Finding Fabrics

Last week during a visit from my oldest sister, who lives in the mid-west, she and I spent lots of sister time going to all our favorite places together.  One of our outings was fabric shopping at my favorite quilt shop, Homespun Harbor, during their close out sale.  We both were able to pick up quite a bit of beautiful fabrics to fill in some of the missing elements of our individual fabric stashes.  A good fabric stash is now very important for me because there is not another local fabric store, I will have to go one town away to shop for quilt fabrics and two towns away to shop for garment fabrics and notions.  No more popping into the shop to pick up thread, elastic, zippers or more fabric when I am in the middle of a project, now I have to plan a day trip instead.  

Anyway….. back to our shopping trip, fat quarters were on sale for $1.00 each (for those of you who don’t know what a fat quarter is, it is fabric which measures 18”x 22”, a regular ¼ yard of fabric measures 9”x 44”, quilters use them to make quilts and other small projects, there are whole books dedicated to sewing with fat quarters) they were a fantastic price, they usually start at $2.50 and up depending on the shop.  I don’t use as many fat quarters as my sister, she bought more of those then I did, but I did manage to pick out a few of my own which I like to use for children’s Christmas stockings, table napkins and wine bags, at a buck each it was a real steal.  I also purchased some basic solids at a wonderful price as well as some retro print fabrics for dressmaking.

I was thrilled to get these retro inspired fabrics at such low prices, some as low as $3.00 a yard for very high quality cotton fabrics, the average price is normally $10 to $12 per yard.  Some of these prints will be made into dresses, tops, aprons or purses, scraps will be sewn into zip bags and other accessories, no wasted fabrics here.

My sister purchased these classic fabrics for me as an early Birthday present.  The set tied with the black bow is a kit which includes a pattern for a table topper and a table runner, the table topper could also be used as a wall hanging.  The other set is the complementary fabrics to the kit which would allow me to complete a wall hanging and a table topper, one for each of us.  I love those fabrics and can’t wait to work with them; they are already on my cutting table ready to be made into some fun projects.

Our day was filled with a whirl of colors and fabrics but it was bittersweet in the loss of such a great shop.  To cheer me up we went on an exploration of a newer shop which opened, one town away, in San Juan Bautista.  The shop, Family Treads, is a darling place with some of the same types of fabrics and notions I like to create with; I think I will probably visit there often as travel time permits.  It was great fun to explore the lovely fabrics and chat with the other ladies about their projects, we both had a really good day and we were all shopped out by late afternoon.

Thanks for letting me share all our fabric finds with you from my visit with my sister.  Our trip inspired me to get back to sewing and creating more colorful projects, look for those to begin in my next posting.  See you soon.

Laurette