I’ve been laughing at something that I suddenly seem to read everywhere - SABLE, “Stash Accumulated Beyond Life Expectancy”. Knitters suffer from it and quilters probably invented it! I know, because I’ve worked in quilt shops. Oh the stories I could tell! The women who store their stashes in their car boots (trunks, y’all) so that their husbands don’t know how much they have. Fabric purchases split over two or three credit cards. The woman who bought squillions of dollars worth of fabric from me one day and then said, “Gosh, how will I get home? My car’s nearly out of fuel and I’ve just spent all my grocery money!”
These days I am very hard to please when it comes to fabric . It takes a pretty spectacular piece of cloth to make me reach for my Visa. I try to kid myself that I have great self-control but it’s really just that I’ve gotten fussier. And I know how much I already have at home. My stash is large but manageable. I know what I’ve got and I only buy colours that I don’t already have or yardage as I need it (see my halo?).
Every now and then, however, the scrap situation reaches crisis point. Most quilters I know can’t bear to throw away scraps of fabric. You either Never Know When You’ll Need A 2″ Square of Orange Elephants Blowing Bubbles on a Gray Background or You Just Can’t Bear to Say Goodbye to the Very Last Shred of the Most Beautiful Floral Hoffman Ever Printed in the Good Old Days When They Made Those Incredible Florals Do You Remember Them Why Don’t They Make Fabric Like That Now?
So now is the time to make scrap quilts. I like ‘em fast, I like ‘em easy and for some reason that I can’t figure out I like ‘em traditional. The only traditional quilts I really make. I found these Jewel Box blocks in a box last night. I made them about three and a half years ago and for some reason never sewed them together. Today is the day.PS If you haven’t already seen print and pattern, go have a look - fabulous!