Speak to me

My fabric speaks to me. Does yours? Mine tells me what it wants to be. Last night I looked through some of my fabric stash for fabric to make a second Jalie polo shirt. I remembered that I had stashed some fabric in the blanket chest in our bedroom and was dismayed surprised to find some that I'd forgotten about, including a pale pink stretchy knit. I'm embarrassed to say that I don't remember where it came from. Probably emmaonesock. This fabric spoke to me right away that it must be the next polo shirt. And I think it will be nice. It's a pale pink, a very ballerina pink, and I think that if I made a simple t-shirt from it it would look too lost against my skin. It needs the collar and neckline of the polo shirt, so a polo shirt it shall be.

Then another fabric from this batch of blanket chest stash spoke to me. It's a light blue sweater knit with a chenille feel to it. This fabric said it needed to be Kwik Sew 3155. The only problem is that this pattern calls for a knit with at least 25% stretch and although this is a sweater knit, it has essentially no stretch. I looked through all of my Burda WOF patterns (I keep a notebook of the pages with the line drawings) to find something else that would work but this fabric persisted. It must be KS3155. Ok. But now I will have to figure out if I need to make adjustments to the pattern to make up for the lack of stretch.


Update to above posting...

Funny...I thought I might have blogged about the blue knit fabric when I bought it and it turns I did. And what did I have in mind to make with it at the time? Yup, the hoodie from Kwik Sew 3155. I guess it spoke to me even then.

And the pink knit mystery is solved. I checked my old email and found an emmaonesock order that listed the purchase of the stretchy baby pink fabric (yes, I'm a bit obsessive about keeping old emails about the fabric I bought). But I wish now I hadn't found it. It's a bit of an ouch. Turns out the pink knit is a rayon lycra for which I paid $18/yard. I bought 1 1/4 yards but it now measures out as less (which means my sleeves will again be elbow length and not 3/4). Either I was shorted a bit (possible, it's happened on other fabrics I ordered from them) or it shrank when I washed it (also possible and probably what happened- I washed it on warm and dried it too). It was purchased, along with some other rayons knits of the same price, during a terrible fabric-buying weakness.

But I can afford it and I shouldn't deny myself nice fabrics. Plus the $18/yard fabric is far better off being made into a garment I might be able to wear than forgotten at the bottom of a blanket chest. If the cost bothers me that much I guess I can figure that it balances the $2.77 I spent on the fabric for the first Jalie polo shirt, right? Besides, I'm not sewing to save money - I sew to save myself the annoyance of shopping for clothing only to see ugly fabrics sewn sometimes badly into things that I could make myself...for a lot less (ok, so money does factor into it a little). But the real reason I sew is because I enjoy finding a fabric that catches my eye and then listening to the fabric tell me what it wants to be. I enjoy turning the fabric into something to wear and I like that there's only one like it in the world!