm of sewing by watching her, first at her pedal sewing machine, and then at her fancy new cabinet Singer.

When I was a freshman in high school, our home economics teacher introduced us to sewing. Our big project was to make a dress. After we assembled our dresses during class, we took them home to measure for the hem, then had to hem them by hand. I still remember neatly spacing the slip stitch we were required to use. My stitching was so good that my teacher did not believe I had hemmed the dress myself and thought my Mom had done it. Mom got very upset when I told her about this and made a trip to the school to set that teacher straight!

Before I learned to sew, Mom made two particularly memorable Palm Sunday and Easter dresses for me from the same pattern. One was a full skirt and jacket in lilac, and the other was a slim skirt and jacket in turquoise. Both had bolero jackets over a sleeveless dress. Mom and I felt very chic saying the word "bolero". She helped me choose the fabric for each dress. At age 13, I felt very grownup wearing these to church, with my first high heels. The pattern pictured above (which can be found here) is very similar to the pattern Mom used, except the dress was sleeveless.

After I got married, I began to buy fabric to sew for our home and family. I loved sewing clothing (I even made my husband a plaid suit!) and house decor, Halloween costumes, etc. A lot of my fabric was purchased at Hancock's, but there were a few nice local stores I loved to frequent. If a particular fabric caught my eye, I splurged and bought a few yards, even if I only had vague plans for it. Some of the fabric got put to good use, some of it just got admired.

During my husband's career, we followed his jobs in Oklahoma and Texas, and the moving process helped keep my yardage in check. When I packed, if I hadn't used it in 5 years, I gave it to Goodwill. Now I wish I still had some of those beautiful fabrics I gave away (I can still remember many of them!)

My first quilt stash and sewing room in 2012

My current fabric stash on hubby-built shelves

After I started quilting in 2010, my fabric purchases became quilting cottons instead of clothing and decor fabrics. I had no clue how to build up a good stash with neutrals, small prints, solids, and blenders. Instead I bought what appealed to me, purchasing many charm packs and bundles. Now that I have a few quilts under my belt, I buy yardage; but I'm still a sucker for a pretty bundle (see the two new Christmas bundles on the top shelf!)

So there you have a little history of my fabric love, but I did not include my love affair with yarn. That I will save for another post!

Felt Stockings and Other Things

A dear friend who helped me prepare dinners this past fall for our church's Wednesday Night Dinners asked me if I would help her with a Christmas project in which she participates. Each year volunteers sew hundreds of Christmas stockings to be filled with goodies and delivered to homeless vets. She already had the felt pieces cut out - all I had to do was decorate them and sew them up.

My confidence in my sewing led me to ask her for two dozen, and I have to confess that I ended up asking another friend to take a dozen of them to complete! These little stockings were more of a challenge than I anticipated! I have little imagination when it comes to decorating, so I turned to Pinterest to find samples of felt stockings. Decorations couldn't just be glued on - everything had to be sewn on just to make sure the stockings remain intact from the time they are filled until they are delivered. Some of the decorations were too small to attach with a sewing machine, so I did a lot of hand sewing. And I had to search for a tutorial to see how to sew the stockings together to hide the seams of the cuff at the top. It was like it was my first time sewing.

In spite of my difficulties, it was a joy and an honor to do these stockings. How sad that the words "homeless" and "vets" are even in the same sentence; nevertheless there is apparently a disproportionately large percentage of homeless people who are veterans. As I worked on the stockings I prayed and thought about who would receive them and that they would be blessed in some way.

My cat Katy was involved in her very special way.

In other news Randy and I celebrated 45 years of marriage and traveled to Dallas to visit our daughter and son-in-law. Our anniversary is the day before our baby girl's birthday, so we often get together for our two events. We ate at Gordon Biersch and had a wonderful evening. I gave her the Secrets and Dreams Journal to use for her iPad or as a journal - she was delighted - yay!

Patchwork Loves Embroidery SAL - Secrets and Dreams Journal

Life has been very busy lately, so I am two weeks behind in completing this project from Gale Pan's Patchwork Loves Embroidery. I took some liberties with Gale's embroidery pattern, as I wanted the design to be less crowded. The beauty of Gale's book is the abundance of designs from which to choose!

With inspiration and encouragement from the other ladies of the SAL, I am becoming more confident with my hand stitching and felt this was my best project to date. I really enjoyed picking out fabrics and thread and even ordered new embroidery needles from Jeana Kimball's Foxglove Cottage. My old needles were purchased from a hobby store, and they were catching and pulling the fabric. After reading a post by Pretty By Hand's Kristyn about her needle preferences, I ordered samples of different types of needles from Jeana's store and have had much smoother sewing!

Since I have deadlines approaching on other quilting projects, I was going to make this my last SAL project. However I still want to make the needle folder as well as pincushions, so I will make the time.

Be sure to visit Martina's blog for links to other SAL projects.

Garden Gate Patchwork

I recently discovered the blog of Christine at Patchwork Allsorts and am drawn to her pretty embroidery. When I saw this beautiful stichery I decided I had to buy one of the double stitch patterns from Mountain Patchwork. During the month of September they have free shipping!

Christine has a stash of Tilda fabrics, which are gorgeous fabrics not readily available here in the States. I have to admit I'm envious of her stash. I started to buy a few pieces on Etsy, but in the end I decided to use some of the "unloved fabrics" that had been weeded out of my stash during The Purge a few weeks ago. They are batiks which attracted me initially, but I didn't love them anymore. However once they were cut and sewn together I loved them again.

I haven't hand sewn for a long time, and my stitches show it. Sewing a straight line is not as easy as it used to be, and my embroidery stitches look spidery to me. But I decided it adds to the charm. For the double stitch thread I used variegated Superior Rainbows with shades of lavender, sage green, and pink, and for embroidering the flowers, ribbons, and stems I used Cosmo thread.

I am working on re-purposing/refinishing a frame for it and will post a final picture. Thanks to Christine for answering my numerous questions about this project!