using up some fabric

Jo commented yesterday that if I ever want to get rid of my fabric I can easily donate or sell it. (Or, in the case of some of my fabric, throw it away or stuff cat beds for the animal shelter!)

That's it exactly! I don't have to use it all. I probably won't use it all in this lifetime. Except for the newest bags, and some yardage I've bought for specific project or just because it was pretty, I've already used enough to get my money's worth and justify the purchases.

But I'm not getting rid of the rest because I want to use it up. I don't look at fabric and think "that's dated.....that's too thin....that's not cotton....why does that have hot pink gambling coyotes on it?" I look at fabric and think "What could I do with that?" If it's dressmaking fabric, I probably won't want to do what I could do with it and will pass it on to someone else. If it's something I think I might ever actually use, I hang onto it.

How much fabric I've got doesn't bug me, but I would like to get it a lot more organized. And use a lot more, because that's kind of the point of hoarding it in the first place.

We've had a rare string of calm days, so I've taken full advantage of the chance to stay home and play.

I've made some cat quilts to take to the local shelter --



And used someone else's cast off nine patch blocks to make a little bee quilt --



This isn't how I would have done it if I'd started from scratch, but I challenged myself to work with what was already done and it's not a bad little quilt. It's even got bee backing and will have bee binding when it's done.

And I've got enough bee fabric left over for another complete bee quilt. I'd love to see what the original quilter did with this project. The way some of the scraps were cut makes me think there were wide borders involved. And the way the nine patch blocks were pieced just confused me. Which is why I hacked them into a disappearing nine patch.

And when I haven't had time to quilt, I've been finding new projects to try:

This heart wall quilt at Remember Your Karma, which is made from a recipe at the Moda Bake Shop. It's 40" square, and I think it would make a great baby quilt.

This one from Crazy Mom Quilts looks like a great way to use up some of those shirt pieces I cut a while back.