stash bursting
the rest of the universe is apparently on a stash-reduction kick this year, whereas I’m still enjoying the ex-smoker luxury of money to blow on STUFF. Connie’s moving to a smaller shop (22 Clyde St, between IGA & the cafe) so she’s been selling off stock she doesn’t want to carry any more. Dress fabrics have been 30-50% off, so one of the things I picked up was some of this pretty chiffon. It’s shot with a very pale grey-mauve/blue, which is most visible when it’s all bunched up & doesn’t show terribly well in the pic. Trust me, it’s gawj. Kind of reminds me of the dress from one of the Disney animated movies - Cinderella? Must have been; I think the fairy godmothers argued about what colour it should be or something, so it kept flashing from blue to pink. I don’t know that I ever saw the actual movie, but we had this set of Disney storybooks, and I was entranced by the idea of a dress that changed colours. Perfect for princesses, anyway, whether I end up using it for one of the fairytale pieces or to make a dress for the small person. Or both, I guess :)
Fur fabric was also on sale. I’d been eyeing the cow print off for years, thinking about covering grandma’s old daybed in it (which everybody else BUT Connie thought was a terrible idea. Connie gets me). It’s more like velvet than fur, and plenty sturdy. Maybe I’ll reupholster the daybed in plain black & make the cowhide into a washable cover, given the 2- & 4-legged animals my furniture has to deal with. The zigzaggy not-quite-zebra stuff (also more velvety than furrish)? Can’t tell you what I was thinking, really. Except that I like it almost in spite of myself, at least partly because it’s like a cartoon adaptation of zebra print. I do kind of have a bit of a thing about animal prints, but I’ve always refused to wear them because being a blue-eyed blonde with big boobs got me more than enough unwarranted attention thankyouverymuch; hoochiewear would have just encouraged the world’s grotty little gropers. So I don’t wear it, but I do have a growing collection of fabrics with snakeskin, tiger, leopard, zebra, giraffe, etc prints. Oh, and fish/dragon scales. This though, this dumb not-really-zebra print, I am somewhat tempted to make a coat from. If I were about 10 years younger & mumblemumble thinner, I would be REALLY tempted, but as it is it’s likely to end up as either a fleece-backed lap-rug/throw/cover, cushions, or upholstery for the chairs that match the daybed. There’s quite a bit of it there, so it may end up as two out of three.
Now this stuff I’ve had on layby for a while, and the gods only know what I’m going to do with it. Some of it’s mum’s, but I can’t remember which she wanted. I vaguely remember thinking some of it might be fun for fairytale works (the wallhangings, not the more 3d things), given that various kinds of fruit & veg make a regular appearance in folk & fairy tales - pumpkins, peas, apples, potatoes, pears, plums, strawberries, just off the top of my head. Other than that, no idea really … I guess they’d be kind of fun for kids, and several of them work just as colour. Meanwhile, they just make me smile a little. Potatoes! Lettuce! Too funny.
This stuff, now. I fell in love with the paisley when it came into the shop, but I couldn’t quite figure out what I wanted it for. It’s kind of bright. Verging on lairy, in fact. Then on Thursday I happened to walk past it sitting on the shelf with the stripe nearby, and thought hrm. Hrm. I rather like that combo. So then I wandered around the shop looking for other things to go with. Bought the last of the leafy tone-on-tone in that particularly delicious rich raw sienna. The dark red with the goldish scrolly bits is actually a Christmas print (I suspect the stripe is too, actually) that had just been delivered. The ochre-umber-sienna-etc weird abstracty rock print appeals to me purely because of the colours; the print itself does nothing much for me, but it should work well as a peeper or tiny strip.
Here’s a few fabrics I pulled out of the stash as potential partners. I really like the deep amethyst down the front, and the dark pink snakeskin, and for that matter the multicoloured scales. The yellow tone-on-tone might work. The mustard with the little red berries & the green iwll probably work if required. There are a few other interesting bits & pieces in the right colours that could be roped in if necessary, just depends what I want to do. Which brings me to the question of what I want to do. What do I want to do? There’s an Indian flavour to the colours & prints I’m gravitating towards, the sumptuous spicy richly ornamental thang. I would like to make a quilt for my very own self, maybe a topper or oversized lap quilt, but I can’t see me persevering with a full queen-size quilt. No, topper. With pieced blocks of some description which manage to capture something of that Indian flavour. Hrm. Maybe I need to dig out all those photos of ornate windows I took in Nepal for pattern ideas … I knew they’d come in handy one day!




I’ve been trying to get the little thingies I’ve been working on finished so I could (for once!) stomp in with a big TADA and show a thingummywhatsit from conception to completion in one post, but it’s taking rather longer than expected to finish even one and I’m suffering blogblather withdrawal so buggrit. My slowness is obviously not solely a function of my incessant photo-op breaks (does that make it multi-cessant photo-opping?) with the consequent editing, uploading, and blathering. I’M JUST SLOW. In all honesty I fully expected to be displaying a pic of Laughably Horrible Failed Concept #1 by the end of the first making session, but it came together rather better than expected so I’m still plugging away at it. My scanner’s attached to the printer which is sitting at the folks’ place because Dad was fixing it, so I can’t even scan the sketches. So there it is –> a bit of stitching and shaping ago.









the new ground for the fig tree looks so very much better it’s no wonder I’ve just been looking at this piece off & on for 6 months instead of finishing it. Srsly. Changing the forward thrust of the foremost root helps too. I’m also really glad I didn’t have enough of the coppery brown, and that I branched out with the brown “opal” multicolour rather than using straight browns, because it really adds something (I love it when I’m right! heh). I can see a couple of spots where I need to add a bit more, but it’s pretty much ready for me to go back to stitching. I had a brainstorm about the quilting, too, so I’m kind of chomping at the bit. I may actually get this sucker finished on deadline after all!

And of course, some bugger(s) had bought all of it. Not even a FQ left. I just KNEW I should have got a half metre heh. Back to the drawing board, & I tried a new warm charcoaly black Connie got in recently, and it was pretty good. Not as good as the gorgeous brown, but good enough. I kept trying different blues & bluegreys etc for a flange or something, but nothing really grabbed me. Dragged out a sad little strip of a dark blue-green-tan fossil fern, & that was just enough colour to make the hints of blue & green & purple in the dyed centrepiece pop a little. None of that left on the roll either lol … Connie managed to find a FQ, but as it turned out I didn’t need it anyway; there was just enough in my scrap to get 4 1″ strips. And that was about it for the shop, although I did get the border strips for this & other pieces cut down there. I was a bit scared to sew tonight to be honest heh - I was sure I’d bollix something (oh never mind, I just remembered two things that were monumentally dumb but turned out ok; the universe can stay spinning on its axis). No way was I going to take to the edges with the rotary cutter though, that would just be asking for trouble: I’ll finish it tomorrow.









