This growing interest of mine in the sewing-needle arts is a dangerous thing for someone who is in love with the whole notion of art supplies. I've been on a little bit of a fabric bender lately, which is not actually pictured above; that's (some of) my existing pile of prints, standing in representationally for the packages of fabric that should be arriving soon. Fabric is kind of a problem if you are a completist, especially if you have yet to find that one excellent local fabric store & so you do a lot of late-night fabric browsing on the internet. Those little half-yard cuts seem so accessible & affordable (although getting a whole bunch of them sort of cuts down on the affordability factor)! I've been stacking, re-stacking, laying alongside of, & otherwise arranging my prints for a few days now, since I'm itching to get started on another quilt but obviously I can't really get going until my new fabric gets here.
I'm thinking about doing the same kind of thing I did last time, except maybe with a little more piecing involved. The other one I'm thinking about is the red & white one from DSQ (a version of the pattern is available here for download from the Free Spirit site), although I think maybe I'd want to collect fabric specifically for that project, plus I really do love the big swaths of solid color with minimal piecing (speaking of, clicking around last night, I ended up again at littlebirds' beautiful duvet cover, which looks delightfully like a giant version of one of her tissue cases).
Since no new fabric was magically materializing from my computer screen last night, I was looking for something casual & tv-friendly to do & finally settled on finishing a bobbin of merino that had been languishing on my wheel for quite a while. My goal this weekend is to finish the second bobbin of this colorway, so I can ply it up & feel a sense of yarn accomplishment, maybe even get inspired to get the dyepots going again, before the weather starts heating up & completely removes any desire to be working with wool.
Ok, so, speaking of tv, late last night I was puttering around & watching Will & Grace reruns, & it was the episode where Grace & Karen go up to Leo's cabin & find all that money under the mattress (should I put one of those black spoiler bars over this, like on televisionwithoutpity?). I'd actually seen this one before, & just like the first time, the thing that completely grabbed my attention is that Leo's cabin is filled with amazing quilts, a shades-of-blue patchwork on the bed (velvets, maybe?), & a really fanastic one across the back of the couch that looked like it was maybe done in rich solid wools. Anyone know the one I'm talking about? I loved it so much that I sketched it on the back of an envelope -- though, really, I sketched as much as I could see of it, since the characters were annoyingly sitting on the couch & having dialogue & things -- & then I colored it in with my random collection of colored pencils. The result is much less amazing & much more circusy than the original, but you have to imagine that the proportions are right (& the circles should actually be a little larger compared to the background fabric), & that the design is more carefully thought out (vs. being quickly imagined while peering around big tv hair).
Anyway, it was a great quilt.
I've gotten into fabric lately, too. On weekends, I've been making my boyfriend stop by fabric stores with me when we're out running errands. My two favorites are Pacific Fabrics on Northgate Way (pretty close to Northgate Mall) and QuiltWorks Northwest in Bellevue. Pacific Fabrics has almost all of the Denyse Schmidt Flea Market Fancy fabrics and some other designer fabrics - Alexander Henry, etc. They also have yarn. QuiltWorks Northwest has a huge variety of fabrics. It's a little overwhelming to walk in there!
That's my two cents on fabric stores around here. Any other suggestions would be appreciated since I don't feel like I've found *the* fabric store. I've heard that there are good ones in Portland...
Posted by: amanda | May 12, 2006 at 05:46 PM
Thank you ,it's really useful.
Posted by: pandora armband | August 31, 2010 at 11:07 PM