Last days of spring cleaning

I recently had a burst of energy and felt the need to organize.  A couple of weeks ago, I went through our linen cabinets and got rid of some old sheets and blankets that we haven’t used in a while.  That cleared a couple of shelves.  For...

Remember my tub of fabric?  Well, that’s grown a little bit.  I remembered this blog post about using comic book boards to make mini fabric bolts.  I went back to search for it, and ordered a 100-pack of the boards from amazon.  And, ta da!

Little projects

Good things happening lately:
1) We’re enjoying some lovely summer weather around here lately.  (See how baby girl is enjoying wearing her summer hat?)
2) After 13 months, baby girl is sleeping through the night.  After about a week of sleeping through the night myself, I feel like a fog has lifted: less cranky, brain is working a tad faster (you know it’s bad when you forget what the word for “door” is and have to explain to your husband, “you know, that thing you open, with the thing...” oy) and, of course, not dog tired all day long.  Drinking less caffeine.
3) I’m back to working part-time.  I’m looking forward to enjoying the summer with the kids.

I’ve been doing some little projects lately:

Lovely weekend!

Even though it involved very little sewing.

Working more these days makes me want to soak up the weekends with the kids as much as possible.  We had such wonderful weather this weekend.  We went out to the botanical gardens with some friends.  My son loved hanging out with his friends.  He’s at such a great age.  He loves exploring everything and wants to learn about everything around him.

Watching the bullfrog and fish at the frog pond.

A funny thing happened on the way to the grocery store...

So, while I was out grocery shopping, I somehow ended up at Joann Fabrics.  They happened to have some cute spring fabrics in the store, and a few of these fabrics somehow ended in my shopping cart.  I also somehow happened to have these coupons in my purse.  And somehow these fabrics are now in my house.

Funny how that happens.

As a side note, the lady who cut the fabric for me told me that the white embroidered fabric reminded her of her grandmother.  In a good way, I hope.

I have a confession to make

I hoard fabric. 

Over the years, I’ve done some sewing here and there.  In graduate school, I bought a $20 sewing machine and made my own curtains and some blankets for my niece and nephew.  But never any clothes.  I did grow up watching my mom sew, and I remember a lot of things she told me about sewing.  It was only this past year, when I had my baby girl, that I started to seriously think about making clothes.  Clothes for her, of course.  There is something about those teeny tiny girl’s dresses that are irresistible. 

And that’s where my obsession with er, admiration and love for fabric began.  I’d bought my first pattern, a pillowcase dress, and I’d started looking around for fabrics to make the dress.  Who knew there was so much beautiful fabric in the world?  I ended up with a box of fabric and a long list of projects on my to-do list, even before I’d bought my new sewing machine.  (My $20 sewing machine got lost somewhere in our many moves.) 

When I finally did get the sewing machine, I found myself hesitant to use any of the beautiful fabric that I had bought, because, well, it was so beautiful.  I wouldn’t want to cut it up and ruin it.  I’d much rather go out to Joann Fabrics and get some discount fabric to cut up.  I keep collecting more lovely fabric but not wanting to use it.  I now have a tub of fabric, which I store on a shelf in my bedroom closet.  It’s gotten so heavy, I have to have my husband bring it down and put it away again.  He keeps commenting that he thought the more you sew, the less fabric you should have.  Such navïeté. 

So, I started this blog as a place to talk about my sewing projects, as I make an effort to use more of the fabric I've accumulated.  Maybe I will even make that pillowcase dress one day. 

Here’s to recovery from fabric hoarding...

 

(although this post is backdated to December 2010, this picture was actually taken March 2011, so it did take a few months to accumulate all this fabric!)