Monday, June 27, 2011

New Rules

Source: Fabric Mart and Burkholder Fabrics

Sometimes Bill Maher's "New Rules" TV segment gets me laughing so hard I almost...(fill in the blank.)   My influence on the world is much smaller.  The only place I get to make the rules is in my sewing studio.  I love being the Queen of my sewing studio...although I wouldn't mind some serfs to do the clean up work.  As the Queen, I get to make the rules.  New rule:  what comes in, must go out.  That means for every piece of fabric I buy, one must leave, either in the form of clothing, a muslin or a donation/sale.  Based on that "new rule" I have to divest myself of ten pieces of fabric from last weeks' shopping.  Yup, done.  One new muslin, seven pieces in the giveaway pile so far.  (More on that in a later post.)


You see, I went to Fabric Mart, in person.  Yes, I know, I was supposed to only stop by briefly when I was visiting my dear friend for a few days.  And I did stop for a few minutes on my second day in the neighborhood.  I kept to my Fabric Mart commitment and only bought two pieces: a stretch poly in navy satin light enough for sheath dress lining and a stretch poly nylon for the same purpose....and only $.50 a yard.  I was able to keep that commitment because I had just been to the most amazing quilting fabric store....Burkholder Fabrics.  Yikes, I had never seen such a collection on one place.  I'm not a quilter but I love quilt stores wth their lovely colors, designs and amazing notions.  Burkholder      Yelp review with pics of Burkholder fabrics  I did buy two batiks to make two table runners for our dining room with a very simple design:  

However.... the second night in town I opened my email and saw that those FM rayon knits were on the half price sale.  I had just made a muslin of the Pamela's Patterns Cool Cardigan Draped Front jacket while I was visiting my friend and loved how it turned out.  That's my excuse reason for returning to FM on Friday, visiting with Sharon, Sandy and Chris and buying five knits and a silk cotton blend.  Now they're all washed and ready to join the sewing line up.  


I had a delightful visit with my dearest girlfriend.  We attended her very fun book group evening where we discussed "Cutting for Stone" by Abraham Verghese, my favorite book of 2010.  Besides fabric shopping we sewed together, talked up a storm, visited a terrific Pennsylvania diner and ooohed and ahhhed over Lucky who came along for the ride.  Now I'm way behind on blog reading and commenting but filled with happy memories.


Postscript:  For those of you not in the US, Bill Maher is a writer, comic, social satirist and political libertarian with a late night show on cable TV.  I'm probably to the right of Bill Maher politically and find he can go from wonderfully insightful to snarky rather quickly, but he does make me laugh out loud when he skewers the left and the right and all our human craziness.  So if you are not familiar with him, here's a link to his latest "New Rules" show segment.  You may not wish to read this if you are easily offended.
Bill Maher May 17, 2011 New Rules

3 comments:

  1. Nice fabrics that turquoise piece is yummmmy... and that whole top row ewww purty!

    Now don't be to hasty in your fabric removing LOL. You should give yourself a few "free" shopping sprees a year where your rule LOL doesn't apply. Especially when you picking fabric up for 50 Cents a yard! My gosh that hardly even counts as a buy!

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  2. Happy new fabric! Those are some really nice prints. I can't wait to see them all stitched up!

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  3. I so love your incorporation of Bill Maher's outrageousness into the sewing room. I've never made the connection, but I will never listen to New Rules in quite the same way. I'm someone who should have used your new rule about ten years ago. I recently have moved an untold number of clear plastic bins of fabric from Northern California to Southern California and it will be interesting to see how much of that gets sewn up in my new state of retirement. I hope my faculties stay with me long enough to make a dent.

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