Just Like Candy

I can resist fabric about as well as I can resist Halloween candy. They always get me, with their big colorful bags and their “fun size” or “minis”. It’s only a “mini”, how bad could it be? Those little bars in the big bag are as bad as fat quarters. Sure, they are only 22” x 18”, but they are all folded up in a cute bundle and there’s 42 of them!

Just like candy, my tastes in fabrics also change from day to day. Sometimes I feel like a Snickers, then sometimes I feel like a Starburst. Sometimes I feel like a cute novelty pickle fabric and sometimes I feel like a holiday plaid. This leaves my stash looking as eclectic as a plastic pumpkin full of Halloween candy dumped all over the living room floor.

I have purchased a lot of fabric over the years just because it was cute or pretty. I have even more because “it would make such a great____ (fill in the blank)____”! So, I buy it, but I never have time to make the (bank). It’s a real problem. I have more fabric hanging around than cellulite from all those minis. The solution to both problems is really the same: don’t go into the store in the first place, or, if you simply must, just get one thing. Just get one candy bar instead of the pack of forty. Just get one fat quarter instead of enough to make a California King size quilt.

Finally, understand if you go to the convenience store when you are feeling snacky, you are definitely going to buy candy. It follows that if you go into the fabric store feeling hungry for creativity, you are going to buy a whole lot more stuff for the one hundred ideas you get from wandering the aisles, many of them you never even thought of before entering the fabric shop. In an effort not to go over your budget for fabric calories, consider the mountain of projects you have just sourced and narrow the herd down to the top one or two projects you are likely to have the time and enthusiasm to undertake. Put the rest of the stuff back and be sure to grab a peanut butter cup on the way out! 

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Please join us here every other Wednesday for another fun, fiber-filled installment of By the Yard. You can read more By the Yard® comics at www.bytheyardcomics.com and check out the 5th annual By the Yard® Calendar for Quilters at www.bytheyardcomics.com.