We all do it. We see the fabric everyone's raving about, the one popping up in every quilting group and every Instagram feed, and we buy it. No pattern in mind. No plan. Just the fabric, and the promise of it.
Then what? We wait. For inspiration, apparently, though it rarely shows up on schedule. Months go by. We take the fabric out now and then, just to look at it, stroke it, hold it up against other things in the stash and imagine what it might become one day. Cut into it though? Hell no. It's far too good for any old project. It's waiting for something worthy. Something we haven't thought of yet.
What are we doing?! Use the good stuff!
I think it's just the nature of fabric collecting (and I'm calling it that deliberately, because let's be honest about what it is) that there's always a next must-have fabric. And then another one after that. You know exactly how it goes, because you're doing it too.
Three years ago, at my very first QuiltCon in Atlanta, I met the designer E Bond. She'd just launched her first fabric collection, called Root. I loved every print in it, so I bought a half-yard bundle of the whole range. When her next collection came out, I bought that too. Both went straight into the "too good to use" pile.
Last week I finally said enough was enough. I'd signed up for a Block of the Month programme with GE Quilt Designs, a proper mega block, 32 inches, the kind that can end up as a wall hanging, get donated to a hospital's preemie unit, or be pieced together with everyone else's blocks into one enormous community quilt. I dug out that first E Bond bundle, and I cut into it.
Did the sun fall out of the sky? It did not. Did the block speak to me the moment I finished it? Not really, if I'm honest. But I love it now. And more than that, I'm no longer precious about a fabric I loved enough to buy but never once used.
Here's the thing, though, and it's the reason I'm writing this instead of just posting a pretty picture of a new print. As the owner of a fabric store, I have to choose fabrics that my customers will actually want to buy , and that doesn't always line up with what I personally love. That's exactly the case with these E Bond prints, so you won't be finding them in my shop any time soon but never say never! Will not selling them stop me buying more E Bond and squirrelling it away for another rainy day? Hell no.
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So here's my challenge to you. Go and find the fabric you've been hoarding, the one you've been too precious to cut, and use it. There are no sewing police coming to stop you. Send me a picture of what you make, I'd genuinely love to see it.
Karen