By Diane Harris,
HQ Stitch Brand Ambassador
I went to Wichita last week to speak to a group of longarm quilters at A-1 Singer Sewing Center, which happens to be a retailer for Handi Quilter and HQ Stitch. If I’m on a road trip alone, I reward myself with a few quilt shop stops along the way. What quilter wouldn’t?
I like Charlotte’s Sew Natural in Newton, Kansas quite a lot. The rooms full of fabric go on and on. But today I’m thinking about what happens to my purchases when I get back home.
There is a lot to do after any trip: unpack the car, throw in some laundry, read the mail, catch up with family members. And that’s just the beginning. I know you’ve been there.
My fabric purchases go into my sewing area, but sometimes it’s a while before I can look at them. It can be a few days or weeks or even a few months. Life is just like that.
I’m embarrassed to say that sometimes when I finally pull the fabric out of the sack I can’t remember why I bought it. What did I have in mind? Was I just adding to my reds? Did I have a particular project in mind? Surely there was a reason it caught my fancy.
This time I decided to do something about it: I labeled each fabric with a note indicating its purpose. (Brilliant, I know.)
Two of my fabrics are for a Halloween sampler quilt I’m building, so those didn’t get labels but they went into the growing pile of fabrics for that project. There will be no doubt what they’re for.
It took just a few minutes to label the fabrics. Why haven’t I always done this? I have too many odd fabrics that were meant for something somewhere in the past but I’ll never know what.
But here’s something else.
Somehow writing an idea down solidifies it more
than if it only lived in my head.
The physical act of putting my idea onto a note and pinning it to the fabric seems to start a ball rolling down a hill and gives me impetus for starting, even if it’s down the road a bit.
That is reason enough to make this a habit.
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this is a great idea!Thanks for sharing!
I have a lot of precuts. I don’t buy too much random fabric unless it is for a current project. When I think of an idea for a certain precut, I have started writing the idea down in a special note book so that I can remember what it is when I get ready to start a new quilt.
sounds like a great plan. just need to remind others to be careful what pins they use. I have had fabric in my stash for years and when I go to use it I find that a pin or staple that the store fastened to their remnants had left rust and then you can hardly get the pins out of the fabric. I selvage what I can and get on with i t.
Great idea but pins and adhesive leave lasting ‘remains’. And it is amazing how long cat hair lasts too!