Playing with Fabric

 

New Fabric Haul

I've been playing with fabric, quite a bit, recently.  I started out with just randomly piecing together some of the scrap pieces of fabric; it was a calming, almost meditative, relaxing activity for me.  I'd trim the resulting pieces into squares or rectangles of no particular size with the idea that I might eventually incorporate them into a quilt top.  

Then, on Saturday afternoon, daughter and I decided to go to Joann's, the fabric/crafts store that is closing down, to see if there were any bargains to be found.  Daughter wanted some beads at 30% off.  I wanted to see if they had any sewing thread (only some specialized machine embroidery thread were available), packaged elastic (the shelves were bare), and fabric, even though I had bought a stash of fabric in December!

I usually stock up on fabric when it goes on sale for 50% off or more, especially when this store used to have their after Thanksgiving/after Christmas clearance sales.  But, now, even with the store closing, most of the fabric were only 20% off.  Which wasn't a big savings, in my opinion, and probably why they had so much fabric left on the shelves in the store.  I stood in front of the holiday fabric shelves, filled with bolts of St. Patrick's Day/Easter/spring themed fabric, Halloween/fall themed fabric, and Christmas/winter themed fabric, as well as patriotic design fabric and checked the prices.  But, the original prices were mostly $9.99 and up and the 20% off discount didn't bring the prices down enough for me to want to purchase them.

Instead, I headed over to their low priced fabric section, where the "project cotton" fabric was originally priced at $2.00 per yard (which is the fabric I stocked up on in December).  They didn't have as big a selection of that fabric, and some of them were the same as what I had bought in December, but, they, too, were 20% off and I decided to get more of that fabric for future projects.

The picture above shows what I bought.  I already had some of the apple print fabric, the solid green fabric, and the pale pink with stars fabric, but, I bought more of them for $1.60/yd.  I bought 2 yards each of the red striped, apple print, green, and orange fabric and 3 yards of the pink.  Most of the fabric on the bolts were pre-cut pieces of fabric (I suppose pieces that were returned by previous customers for whatever reason?)  I had a very nice store clerk assisting me, though.  Sometimes, the precut piece was just over 2 yards, and rather than cutting off the excess, he just gave me the whole piece and charged me only for the 2 yards.

I did want 10 yards of the purple fabric (my favorite color and good for quilt backings, borders, sashing, etc.)  However, that entire bolt seemed to be made up of 2-3 yard pieces.  I think the biggest piece was a little under 4 yards.  I was fine with getting 10 yards of pieces at that price (I could always sew the pieces together if needed).  The sales assistant measured out 10 yards of the purple altogether, but, because it was in pieces, he gave me a further discount and charged me for only 5 yards!  As a result, I paid a total of $25.60 for a little over 21 yards of fabric.  Now, that's a good way to build up my fabric stash, I think.  I was very happy with my fabric purchase.

Speaking of my fabric stash, I had a piece of fabric (bought from this same store, but, several years ago) in the stash.  I remember shopping for it because I went with my daughter and she selected several pieces of fabric with cherry blossom designs because she loves cherry blossoms.  

Close Up of the Fabric Design

This Sunday, I sat down at the sewing machine and stitched up a gathered skirt for my daughter with this piece of fabric:

A New Skirt for Daughter

It's a very simple gathered skirt with an elastic waist band.  But, daughter is very happy with her new skirt with the cherry blossom print.  And I am happy that a piece of fabric I had in my stash was used up.  

I am grateful for:

- Finding fabric on sale
- A really nice sales assistant who gave me additional discounts on the sale fabric!
- More fabric for my stash
- Being able to sew a skirt for my daughter with fabric I already had in my stash
- Daughter being so happy to have a new skirt sewn by me.

Playing with fabric is one of my favorite joyful activities.

I do admit to wandering around the yarn section, too, but, nothing was reduced to a price that I thought was a good deal, so I didn't buy any yarn.  

Have you been to Joann's since they announced their store closings?  Did you find good bargains?  Do you have a fabric stash?  Do you think I went a bit overboard with my adding to my stash?