Mother of the bride outfit! Fabric found!!

So! My trip to San Francisco last weekend was wonderful! Although I got home on Sunday night and had to be back at the airport Monday morning to fly to North Carolina for work! Busy Busy!!  But we did a great deal of wedding stuff while I was there, including finding the fabric for my dress!

I had been going back and forth about what color I should wear. Meghan was completely unconcerned about it; she left it up to me. I did however, need to coordinate with my husbands USMC dress blues uniform, so that really left out colors like yellow and light green, etc.

Even though it is a June wedding, I was really feeling red. I look good in red. I love the color. I bought a new car in red. It’s MY color! So we headed over to the orgasmic Britex Fabrics on Geary Street early Saturday morning. We looked at a couple of different fabrics, but when the salesclerk showed us a fabulous red silk faille, I was in love! It was a lovely red (not that orange red but a clear, blue red) and was a nice weight with some texture to it. 100% silk and just fabulous! I was sold! And so was Meghan. It has a nice weight that should drape wonderfully with the pattern I chose for the dress. This is not the type of fabric one could get at a Joanne’s or Hancock fabrics. (And at $95 per yard I can understand why!)

The button purchased for the dress!

100% silk faille

It's not nearly this pink

 

The pattern I chose. I will be making the short sleeve one.

The pictures don’t really do it justice; I blame the late afternoon sun in my sewing room! The plan is to do all gray accessories, with gray gloves, shoes and hat (and potentially a purse) to complement it. I also have been thinking of lining the front skirt drape with a lovely gray to bring out the gray accessories as well. Will think on that!

So, what do you think? Is it weird that I am wearing red to my daughter’s wedding. (Not that I care!)  I figure that as long as Meghan is happy, that is all that matters!

Stay tuned for shoes!  Ahhh….Shoes….

How do you store your fabric?

A recent thought came to be concerning fabric storage. How do you store your fabric stash? Everyone has different ways to store their fabric, based on their individual circumstances.

The way I store my fabric is based on what type of sewing space I had over the years. When we lived in base housing on Camp Pendleton years ago, I only had a small table stuffed in the corner of our bedroom dedicated to sewing. So I used those plastic tubs you can get at Target to store fabric under the bed. It wasn’t really efficient, as you had to dig through the tubs when you needed something. But for the time being, it worked. When we bought our first house in Temecula, I did have a little more room, but still no dedicated sewing space. I would set up a table in the bedroom or use the dining room table if necessary.

Now I find that I have an entire bedroom upstairs to dedicate to my sewing. Yay! (Although I do have to share a closet with my husband’s military uniforms!) I have space for both my quilting fabric and my fashion fabric. So I thought I would share some of my ideas for storing that fabric stash!!

1:             Separate the fabric for quilting and the fashion fabric (also called dressmaking fabric). It is easier for me to keep them separate as they are used for such different projects.

2:             Prewash. Whenever I bring new fabric into the house, I always prewash it before I store it. If it is machine washable, it gets washed and dried and then folded and put away. Always. This way I never have an issue wondering if I have pre washed and shrunk a fabric.

3:            I always run an iron over the fabric to get the worst of the wrinkles out and then fold the fabric and put it away in the drawers.

4:            If for some reason I can’t prewash that day, I leave the fabric in the bag I brought it home in on my sewing table. This reminds me that it is unwashed.

Currently I have two “dressers” for storing fabric. The one I use for my fashion fabric is an older blue 4-drawer dresser that used to be in my son’s bedroom when he was little. It is not the prettiest thing, but it serves its purpose. All the fabric is folded and then placed in the drawers organized by type.  (And the drawers are lined with tissue paper). One drawer for wool, one for silks and silk like, one for linings and one for misc. It works out really well and it is easy to find something when I need it.

For the quilt fabric, I use a plastic 3 drawer-rolling cart (like you get at Target). I keep solid quilting fabric in one and the printed fabric in another. The top drawer is used for misc quilting stencils and perhaps some unfinished quilting blocks.

I also have a large metal shelving unit that I use for books, sewing magazines and all my notions. I use the colored printed boxes that you can get a Michael’s very inexpensively. (Perhaps 5 for $10?). They are called photo boxes and used for storing pictures for scrapbooking. I label them and it keeps everything organized. One each for thread, ribbons, sewing notions, zippers, bias tape, etc. They look really pretty sitting on the shelf and it is so easy to find what I am looking for.

So that’s my way of organizing my sewing room and fabric stash. Everyone has different needs for their sewing and is at a different place in their life. This works for me, but might not work for everyone.

So how do you store your fabric??