Fabric Diet: May 2017

I have to say that after seeing my fabric purchases and usage for April, I went on a bit of a quilt-finishing spree. In the month of May, I finished my Lizzy House Mystery quilt from Sewtopia, my jelly roll 16-patch quilt, a fish mini quilt for a fabric challenge organized by my local quilt group (blog post still to come), and my square-in-a-square star cat quilt.  I also went to my stash and pulled fabric for a quilt for no reason other than to use up fabric - and made good progress on that quilt! (Shown above.)

For the new quilt, I started with the "I heart to read" fabric from Alexander Henry Fabric that I had always planned to use to back a quilt (purchased in 2013). Then I pulled fabrics to coordinate with that print, including "greige" prints that I've acquired over the years and have never known how to use.  Once I had a quilt plan in mind, I went about cutting and assembling very methodically.  I'll post the complete story behind this quilt when it is completed, but for now you can see more updated pics on my Instagram feed.

This month I added a low-volume boarder to my double bear paw quilt, and basted it (which was a big feat) once I had some backing fabric on hand.  Once again, a complete pic of the quilt top can be seen in my Instagram feed.

This month I only bought 1 piece of fabric: a large piece of 108" wide-back fabric for my double bear paw quilt.  I was unsure how to count this fabric yardage in my account system. I purchased 3 yards of the fabric and used most of it.  In the end, I looked at the dimensions of the pieces that were left over and roughly estimated that I had 3 yards left over. Man, if you trim 10" off of a piece of fabric 108" long, that makes for a large "scrap."  I also returned some pieces of fabric to stash from another project that I finished (fabric I had pulled and tallied, but then ended up not using).  So I'm technically up 4 yards of fabric this month.

Fabric Diet Standings

Fabric purchases: 4
Fabric used in projects: 19.25
Net for the month: -15.25
Net for the year: -102 

Last month I only managed to go down 1 yard. After seeing that, I started to wonder if my goal of using up (or giving away or de-stashing) 200 yards of fabric in 2017 was unreachable.  So this month I really went after sewing projects with zeal.  It was fun and felt great to pull stacks of fabric off the shelf and sew them up.  I also think that I felt (feel!) a bit fear over the approaching end of school for my kids. With summer break here, I think I'm freaking out a little bit over losing my free days where I can sew to my hearts delight.  Soooo now that June is here, I'm curious to see how much sewing time I get.