A Case for Buying Fabric as Souvenirs
I make a deliberate effort to buy fabric everywhere I go, as a sort of textile reminder of my travels. Buying fabric as a souvenir rather than a T-shirt or a key chain is a great idea for a me as a quilter because it’s not just a mass-produced trinket that will quickly become lost, broken or forgotten, it’s something I am going to use. Moreover, the projects I create from these acquisitions are made even more special because they evoke memories of the trip with their every use.
I have extended my fabric souvenir shopping by recruiting friends who travel to buy me some fabric if they have the opportunity. I’ve received some beautiful bark cloth from Hawaii which became a tropical tote with paradise vibes and some sunny pillows for my screened porch. Quilting cotton from Korea became a shirt dress. Some silk from China became a scarf for only the specialist of occasions.
The next time you head out of town on a trip, be sure to stop by the local fabric shop. You may end up finding some memories there, too!
How to Find Your Lost Scissors
As a quilter, I have many scissors of course but one pair stands out as my most cherished. Unlike the ratty “Red Handled Scissors” I detailed in my last post, these scissors are exquisite. They are a pair of impeccably sharp Gingher Dressmaker’s shears with fancy teal and yellow floral painted handles. When I have those scissors in my hand, I can do anything but when they are lost, I’m a mess. All productivity screeches to a halt. Logically, I realize the most sensible thing to do in the case of their inexplicable absence is to make a modest effort to find them, and if I can’t, just grab the next available scissors knowing that the good ones will turn up. If only it were that easy. When my good scissors are missing, I just can’t do anything until they are found. It’s like they are some kind of magic charm that ensures my project will turn out beautiful. The last time I lost them, I tore the house apart looking for them. I even checked the most unlikely places, like the refrigerator, logically because I’d once left the TV remote in the fridge while going for a snack.
My husband has a long-standing explanation for a situation like this. He quips the lost item is temporarily in another dimension, and I simply have to wait for Other Jen to stop using it. Have you ever opened a drawer, looked for something, not found it, closed the drawer only to open it again 30 seconds later and find it? Well, that is the Other You using the object in another dimension. You simply must wait for Other You to finished using it. Other Jen did eventually finish using the good scissors and was kind enough to put them back in a not totally obvious place but one that would delight me when I did find them: under a stack of fabric, right on the cutting table. Being happily reunited with my scissors (again) always reminds me of a Peanuts cartoon from years ago where Snoopy muses something along the lines of “Tidy people will never know the joy of finding something thought irretrievably lost”.
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Mom’s Scissors
When I was a kid, we only had two pairs of scissors in the entire house. One was a beat-up pair in the junk drawer. At some point, they must have been finished in red paint. Even though only a few tiny specks of red paint remained by the time I ever used them, they were universally referred to as “the red handled scissors”. The other pair was a glistening silver pair of Wiss dress maker shears. These lived in my mom’s sewing stuff. I’m not really sure where, because she guarded them like a dragon protecting its castle.
The Red Handled scissors cut everything: paper, string, tape, wire, brake line, chicken bones…. you name it and the Red Handles scissors were on the job. However, when it came to fabric, they were thoroughly inadequate for the job. For those special occasions, you had to ask Mom for the Silver Scissors. I don’t know where she kept them, but they’d miraculously appear under the strict provision that they be returned immediately after their use.
The Silver Scissors were always impeccably sharp, shiny, and flawless. I know she had them professionally sharpened from time to time because I remember as a child going someplace to pick them up. In what seemed like some kind of clandestine transaction, we would go someplace that had fabric. The clerk would slide them across the counter, wrapped in some brown paper and my mother would in turn slip him some money with a little nod. Maybe the clerk was sharpening scissors on the side, I don’t know, but I remember the Silver Scissors being even more sharp and perfect after they got back from their little spa vacation.
When I became an adult, I really had to be in awe of my mother’s scissors-management. At any given time, I must own 4 or 5 pair of “good scissors”, none of which I can ever find, and the Junk Drawer scissors apparently only live in the ether. It is now a solid fifty years since I first met the Silver Scissors. I would be willing to bet my life that my mother still has them lovingly stashed somewhere. You would think I should have learned from her after all these years, but I still can’t find my good scissors.
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Check out the annual By the Yard® Calendar for Quilters and other fun quilt-y merch at at www.bytheyardstore.com.
I Didn’t Mean to Buy More Fabric
Today I went to the local big box fabric and crafts shop with a seemingly harmless objective. I wanted to buy a little tube of gear grease for my vintage sewing machine. She is very much in need of some long-overdue scheduled maintenance. This turned out to be a much more elusive goal than anticipated. They didn’t have any gear grease. I guess people don’t service their own machines anymore or maybe modern sewing machines don’t need grease? For whatever reason, I could not find it. I was then faced with the formidable challenge of getting out of the store without buying any more fabric. This made me think about why I buy so much fabric in the first place. Here are my primary challenges:
- A great idea – Many times, a certain print of fabric will jump out at me. “This would make a great (fill in the blank)”. Whether I actually need or want that thing is another question entirely.
- I was once looking for this – Often times, a fabric will jump out at me, “Remember when you were looking for me before?” Something I had wanted for a previous project and never found is now right there in my hands. The fact that I’m now done with that project, usually by finding some substitute for what I had wanted at the time, is largely irrelevant when you are face to face with something you had desperately wanted at some previous time.
- It’s on sale – I have to admit, this one rarely motivates me. My capacity for spending money on fabric is pretty high now that I’m a fully grown adult with a day job. I no longer need to scrimp and save like I did when I was in college trying to make a full-length wool coat for job interviews for less than $5 per yard.
- Stinkin’ cute – This one gets me much more than I’m willing to admit. I have no idea at the time what this fabric could be used for but it’s just so darned cute I have to have at least a yard of it. Years ago, my BFF fell prey to this scheme when there was a line of Coca-Cola fabric seemingly everywhere. She bought a bunch of it, took it home and thought “What am I ever going to do with a bunch of Coke fabric?!”. Fortunately, I had been an avid fan of Coke for decades, so she made me a Coke apron which I still use to this day.
I did successfully make it out of the big box store without buying anymore fabric, although I can’t say the same for the yarn section!
What To Do with Your Scraps
I never throw away any fabric scraps, no matter how small. I just can’t bring myself to do it. To me, every little bit still has potential. They could be a coaster, or a dollhouse blanket, or a Christmas ornament, or a bunch of them could be sewn together and make a potholder or a table runner. If I was really ambitious, I could cut them all into 1” squares and make a Postage Stamp quilt. That could use up over 9,000 one-inch squares and would make a real dent in my scrap pile. I’ve even known some people to take the tiniest bits (one quarter inch in size or less!) then iron them to a fusible backing to make autumn leaves or snow.
Another fun quilt that can use up scraps is an “I Spy” quilt which can be entertaining for the kiddos and makes a very charming gift for a child. Simply fussy cut visual elements of interest like animals or other objects like cars or dinosaurs or spaceships. Stitch them together any way you like. You can have a good time with the little ones finding all the cool things hidden in the quilt.
If you can’t think of a use for your scraps or you simply have an overwhelming number of them and are looking to clean house, you could:
- Bag them up and sell them on ETSY or eBay. I know this sounds ridiculous… why would any buy something you are trying to get rid of? Surely, they must have plenty of their own scraps at home! Strange as it sounds, I urge you to give it a go. People will buy bags of scraps online.
- Trade with other quilters such as at a guild or sewing group or even online. That doesn’t really reduce the total number of scraps you have but at least you will have different scraps to inspire you.
- Rehome them on Facebook Marketplace. Simply bag them up, put up a listing, and leave them at the end of your driveway. Trust me, quilters will come.
- Use them as stuffing for stuffed animals or other objects d’ art. Frankly I’d have a very hard time using perfectly good scraps for stuffing because you would not be able to see them anymore, but if the pieces were very small and a lot of them had been collected over time, I might be able to do this.
Whatever you choose to do with your scraps, keep on quilting and making new scraps!