June 30, 2007
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Reading the adventures of Formerprincess in searching out fabrics for her quilt has caused me to think about the process of buying fabric.For me, it is quite different from the process of buying yarn. When I buy yarn, I think to myself, “I want to make X.” I calculate how much yarn of what type I will need, shop around at the available places, and buy the stuff that meets my need at a reasonable price. When I finish that project, I repeat the process.
I realize that many knitters — as well as many apparent yarn collecters who buy lots and lots of yarn and rarely actually knit anything with it — have a completely different approach to yarn buying, but this is mine.
Fabric, for me, is different.
I used to buy fabric for quiltmaking. Sometimes that means you have thought of a quilt you want to make so you go buy all the fabric, but just as often it means that you have found fabric you love, so you buy some and then think of a quilt you can make with it. In fact, quilt shops sell fat quarters for a dollar or two, so you can buy one or two at a time and amass a collection, adding them to your rag bag so they will be there for that moment when you need a particular shade or visual texture.
But when I took up dressmaking again last year after a hiatus of some years, I had to think of fabric in a different way.
(I am not saying that I don’t quilt any more, of course. I have two WIPs and the fabric and plan for two more, though, so I won’t be buying any quilting fabric in the foreseeable future. Unless it’s a fat quarter in a quilt shop while traveling. Which I also won’t be doing in the foreseeable future. But we all know that fat quarters bought while traveling don’t count.)
I have three more pieces to make in my SWAP Part II. Naturally, this means that I have begun thinking ahead to
SWAP Part III.I had to, because I found this print.
The rule for SWAPs is to begin with a print that contains the two main colors of the SWAP. These colors are to be a neutral and a “fashion color” that you can wear as frequently as you would a neutral. For me, these were gray and burgundy. You carry your print around to fabric stores with you and pull the solids that are in the print. You then add a contrast color (blue, for me) and sew up your 11 pieces in these colors.
For the second stage of the SWAP, you make your contrast color the #2 color in the plan, and add a new contrast color or two (I added green and plum). For the third stage, you make the contrast color from the second stage the new #2 color, and add another contrast, while still making sure that your new pieces all work with one another, and with at least three pieces from your previous SWAPs. I’m using my favorite green, so my Sophie bag from a couple of years ago will go with it.
So when I saw this print, a lovely rayon challis in burgundy and sage green with gray, I obviously had to buy it.
It comes from Candlelight Valley Fabrics. I happened upon the link over at a sewing blog, and idly clicked on it. Having had a terrible time finding prints that followed the rules for my first two SWAPs, I knew that I couldn’t fool around in this case for fear of its selling out, so I snapped it up. At full price. $12 a yard.
Now, I am not a bargain shopper, exactly. I agree with the maxim that you should buy the best materials for your crafts that you can afford. You are putting time and skill into your work, so it does not make sense that you should use shoddy materials and end up with something of poor quality. At my rate of output (in a year, I can expect to make 2 or 3 sweaters, one quilt, and a couple dozen sewn things), I could routinely spend $12 a yard and $6 a skein and still it would be cheaper than, say, smoking or golfing or many other hobbies. I also know that a ready-made skirt in such a fabric would never be available at under $25, so if looked at as part of the clothing budget rather than the entertainment budget, it is still a reasonable price.
But fabric is one of the many things that goes on sale all the time. The phenomenon of sales and discounts has skewed the whole notion of value for money, so that we now have to consider that the price might be completely different if we wait a week or two. So, even though the fabrics that I like — natural fibers or microfibers in
complex colors — typically retail at $10 to $30 a yard, I hardly ever pay that amount for them.That also means that I can’t, since I want to have these bargains, just go buy all the fabrics together in a civilized fashion.
No. I haunt the clearance tables and check the online discount fabric houses. When I see a good quality fabric at a low price — in my SWAP colors — I buy some. Palmer and Pletsch say “Don’t be a remnant queen.” They recommend bying your fabric eight yards at a time. Maybe I will work up to that. But I know that three yards will do any pants, skirt, blouse, or jacket, and five yards will do any suit or dress, so those are my magic numbers for yardage.
Here you can see the fabrics for my SWAP Part III. From left to right, here are their histories:
- Blue-green wool bought in summer from the winter-fabric clearance table, $2 a yard.
- Gray, green, and burgundy wool, watched until it went on sale and then bought at $5 a yard.
- The perfect print, bought at full price, not taking any chances.
- The coordinating Ralph Lauren jersey, ditto. Listen, there’s no way you can pay shipping on one cut of fabric. You have to buy two. $6.95 a yard.
- Gray microfiber from last year’s Memorial Day sale, $3 a yard.
- Navy blue linen from the clearance table (it seems to me it was the summer fabric, last fall), $2 a yard.
- Khaki twill from an online discount fabric place, $1.99 a yard.
With any luck, by the time I am ready to begin sewing, I will have picked up the remaining needed fabrics at equally good prices.
Today I will be up at the store again. We are getting busy, but everyone is still cheerful. This is a nice time of year to be in retail. However, we are also being asked every day about more summer workshops, and I am having to explain that we don’t have any scheduled. That was probably an error. It would probably be more profitable to have me continue doing workshops than to have me on the floor all day.
Oh, well.
Comments (8)
I’m not a fan of ‘popular psychology’. Like ‘popular medical’ journalists, ‘popular psychology’ journalists tend to focus on aspects of studies that are taken out of context. In my experience serious scientific researchers hate having their work reported by the popular press because the press usually make claims about the research that the scientists themselves would not make. It looks bad when their reported ‘successes’ and ‘discoveries’ don’t live up to expectations and it is never the reportage that is blamed, it is the scientists that the public come down on.
Anyhow, I’d probably be ex-communicated if ever I started focusing on pop psych, I’m not that much of an scientific rebel
In the real world one must compromise. When I was doing 4th year psych studies I had a visiting lecturer from the States who shared my view that the way to go in psych was not to focus on some narrow subsubfield of a psych subdiscipline, but to attempt to integrate at least some of the seemingly unconnected little theories and models that abound in the field. I think that principle still underlies what research I do. It is not, however, a terribly efficient method for developing research designs so it is just as well that my job does not rely upon my getting 3 papers published a year.
Oh. ok they are not quite what I meant. Bryson is the only one of those that I have read (like you I am reading ‘A Short History..’ in smallish bites) I have a tremendous amount of respect for Bryson as a writer and as a science communicator, he seems to be able to make science interesting without ever trying to put a particular ’spin’ on what he writes. Of course he doesn’t need to bias his writing, he is an author, not a scientist with a theory of his own to sell. Do you think Dawkins is in that same sort of category? (Your running review of his last book sort of put me off him)
Absolutely fantastic! Great fall colours. We have a place near us called “The Mill End Store” – Pendleton wool comes from Pendleton, Oregon (it’s gorgeous) and they have a few mill end stores to get ride of their odd lots, etc. This place is HUGE!! It’s like the Disneyland of fabric. I took my mum there for fabric for curtains and she was so overwhelmed she needed to sit down for a few minutes.
It certainly isn’t a Joann’s Fabrics. The closest I could say is that it is like House of Fabrics (if those are still around).
Your SWAP process is very interesting. I’ll bet you end up putting more thought into the clothes you’re (preparing to) wear than if you were buying things off the rack. Also…the added bonus of getting exactly what you want is a delightful proposition.
So far, coming in at well under $5/yd, according to my haphazard calculations. I say you’re way ahead.
If you’re managing to get paid for being on the floor all day …. lying, or sitting, or playing cards, or whatever it is you’re doing there on the floor … I think that’s great. Way to go!
RYC: In that case I might just look up one or 2 of Dawkins’ other books.
RYC: Wilde was married and had two sons, Vyvyan and… other one’s name escapes me. After Wilde’s affair, when he was jailed, the wife and sons went into exile in Europe to escape hounding. During Wilde’s own exile after his release from prison, he tried to find his sons, but the wife’s family (who never liked Wilde and didn’t find his debacle a reason to start liking him) wouldn’t give him any information about their whereabouts, so he never saw his children again.