No Fabric Left Behind

When we woke up on Saturday morning, it was spring. As in 70 degrees, sunny and all the snow gone overnight. Hard to remember that it had been less than a week since we got 6 inches of the white stuff. After breakfast and a trip to the farmer's market (they had greens! I was happy!), I got down to it and spent 4 hours digging in the back yard. I'm planning to put in more vegetables this year, so I picked a part of the garden to sacrifice for food, dug out everything but the rosebushes (it was mostly columbines, irises and catmint, all of which I have in abundance elsewhere), turned the soil over to the depth of about a foot, dug in a load of compost and covered it with newspaper to keep the weeds from sprouting too much before I can plant.

It felt really good at the time, but you know you've overdone it when you come inside and hunch over the sewing machine to REST your back.

I'm still on a kick with spring/summer sewing - I know the weather won't last, but spring will be here eventually, right? - so I knocked out two more of my favorite quick-and easy BWOF skirt. Since they were sewn with the same color thread, I cut them out and did them assembly-line style, and all I had left to do yesterday was the hand sewing of the lining down along the zipper. Everything else was finished on Saturday. These aren't the most complicated skirts in the world, and I freely admit to topstitching the hems, but they're casual summer skirts to wear instead of shorts, so it was acceptable for this skirt in those fabrics. (Both of which, BTW, were end-of-season last year from Fashion Fabrics Club and dirt cheap - just to make it better).

Yesterday Elizabeth came over for a while and we made another brief trip to Jomar. This time I came home with no regrets for fabrics left behind at the store. Possibly I will regret buying some of what I did, but that's better than the reverse. This time I took proper advantage of the cotton jerseys and got 4 more - spring green, light blue, aqua and red. I also got a few yards of light gray pointelle knit for a pair of PJs, 2 yards of tan stretch twill for the cropped pants in the new issue of Ottobre, some iridescent burgundy/black raincoat fabric for one of the trench jackets in BWOF 3/09, some light terracotta shirting for Mario to replace an existing RTW shirt that has gotten absolutely threadbare, a brown/cream striped bottomweight, a yard of Spanx-level lycra, two double-faced knits for casual wear (green for me, gray for him), and a floral print knit for an unexpectedly pregnant friend who recently gave away all her maternity clothes because they weren't planning for any more kids. Oh, and 5 yards of interfacing because I was almost out.

29 yards, by my calculation. When the fabric cutter gave me my total, I was a little surprised ($60 - still not bad, I just shouldn't have spent it), but then I came to my senses. Yes, it was too much fabric. But except for the yard of spandex I purchased to make a cover for my recently padded out dress form, it was all $2 per yard.

Yeah, so that puts the numbers back up in the bad behavior range, but I'm not regretting these purchases yet, and I don't think I will anytime soon.
Off to look at knit top patterns so I can make up some of these jerseys before they even hit the shelves.