My Old Addiction

This stuff is like heroin to me

When I read the words "Italian Silk-Cotton Blend", I was filled with that acquisitive desire known to fellow fabric... enthusiasts.
Like an AA member who still walks by liquor stores, I regularly look at fabric  I read about sewing and quilting. Occasionally, I even sew things. But my main passion is collecting fabric  That I have many lovely pieces already is not the point. I am always interested in having more. I have tried to be rational about this. But as any addict/collector/hoarder knows, these things are not rational.
I went for a four year period in which I did not buy ANY fabric at all. Last year, I bought some lovely pieces on my birthday. Of course I have not made anything out of them yet...they're Too Nice.
When my daughter asked me what my New Year's resolutions were, I told her I'd have to think about it. Then when I was working on a fabric banner for our Christmas Party, the Resolution presented itself to me, as J.K. Rowling says, "with the force of a stampeding troll": No Saving
I was selecting the background fabric from my Christmas Fabric Collection. I found the perfect one - white with silver stars. I am ashamed to admit that I then thought, "this is too nice, I'd better save it." and then my rational brain spoke up and said, actually yelled: SAVE IT FOR WHAT!!! 
Yes, reader, I used it. What was I saving it for, but to use for our family celebrations? Then I realized: THAT was my resolution: NO SAVING. Don't I deserve to use all of my nice things? My daughter doesn't sew. When I am gone, this stuff I have "Saved" will all be donated to a worthy cause (I hope) so I'd better enjoy it now.
I couldn't decide what lovely piece I wanted to sacrifice on the altar of No Saving, so I decided to use up all my my small scraps in a scrap quilt. Part of my Saving Problem is that I will save Scraps Too Small To Be Saved. And I noticed yesterday that giving up "saving" isn't going to be easy. I'm happily taking sewing breaks, making little scrappy log cabins and courthouse steps blocks, and I caught myself thinking, "This scrap is too pretty to use now, I'll save it for something else". I made myself use it.
What are your sewing resolutions? I'm NOT Saving. I am recklessly using the good stuff, and trying to UN-hoard. It's a constant battle, because my first impulse is to save. But I guess all resolutions are like that, amirite?

p.s. My collecting habit isn't just manifested in humans. My little cat, Miss Etta, has a collection too. Every day, she drags these three things out from my sewing room into a special spot in the living room. When Mr. Hunting Creek puts them back, she fetches them again.

I snapped a quick picture on my iPhone: they are a little lambswool duster that I use to clean computer screens, a bag of wool felt scraps, and a package of Angelina Fibers.The bag of wool felt scraps is bigger than she is, but she loves it and drags it back every day. It's pretty bad when your cats start hoarding too.

Caught in the Act

Heard mysterious thumping from the Sewing Room. Upon investigation, found this perp in the uppermost cubby, kicking fabric out of the cubby for his own nefarious purposes.

Oops,  guess I knocked some down. Now I can sleep on it.

 I don't know anything about that fabric on the ironing board and the floor.

That was a lot of work. I think I'll take a well-deserved nap.

Excellent For Cat Sleeping

Wash and fold fabric

Excellent for cat sleeping

You don’t like cat hair?

When Harry Met Quilting

Harry meets quilting

Fabric strips to claw and steal

Dresden plate is broken now

From Here To Tulle-ternity

The tulle lives on the top left cubbie in the Great Wall 'O fabric. Or it did. But recently, it has been found in some odd places, like in the middle of the hallway and under the ironing board. Very mysterious. Until someone was surprised in the act of tulle adoration, rolling around on the floor with it in a passionate  embrace  like Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach in Hawaii.
He climbs the wall of fabric as if it were a rock climbing wall, seizing the tulle bundle in triumph, taking it away for his entertainment. It is so scratchy and tullicious, he can't stay away from it. He Must Have It.
Tulle Addiction.

It's a strange love, but Love can be Strange. Who knows what will strike someone's fancy. He could say the same about some people and their charmeuse habit.

Scary Fabrics,Volume I: Sock Monkey Santa

If Stephen King sewed, this would be the fabric he'd make into pajamas for his kids.
"No, Daddy, NO! Not Sock Monkey Santa!"
Of course, if you're a fan of the macabre little monkieys, find them here. All others be warned.

Jasmine is my New Favorite

Even though I have not purchased any fabric in over four years (and not suffered one bit, that's how much fabric there is around here), I never stopped collecting patterns. Patterns are the crack cocaine of sewing, incredibly addictive, and each new batch leaves you wanting more, more , MORE! Not that I have a problem with that. Patterns are small. I temporarily stopped my so far fruitless search for Simplicity 3536(but now I have two completely clean closets!)
to unwrap my new Colette Patterns, and immediately decided to make the Jasmine Blouse. So pretty! So feminine! No buttons or zippers- a big plus in my book. Although I've been making buttonholes since I was ten, I hate sewing on buttons and this is a perfect chance to avoid them.
As mentioned yesterday, when I cleaned out my office closet and previous fabric storage location, I found fabrics that some unknown person had snuck into my house. Luckily this unknown person has exactly my taste, so I could make the Jasmine Blouse out of blue charmeuse or cream silk jacquard. Or possibly both.
The new Peony Dress is a very ladylike kind of dress as my mother would say, and it would make a perfect LBD, and the Clover Pants are VERY Audrey. Audrey and I look nothing alike, but we can't let little things like that get in the way.(I'm more like Elizabeth Taylor, and very few people would say that she was a fashion icon...in a good way. She had her own style, though. She didn't give a damn about what you thought of her, and that's a style worth emulating.)
I know what I'm making next -what's on your cutting table for Fall?

Fabric Affineuse

When people ask about my stash/fabric collection/Great Wall o' Fabric, I no longer say that I collect fabric. Instead, I say I am a Fabric Affineuse. Affinage is the practice of aging cheese so that your favorite brie is just meltingly ripe and the wonderful English Coastal Cheddar properly sharp - but not too sharp!. Fabric Affinage is the practice of lovingly collecting fabric from all over the world - curating it, in fact, and keeping it until just the right project makes itself known for that fabric. Sometimes this can be days, or weeks, other times it can be years or even lifetimes. There is fabric in my collection from my late mother's stash, from Mr. Hunting Creek's mother's stash, from his late aunt's stash...and so on. No fabric is sewn here unless properly aged!
Sometimes the match betwen fabric and pattern results in a beautiful relationship. Other times...well let's just say that there may have been harsh words or even tears. But most of the time fabric and pattern become one and we all live happily ever after...until the next project.
Do you practice Fabric Affinage? Or, are you one of those people who buy their fabric one piece at a time, for each specific project? (Really? Not even any extra? I wouldn't even know how to do that!) Become an Affineuse - you'll be glad you did.

Roma non fu fatta in un giorno

Looking at the Do It All Mom Calendar, I make the snarky comment to Mr. Hunting Creek that I can’t find the Do It All Dad Calendar. “There won’t be gender equality until there are “Do It All Dad” Calendars.” He says. “The problem with women is, you let men get away with too much.”
I protest, “But then nothing would get done!”
He smiled an enigmatic smile.

He’s right. I hate when that happens. I decide immediately that I am starting a movement.
I will call it the Do Less Parenting Movement. (I originally titled it, Do Less Mom Movement, and was corrected by both son and husband that that was sexist. Duly noted. They’re right again. I hate when that happens.)

Hey, how are you doing on your resolutions, Day 6? I thought I’d update you on a resolution I made a couple years ago, to stop buying fabric. As mentioned, I went cold turkey when accused by my otherwise charming children of exhibiting addictive behaviors regarding fabric and pattern purchasing, meaning, don’t get in between me and any Italian Silk when there is a sale. (Seriously, you might get hurt. Just sayin’)
Well, I did go cold turkey, and as of this March it will be three years since I have purchased fabric for myself. THREE YEARS. But I know that they say that it only takes one drink. I mean, Yard, to fall back into bad habits, so Mr. Hunting Creek and Ms. Hunting Creek remain ever vigilant that no new fabric enters the house until all old fabric is sorted and organized.

The forces of disorder, being the dog, son and Mr. Hunting Creek’s coffee mugs, are making it difficult to keep the outer order in the living room. Also my desk and sewing room are looking pretty rough. But I remind myself that Roma non fu fatta in un giorno, and start picking up clutter when ever I see it.

I realize that looking cute every day is a manifestation of the first mantra: Outer order contributes to inner calm! It’s all the same thing. Now to go vacuum up the dog hair.

Great Moments in Fabric Literature, Vol XX -Moroccan edition

On the hottest day so far, I tell Rachid I would like to look at fabric. We visit workshops where men sit on rugs sewing djellabas and embroidering the necklines. In the street, they card the thread, extending it and pulling it on to rolls. I resist ordering one of these splendid garments because it would hand in my closet until doomsday. I would like to find silk for table draperies or curtains. But most everything is precut to three meters, enough to make the djellaba. I find one square of antique ivory silk embroidered with apricot flowers.Rachid steps back when bargaining begins. Nothing ever seems to have a price, and I'm pressed to offer one. I offer so little that the seller appears to be shocked. Rachid puts his hand to his mouth to hide a smile. "What will you pay, madame?" I offer slightly more, then the seller says he must have four hundred euros. This is so far from what I would pay that I thank him, compliment him on the silk and walk away. He's dumbfounded that the American has escaped, having bought only a silver hand of Fatima.

Frances Mayes, A Year in the World pages 189-190, 2006

Do you shop for fabric when you travel? I have never been able to. I have travelled all over the world, but it seems as if there is no fabric anywhere I go. I have a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Hunting Creek has made it his business to avoid locations that have possible fabric buying opportunities. Once when we were in Thailand I had fifteen minutes of unsupervised shopping and was able to buy a handwoven wall hanging, but that's about it. If I venture to say that I might like to look at some fabric my daughter will say in a shocked tone, "Mom! You have enough fabric!" (I'd like to point out that I never say things like this when she looks at shoes, sandals, designer sunglasses and clothing.)

If you like to travel via reading before you actually, physically go somewhere, take a look at Frances Mayes' books about traveling. It's almost as good as going.

Alien Fabric

I never used to plan my sewing. I would just make whatever I felt like making and buy whatever caught my fancy. I liked to think I was the Johnny Depp of sewistas...you know...a pirate!(we don't need no stinking SWAPS!).
But with age and experience comes, one hopes, wisdom. Just like with home cooking, we can't always make chocolate brownies all the time (or we should not make chocolate brownies all the time), into each life some salad must fall. A sewista must plan or be faced with a closet of delightful orphans, none of which can be worn with anything else.
At one point in my life, I decided that I would only have black, white, and tan shoes. Order in the Closet! Rules! I would no longer indulge in blue or brown shoes, because they could only be worn with a very few things. (This rule didn't last long, I have a zillion shoes in many colors). But the impulse was good. Fashion rules we make for ourselves are kind of like diets, aren't they? We decide - NO MORE BROWN! Or orange or whatever the offending item is, and we purge and sort and soon all remnants of the evil brown are gone from our lives, like what we should do with an ex-boyfriend's pictures.
Now I am sorting my fabric and patterns and really seeing and thinking about what I have already, and asking those existentialist questions that every sewista must eventually ask herself: Why did I buy so many ball gown patterns? Will I ever be size 12 again? and: Who is all of this hot pink double knit for, and why is she storing it in my sewing cave? (I don't even wear hot pink! Who bought this? Where did it come from? Are aliens adding fabric to my room at night?)
What patterns and fabrics have aliens added to your sewing room?

Menu Planning

Every week for the past thirty years or so, I make a menu plan. I look at cookbooks and cooking magazines, consult with Mr. Hunting Creek and make my menu. Then we look in the pantry and see what we need, I make my list and the week is laid out for me. We don't always stick exactly to it, but it is nice knowing that I have all of the ingredients to make those seven meals on the list. I started making a plan because I discovered that I was completely capable of buying a weeks worth of groceries and having nothing to eat for dinner after two days. Then back to the store I went. This gets expensive. Recently, while going through fabric in my cave, and making plans to have a dedicated sewing room (now that my daughter has her own place). I had one of those uncomfortable epiphanies: I had been buying fabric all wrong my whole life.
I would go through a fabric store or online store and just pick out what I liked. No list. No plan, just a sailor on leave with a month's pay going crazy. What I have ended up with is the most beautiful, impractical collection of unmatched fabric a sewista could have. Vintage kimono? Check! Silk suiting? Check! ( I no longer work in an office, either). Charmeuse, silk velvet...you name it, I have it. And in all of my favorite colors. But, if I considered what I actually wore every day, I'd be challenged to find three things that matched in the whole collection. I could never do a SWAP, I realized, because I never once bought fabric with a plan!
My daughter has offered to help arrange my new sewing room (she is a demon organizer. I sometimes wonder if she is really related to me, since I come from a long line of messy hoarding women, and she is neat, organized and most emphatically NOT a collector of anything. Kids today!) She has forbidden me to buy any fabric until what I have is all folded on shelves and organized. (Of course she knows that once she is finished I'll mess it all up.)
But at least I'll be sewing with a plan. Do you suppose it's too late to learn?

P.s. to the persons who emailed me saying that they couldn't read my handwriting: don't feel bad, sometimes I can't read it either! The menu reads: Asian Chicken Noodle soup with Chile; Carnitas Burritos, rice and beans; Steak and Snowpea Stir-fry; Chicken Sausage Calzone; Baked Potato Soup, salad; Fish, quinoa pilaf, roasted vegetables. (Yes, we really do cook like this every day. It's not difficult, once you get the hang of it.)

Great Moments in Fabric Literature, Vol V

A Summer Wind, a Cotton Dress

I was hers and you were his
The night we met out on that bridge
You knew then what I know now
That love put down comes back some how

The comet came, the comet went
And hid its face in the firmament
I looked once and then turned away
When I looked again it was much too late

A summer wind, a cotton dress
This is how I remember you best
A glance held long and a stolen kiss
This is how I remember you best

The fool I was is the fool I am
I've got a wife, I'm a family man
But when I lay in our bed
I sometimes dream I'm holding you instead

A summer wind, a cotton dress
This is how I remember you best
A glance held long and a stolen kiss
This is how I remember you best

The kids are fine
They're six and nine
I think you'd probably like my wife
But the kitchen light seems much too bright
For what I find myself thinking tonight

A summer wind, a cotton dress
This is how I remember you best
A glance held long and a stolen kiss
This is how I remember you best


Richard Shindell, from the album Courier
If you click on the song title above, you'll see a live performance of this song by Richard Shindell

When a man says he remembers a girl in a cotton dress, it must be an awfully pretty dress. Maybe one like the one shown above? The fifties were a prime cotton dress viewing period. Cotton lawn, I like to imagine, maybe Liberty? With pretty pastel flowers. The girls above, muses both, are wearing sensibly low heels for dancing and bridge-set stolen kisses by comet-light later.

Great Moments in Fabric Literature, Vol II

Sallie had been buying silks, and Meg longed for a new one, just a handsome light one for parties, her black silk was so common, and thin things for evening wear were only proper for girls. Aunt March usually gave the sisters a present of twenty-five dollars apiece at New Year's. That was only a month to wait, and here was a lovely violet silk going at a bargain, and she had the money, if she only dared to take it. John always said what was his was hers, but would he think it right to spend not only the prospective five-and-twenty, but another five-and-twenty out of the household fund? That was the question. Sallie had urged her to do it, had offered to lend the money, and with the best intentions in life had tempted Meg beyond her strength. In an evil moment the shopman held up the lovely, shimmering folds, and said, A bargain, I assure, you, ma'am. She answered, I'll take it, and it was cut off and paid for, and Sallie had exulted, and she had laughed as if it were a thing of no consequence, and driven away, feeling as if she had stolen something, and the police were after her.

When she got home, she tried to assuage the pangs of remorse by spreading forth the lovely silk, but it looked less silvery now, didn't become her, after all, and the words `fifty dollars' seemed stamped like a pattern down each breadth. She put it away, but it haunted her, not delightfully as a new dress should, but dreadfully like the ghost of a folly that was not easily laid. When John got out his books that night, Meg's heart sank, and for the first time in her married life, she was afraid of her husband. The kind, brown eyes looked as if they could be stern, and though he was unusually merry, she fancied he had found her out, but didn't mean to let her know it.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

There may or may not be possums...

My daughter has been watching Hoarders with the horror and fascination of someone driving by a giant car pile up. She just can't look away.
I can't watch. I come from a long line of hoarders, and I am constantly resisting the siren call of owning every fabric I desire, or all of the patterns I ever wanted, even though two lifetimes would not give me enough time to sew what I have already. Two years ago I stopped buying fabric. And in the two years I have not suffered a fabric shortage. I just used what I had. I did buy thread and zippers and interfacing as needed. But I never want to be like the lady who said on the show, "There may or may not be possums in that bedroom. There have been no confirmed sightings, but..." If you just can't be sure if there might be possums in your house, it's official. You have a problem.
(Now when one of our rooms or closets is messy we all say, "there may or may not be possums...")
For example: our front closet, where we keep all of the coats. I do not recall ever getting rid of a coat in the last ten years. Possum territory, definitely.
I think that the fear of ending up like those poor people might have inspired me to clean my closets. That and the fear of possums, of course.
Do you have a room that may or may not have possums?

The Buck Stops Here

Anyone who has ever tried to quit smoking or drinking or any pernicious addiction can tell you the tricks the mind plays on the addict to try and tempt said virtuous abstaining addict to fall off the wagon. As I discussed a few months ago, my children (who up until that point had seemed like nice, well behaved and affectionate children) claimed that I had a fabric and pattern "problem". They claimed that I was an addict; I denied it. (Which is exactly what an addict would say.) I found myself telling Mr. Hunting Creek this weekend that I had not bought any fabric or patterns since last March and we both realized: that's when the recession began! Yes! Mrs. Hunting Creek, mild mannered textile artist, quilter and sewista-poseur may be responsible for the worst recession since the Great Depression! So I expressed this belief, and asked Mr. Hunting Creek if I should, instead moderate my fabric fast in order to jump start the economy, patriotic duty and all that. For those of you not fortunate enough to know Mr. Hunting Creek personally, let me just say that he is a trained economist and responds to comments like that with statements that include terms like "declining marginal utility", "St. Milton Friedman", and "Keynesian."
What I took away from his possible Nobel prize winning discourse is that OTHER sewistas should support their favorite fabric pushers, but not Mrs. Hunting Creek. It was his opinion that addict that I am, I may have caused the whole Global Financial Meltdown in order to thus have an excellent excuse to purchase yards and yards of fabric, claiming to be doing it to "save the world". "Addicts are like that", he says. "They'll do anything for their fix".
So my fellow addicts (you know who you are), get out there and spend. Do it for the country, do it to save the economy, and while you are buying some lovely Italian wool doublecoth, think of me. Your country will thank you later.


p.s. if I were going to buy a new pattern, this new McCalls shirtdress caught my eye. Would it be cheating if someone bought it for my birthday?...just asking...

Fabric Rehab

My children told me that I had a problem, but I denied it. "I'm not an addict!", I claimed. "I collect fabric and patterns, that's all. I like to sew. It's my hobby."
"Then why is it called a STASH?" they wanted to know. Good question. Like all addicts, I live in denial. Even though I have over a thousand patterns, (my personal patterns, not even counting the ones I sell on my website) I am always looking for the new ones. I check out my favorite fabric websites every day. Because you just never know. That next pattern, that new fabric might be THE ONE.
I inherited my fabriholic tendencies from my mother.(She was quite a collector of more than just fabric. I think this behavior is genetic.) We used to visit the Fabric Warehouse in Anaheim and Newport Beach just to see what they had. No projects in mind. Just looking. We'd come home with huge bags of treasures. For many years my fabric acquisition was under control because after we moved to Virginia, there was no local source for the designer fabrics I craved. I took up quilting... until one day I found the Pattern Review website. It was as if an alcoholic got a job at a brewery. It was like finding the source of the Nile, fabric-wise! I could buy fabric ONLINE! Things got so bad that once Linda at Emmaonesock called to ask if I wanted the goods shipped in a plain brown wrapper, so my husband wouldn't notice. (I THINK she was kidding.) Yeah, I'm on a first name basis with my pushers...er...textile purveyors. While we were talking she said that her customers sometimes ask her to ship to next door neighbors, hold fabric for later shipping, ship to offices...so that no one at home knows! What kind of behavior does THAT sound like, class? True confession: I have even accidentally bought pieces of the same fabric twice because I had forgotten I had already bought some. This is NOT sane behavior. I've tried to reform, really I have. I donated some fabric that I would never use to charity. I donated supplies to our neighborhood silent auction, to raise money for a new playground. It's July, and I haven't bought any fabric or patterns for FOUR months! I told my son that I was cured, and he said, "No Mom, you can never be cured. Once an addict, always an addict." Isn't it awful what they teach our kids in school these days?