Lost in Translation

I'm having a Lost in Translation sort of day. For unknown reasons, I feel a little empty, a little sad...but mostly I feel detached, floating, not able to express myself. Everything comes out...not quite right. It gets lost in translation.

I don't want to admit it but I think this mood has something to do with my quilting fabric. As in, I buy it but never use it. And it sits on my shelves looking a little empty, a little sad. It was all supposed to turn into beautiful quilts but the ideas have been lost in translation...now it just sits there, unable to express itself.

I'm curious to see just how many quilts I can make without buying any new fabric. I bet it's a depressingly (and excitingly) huge amount.

So, that's the plan...no buying new fabric until I make a significant dent in my stash. I hate doing this (and have actively resisted doing this in the past) because I like to support etsy sellers (and other small businesses) in these hard times. But I know I've done a ridiculous amount of supporting over the past year so I don't feel too bad.

As always, there are exceptions to the rule. I'm going to let myself buy:

1) some of the green and pink prints in Sandi Henderson's new Meadowsweet collection (late November, get here already!)

2) white or off-white fabric as necessary

3) any "must have or I'll regret it forever" fabrics that come out (still kicking myself for not buying some Lush paint by number deer fabric the moment it came out.)

4) a print that I love, love, love and use in just about every quilt (some of the ginger blossom prints for example) only if they're on a too good to pass up super sale, like, $4 a yard or something crazy like that.

That sounds like a lot of exceptions but I think it's still a valiant goal. Note that I didn't mention anything about fabric for the backs of quilts. Oh yes, that's the killer...I have to use stash fabric on the backs which, no matter how cool the back looks, feels wasteful to me. I know I'll have double-sided quilts but it still makes me cringe to see all that beautiful fabric on the back instead of the front. I mean, you can only see one side at a time! I'm going to spend a lot of time at the Quilt Backs flickr pool, I think.

The challenge has already begun. Since I've been working with blue and green for the Modify Tradition project, I've felt like working with more blues and greens. I'm now up to 15 log cabins:



It felt really good raiding my scrap bin and it even felt good cutting into my stash to make longer strips for the larger blocks. And I made some more scraps as I went along (even though I tried to avoid this) so these fabrics will end up in another quilt someday. And I feel really good about that.

And I feel really good about my plan, although I know it's not much of a sacrifice. I'll show you a picture of my stash once I finish ironing and folding the huge "washed but still not ironed" pile. And I'm going to give away some of the prints I sort of like but don't really like...and I know that's probably a crappy giveaway but maybe someone will want it. So stay tuned!