Fabric Diet: April 2017

As I anticipated, April was a big sewing month! But unfortunately it was also a big (fabric) shopping month.  This past month, I attended my third Sewtopia and this year it was in Denver. I met up with 4 friends, who I met at my first Sewtopia in Chicago, and we went on a little shop hop.  We hit up Fancy Tiger Crafts, Fabric Bliss, and a new store up in Broomfield: A Quilter's Corner.  Then there was also the Pink Door Fabrics pop-up shop at Sewtopia.  All combined, I came home from my sewing weekend with just under 30 new yards of fabric. Yikes!  That's the bad news.

The good news is that I sewed a lot in April.  My biggest project (shown above) is a double bear paw quilt that I made out of lots of the 2 1/2 and 3 1/2" squares cut from my scrap bins.  It didn't help me in my quest to sew my stash, but it did use up some scraps. 

At Sewtopia I did two classes. The first was a mystery quilt with Lizzy House. We were instructed to bring 24 fat quarters of fabric in various colors and tones, and weren't given any more information until the class started.  I was really worried that I wouldn't like the quilt, but it ended up being the old "Square and Compass" pattern - and I like it! However, I didn't like the fabric that I brought for it. So I went shopping at the pop-up to buy a little more green fabric and added a few black and white low-volume prints that I had picked up on our shop-hop.  This project probably ended up being half stash and half newly-purchased fabric.

The second class I took was with Anna Graham (Noodlehead) where we made her new Traverse Bag.  I bought all new fabric for this project, so let's not even talk about it (other than to say that I really liked her class and the resulting bag).

This year at Sewtopia I went with a mission to get some other projects done (projects other than the ones we were doing in the classes). I cut all the fabric for this Square in a Square quilt ahead of time and was able to sew all the blocks from start to finish in to a completed quilt top. Success! (All from stash)

The last part of Sewtopia is these 4 cats I made. This past February at Quiltcon I took Melissa Averino's "Making Cat Faces" class, so I made my Sewtopia friends each a cat face. (All from stash!)

So here is where April ended up:

Fabric Purchases: 28.75 yards
Fabric Used Up: 29.75 yards
Net for the Month: -1 yard
Net for the Year: -86.75

I'm still down (just barely) this month, and I'm happy that I was able to balance all the fabric I bought by sewing a lot. 4 months are done, 8 more to go and originally I wanted to be down 100-200 yards overall. I've gotten rid of a lot of fabric that I didn't want (mainly through de-stashing honestly) and am wondering if it'll be possible to sew thru 100 more yards of fabric. Stay tuned!