Fabric Diet: August 2017

Another month has come and gone.

At the end of July I had surgery on my ankle, so most of August was spent on the couch.  Who doesn't itch to  buy fabric when one spends a lot of time on the couch (and therefore on the computer and phone) reading quilty blogs and newsletters?!  One day I spontaneously decided that I wanted to make some Halloween quilts. So I immediately set about finding some background fabric for the Halloween quilt that I had in mind.

Then I came up with a plan for a second quilt... and a new set of drapes to hide my fabric stash on the shelving in my sewing room.  In all I bought 13 yards of fabric online for these projects.  The good news is that all of the fabric purchased was for very specific projects (not just stash-building), so it should get used up in October when I plan to sew these quilts.

Here's the other good news - in a round-about way: the fabric that I originally bought online for the background of one quilt was the skull and bones fabric shown above. When I received it, I was sad to see that the skulls were actually fluorescent orange, not a normal orange color (and I didn't like the combo of the two types of oranges).  In the past I would have just put the fluorescent fabric on a shelf and never used it.  However this time, since I knew I was going to have to count the fabric in my tally, I reached out to the store where I purchased the fabric and asked if there was a way I could return it.  The answer was yes! So I sent it back and deleted it from my tally. I'm so happy that I was motivated to ask about a return option and don't have to stare at the fabric on my shelf for the next 10 years.

Once I started feeling a little better, I hobbled in to my sewing room and started on a scrappy flying geese quilt. The top is now finished and can be seen here.
The flying geese quilt was both a scrap-buster and stash-buster (win-win!)
I used about 288 of my scrap 3 1/2" squares for the geese, and cut up a bunch of low volume fabric for the background. I cut up 7 yards to be exact.

Another project that was easy to work on from a sitting position is folded fabric stars. You can read about the Christmas table runner I made here using these stars. This project used lots of prairie points (and 2 yards of fabric) and was kind-of addictive.

This month I finished (I think) the quilt that I started in my Quiltcon class with Denyse Schmidt. I'm not completely 100% sure it's finished because I may want to make it a little bigger. Regardless finishing this quilt caused me to use up 1.75 yards of Kona silver for sashing. But...it also left 13 yards of previously  pulled fabric unused (and therefore put back in to my stash).  When I was getting ready for the class I pulled lots of fabrics and counted them as "used" in my spreadsheet. Now that the quilt is done, I re-measured the remaining fabric and added it back to my stash.

Overall, I'm up for the month just about 15 yards (which sounds a bit shocking compared to my past few months). But I'm ok with it. Why? Because I thoroughly currently plan to use up those 11.25 yards that I bought before the year is over. (You know how quilty plans change, right?)

Fabric Diet Standings
Fabric Purchases: 26 yards (gasp)
Fabric Used in Projects: 11.25 yards
Net for the Month: 14.75 yards UP
Net for the Year: -114.5 yards