This is the place that most of my apparel fabric lives. In theory, it should all fit into that basket. Unfortunately, I'm always tearing through there and so it ends up looking like this a lot of the time. There's more to the right (out of the frame) but it's heavier stuff. I keep knits and linen rolled and stuffed in a bin.
I have gotten much better at buying fabric over time. While I sometimes feel like I have more than I'll ever use, I'm usually all right with the stuff I chose to keep and buy. Usually. I try to keep in mind to only buy things that I will absolutely 100% love-- even if I'm making something for someone else. This shouldn't be so hard to get my head around, but you'd be surprised at how often I'm grabbing stuff with one of my sisters or friends in mind. The problem is, I don't always get around to using it for them. (OR worse-- "It's so cheap! How could I not?" I'll tell you why you shouldn't, Crazy.)
But, like I said, I'm getting better. I go for long stretches without getting anything new, and at the moment I'm doing a good amount of sewing. Here's my thinking about buying beyond that (especially if I don't have a specific pattern in my hand):
- If it's quilt weight, then only 1/3 a yard. Max. I get a half if I'm thinking about accenting kids clothes (or whatever), but I try to keep those quilt weight cottons for things other than apparel. Remembering this has cut WAY DOWN on yardage consumption.
- Buying fabric for clothes gets easier the longer that I sew as you start thinking like a envelope back. Gwen has created some pretty comprehensive tables for figuring this stuff out and she also has handy yardage cards to buy! I usually go something like this-- 1 1/2 yards for a skirt; 1-1 1/2 for a shirt (depending on width and sleeves or not); 2-3 for a dress. Beyond that, I should probably put it away because I'm not going to use it.
- Here is a lovely, illustrated (and printable!) guide for upholstery yardage. I love it mainly because it reinforces the fact that I have NO DESIRE to recover furniture. At all. I will leave that to my girl, Blair.
I keep way too many scraps. I still make ill-advised purchases. My shelves get messy pretty quickly (I store most quilt weight or smaller pieces folded by colour). I drive myself and the person I share this room with crazy (it's our bedroom after all). Here are a few more pictures of things on shelves for those of you interested in that sort of thing. It's, you know, very lived in at the moment. I hope you weren't expecting any different.
