Sorting...

...and more sorting...  It's interesting to see how much fabric I don't have.  Instead of multiple large boxes, I have two small boxes of commercial fabric.  One of them contains my collection of cat fabric...I made Robin a small quilt called 'The Cat Hater Quilt', a long time ago (it's a long story), and always meant to make a bed sized quilt along the same lines...but never did.  Couldn't bring myself to get rid of the fabric in the recent purge, though.  It's mostly fat quarter size and smaller, and I dare say at some point I'll get round to The Quilt.  The other box has mostly scrap in it, some of it donated by a couple of kind friends when I realised that I really had overdone The Great Purge, though there are also some FQs I bought recently, just in order to have something to play with in the rental, where I actually did have a workroom, as opposed to this house, where, at present, I have a pile of stuff (sigh). 

And then there's the two partially filled boxes, with dyed lutradur and evolon...well, mostly dyed, some of it is painted.  I still hold the line that paint is Not A Good Thing to use on either of these fabrics; lutradur, because, unless you're using watercolour paints, you take away the semi transparent nature of the cloth, which is what makes it special, and evolon, because paint ruins the hand, that lovely suede/velvet like feeling.  Here they are :

As you can see, there's not a huge amount, though I do still have lutradur on the roll, which is perhaps a tad excessive for what I need these days, but I dare say I'll get through it.  I might combine the boxes, save a bit of space, which is at a premium now that I'm down to one room.  Having said that most of this fabric is transfer dyed (or printed), the piece at the very top of the evolon box (the lower image) is quite interesting.  It was coloured using encaustic wax, just to see what happened.  Unsurprisingly, the fabric became really quite stiff, but the texture of the stitch still shows through quite clearly; I didn't think that it would.  I thought it might be interesting to make applique elements using encaustic...in theory, at least, you could attach them to the surface using heat, as the wax would melt, then resolidify, and cling to the base fabric.  Must try it out some time. Another one for the list.

The only other fabric I have is for dyeing, probably more than I need, silk and linen as well as cotton.  I'm used to dyeing in big quantities, hence the volume; I tended to buy dyeing fabric whenever I saw it at a good price.  Haven't quite decided what to do with it all.  There's no way that this type of fabric will fit neatly into a small box... under bed sized box it is....and possibly two of them... just have to work out where to put them.  If all else fails, I dare say they can go under an actual bed.


I doubt I'm going to get anything done today.  Yesterday was stressful for all sorts of reasons, and I'm feeling like a wrung-out dishcloth...and given that I'd like to go out this evening, to the Embroiderer's Guild in Linlithgow, I think today will be spent on the sofa.  I lead such an exciting life...snort...