This post used to be called, "Why I Don't (And Won't) Shop at a Fabric Store," but that just sounds so craaaaby and so Retail Judgemental. Guy. It's not about that for me. This is really just an explananation for why I'm such a treasure-hunting fabric packrat--that it's more than just a weird diagnosable character flaw: it's actually part of my very own creative process. And it might be something that frees you up too.
So, if you want to know why I sew only with Rescued Fabric, here you go . . .
[*Ginger, What's "Rescued Fabric"? This is the only fabric I sew with--it's fabric that was going to be FORGOTTEN about if I didn't save it: but I did. I found it at a thrift store or a garage sale or on some high shelf of my husband's aunt's barn . . . somewhere like that. And then I rescued it from its sad little hiding anonymity and brought it back out in the world to be purposable. Fabric is always sad when it's hiding. It likes to be out where the people are.]
No offense to nice old ladies named Betty and Beverly and all the fabric stores that are named after them, but you're not gonna see me there.
And it's not that the fabric is really
expensive.
Or that it's all organized in a way that
somebody else thinks it goes together.
Or that the lighting is reminiscent of my 7th
grade Home Ec class.
Or that the place is crawling with strangers.
(Strangers make me nervous. I know. Ask me later.)
It's that I don't get it: how are you supposed to know what to do with the fabric until you get it home? And how are you supposed to find fabric you love when it's all squished next to other fabric of similar color so it can't scream its own SINGULARITUDE?
Plus, how are you supposed to get yourself to shell out $8 or $12 or $82 bucks for fabric that you're not sure what you're going to do with? Or--if you do know what you want to do with it--how are you supposed to decide, standing there with your wallet burning in your pocket. You've got about as much creative juice flowing through your body as the morning you took the SAT.
I get why people do the shop-for-the-recipe attack to sewing projects. I just don't think it's living large. I think you end up like the Lady Shame Lady I was talking about the other day because when you look into your project pile/closet/room/shoe box all you see is a receipt. You see cash money. And somehow, really, I think what you see is Waste. And then you feel bad. Because you could have spent money on your kid's shoes or un-killing-plastic bottles for your baby or fresh flowers or a hide-a-bed.
I like to think of my sewing life as following the eat-local movement. A lot of us are getting the picture that it makes more sense to eat apples out of neighbor's backyard in October instead of $4 grapes trucked and boated from freaking Provence. (I made that grape-shipping stuff up about Provence. But I really did read about these good ideas here and here and here.) So we've started to train our taste buds to want apples in the fall and melons in the summer and rutabega in november. (I made up the stuff about the rutabega too.) I'm in to it. I bought this cookbook and it's helping me come up with new ways to eat more asparagus in april. Good times.
I'm just saying that I've sort of done the same thing in my sewing life that I'm shooting to do in my eating life: I buy local. In season. When it shows up at the thrift store, dirt cheap, funky and ready to grab, I buy it. And when I say "in season" I just mean "in the bin" because this kind of fabric shopping usually means finding pink bunnies in December and reindeers and holly in June. When it's ready to pick, I pick it.
And then I have this wonderful hoard of a fabric stash ready to work from. So when the mood--or the 13 minutes of freedom, or the rainy day where my kids have for some reason had to take Benadryl--hits, I go to my stash of fabric and sit in the middle of it and start putting one glob of it next to another glob of it until I find two that want to talk nicely to each other. Then sometimes I add one more. And if I'm feeling really fancy, I pull from my bucket of old trims too. Wonderful aprony things happen then. Or lately sometimes bag-ish things. And new combos of color and thought pop up that I feel FOR CERTAIN would never come to me in the matchy matchy world of the local fabric store.
And when I screw up and cut it wrong or botch the whole deal I never ever ever have to say "THERE GOES 82 BUCKS." I might say, "Good one, Ginger. When will you learn to baste?" But I won't have a financial conniption over my project failure.
I know: this doesn't work for making prom dresses (or does it?). Because actually, I've got some great looking slinky polyester whose pinkishness just might make something stunning-ish.
And one more thing: When I do shop at a fabric store--you know for thread and needles and stuff like that, then I go down the street in my town, so that Rob who always explains the difference between all the kinds of needles gets my little business, or I go here where Beth and Kristin are doing such great community-building work for those of us who love to sew stuff together.
