Quilting and Buying Fabric are Actually Two Different Hobbies

Has your husband just come home from the quilt shop with another haul of fabric? And he hasn’t even used up all the fabric he has yet? How ridiculous… or is it really? After all, you still have food in the pantry, but you probably went grocery shopping within the last two days. There are a lot of reasons you might want to buy more fabric when you already have plenty at home. Consider these:

• Can’t bring yourself to “make-do” – You ran out of a specific fabric that you need to finish a quilt, and any last-minute substitutions are just not going to cut it. You are really hoping your Local Quilt Shop still has some in stock… and that you didn’t buy it while you were 800 miles away on that road trip to West Virginia.
• Fabric swap coming up – You have a fabric swap coming up with your guild and there is no way you can find anything in your stash that you can currently bear to part with. No one will know that you just bought this! Pro tip: Try to buy something that is out of print. The uglier the better.
• Creative energy – Sometimes we get stuck in a rut, especially when working on a large project… Hello, “king sized Broken Dishes quilt that that I have been working on for six years”. A little bit of something new may be just the right spark to get you back in your quilting zone. Be sure to pick up a chocolate bar from right next to the register, too.
• Supporting a new shop – Among all the reason to buy fabric that you do not really need; this one is probably the best. Small Mom & Pop retailers are really struggling now due to the meteoric rise of online shopping. Any love you can give to The Little Guy is going to come back to you ten-fold. So, please make that unnecessary purchase!
• Feeling blue… or red, or pink – Life is hard. Work is hard. Taking care of kids is hard. Sometimes, we just need to feel excited about something and that new Dear Stella fat quarter may be just the thing. You don’t even need to sew it into something, just pop it into a large embroidery hoop and hang it on the wall for some instant fiber art that will lighten your heart and warm your soul.

So, my friends, remember that fabric acquisition is its own hobby and as such deserves just as much consideration as other collecting hobbies such as comic books, rubber ducks, Barbies®, antique cookie jars, old sewing machines… you name it. There’s even a chance that you might use some of that fabric in a quilt one day!

Blog Post By Jen Lopez

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Please join us here every other Wednesday for another fun, fiber-filled installment of By the Yard. You can read more By the Yard® comics at www.bytheyardcomics.com and check out the new By the Yard® 2027 Calendar for Quilters, now in its 8th year!