It's time for. . .

Patchwork. Yup. Every sewers nightmare, or blessing, depending on how you look at it. For me, it is more of a nightmare, all these bits and pieces of fabrics from years past. I like to just go in there and grab fabric and make stuff. Sometimes I don't wanna have to piece a bunch together to make a big enough piece of fabric to make something out of. But now is the time. Fortunately after the pieces have been sewn together, a beautiful patchwork creation emerges, and that excites me.

I store my fabrics in dressers. The main one is an antique dresser from my great uncle who lived in Waycross Georgia. It is a beautiful dresser, with large deep drawers that I've been using for the past 14 years of sewing.



On Saturday I began pulling out all these fabrics. Most of them in these two drawers being discussed today are my calico prints. They are from craft and fabric stores, purchased before discovering the incredible world of designer quilt shop fabrics. I prefer to use quilt shop fabrics now, and these fabrics have been pushed further and deeper into the drawers until no more could fit.

I started sorting the pieces by size, as many of them were already cut into strips. Other pieces that weren't strait-sided or were of odd shapes, like maybe I cut a bodice or something else curvy out of it, were put aside in another pile. A pile for smaller pieces and one for larger. There was even a pile for strait-sided small pieces, that eventually could become random patchwork. So I have all the calico strips assorted by width.



Don't they look all nice laid out like that? Thanks to Kelly for the idea to store them this way. I used to just have them all stacked up together by color. But I'd get pissed off when I went to use it up, realizing it was a smaller piece than I'd thought. You just don't know what ya got when it's all folded up and stacked and you have to pull out the whole stack so it doesn't mess everything else up. This way works much better.



The next step will be to cut squares from all these strips. Obviously they will be different size squares so those will go into their own piles. Amongst all the larger strips were more narrow strips, definitely cut with some sort of purpose in mind. Those went into two piles; one for selvage to selvage strips, and one for the strips that were not the full width of fabric. I am a strip-piecing fanatic, so most of my patterned patchwork is made this way. Thus, the reason for all those strips in the first place. I think it's going to be a lot of fun, making some sort of strippy project. I did a few purses like that a few years ago and I just loved how simple and interesting they turned out.

So patchwork it will be.

On Friday I cooked myself up delicious dinner. Roasted root veggies, sauteed beet greens with shallot, and heated up some pre-cooked fried rice from Trader Joes. Can you tell I like to roast up veggies??? It really is the best way to bring out their natural flavors.


Tomorrow I will start cutting squares.