The Sewing Chair No. 7

Making Do—and Seeing What Happens

The economy has been making itself known lately. Not in an abstract, economists-on-the-news sort of way, but in the much more personal form of grocery totals, household bills, and the astonishing amount of money that can disappear while buying nothing particularly exciting.

Fabric has not escaped this. Neither have batting, thread, patterns, rulers, or any of the other things that quietly follow a quilter home. I am not criticizing quilt shops or fabric companies. Good fabric costs money to produce, and I want those businesses to survive. I also know myself well enough to admit that I can walk into a quilt shop with no identified need and come out having supported the industry with remarkable enthusiasm.

But right now, I do not need more fabric.

That is not the same as saying I do not want more fabric. Let us remain reasonable.

The truth is that I already own enough fabric to keep me occupied for years. I have kits, unfinished blocks, works in progress, leftover pieces, precuts, yardage bought for forgotten purposes, and fabrics apparently selected by an earlier version of me whose plans were never properly documented. There are also old clothes waiting to be repurposed because I have saved them with the vague but persistent belief that they could become something else.

So I am stepping back from buying and looking instead at what I already have.

This began partly as a financial decision. I canceled the Sew Sampler box because reducing unnecessary spending makes sense right now, but money was not the only reason. How many notions does one quilter really need? At some point, another clever tool is not expanding my creative possibilities; it is simply becoming one more object I have to store, organize, and remember that I own.

My sewing room was beginning to look less like a place where an artist works and more like a hoarder’s hovel with a cutting table. I had plenty of supplies but less room to use them, which rather defeats the purpose. I do not need another box arriving each month to give me more things. I need to rediscover the things already here, finish some of the projects occupying the room, and create enough space to sew without first conducting an archaeological excavation.

I am working through the block-of-the-month programs already in progress. I will still need practical things from time to time—batting, backing, thread, or a specific supply required to finish something—but I do not need to keep accumulating projects and notions faster than I can use them.

As I began thinking about what this could look like, the decision became more than a sensible response to the economy. It started to become interesting.

What can I make with what is already here?

That question sits much closer to the history of quilting than our modern habit of choosing an entire coordinated fabric collection for one project. Quilters have often worked with what was available: worn clothing, leftover dress fabric, feed sacks, household textiles, pieces exchanged with friends, and scraps too useful to discard. They did not always begin with a perfectly arranged bundle containing twenty prints that had already agreed to cooperate.

Sometimes they had to create the harmony themselves.

I want to return to more of that kind of making—not because everything done in the past was automatically better, but because resourcefulness is a skill. I suspect some of us have allowed convenience to do more of the creative thinking than we realize.

This is where the old clothing comes in.

I have clothes that are no longer worn but still contain usable fabric. Some pieces carry memories. Others simply contain too much good material to justify throwing them away. I already know how to take garments apart efficiently, alter clothing, follow clothing patterns, and determine which fabrics need stabilizing. The technical part is familiar. The new challenge is deciding what these materials can become when I stop seeing them as clothing.

A shirt may offer more than yardage. Its pocket, cuff, placket, buttons, or worn edge might become part of the design rather than something to cut around and discard. Different fibers and fabric weights could lead toward quilts, bags, wearables, appliqué, or combinations I have not considered yet. I am not beginning with a need to learn how to handle the clothing. I am beginning with the more interesting question of how to use what I already know in a different and more creative way.

And then there is the crazy quilt.

A crazy quilt feels like the perfect place for this experiment because it does not require every fabric to pretend it came from the same family. It can hold cotton, clothing scraps, embroidery, saved trims, unusual textures, and whatever else proves willing to participate. It offers room to refine decorative stitching without requiring the stitches—or me—to achieve perfection before I begin. It can become part sewing project, part embroidery sampler, and part record of what was already in the house.

It may also become evidence that I should not be left unsupervised with buttons.

I do not yet know exactly what this crazy quilt will look like. I do not know whether it will become a full quilt, a wall hanging, a table runner, or one magnificently overworked block that teaches me enough to make the next one better. That uncertainty is part of the appeal.

I will learn how fabrics with different weights and textures behave beside one another in a quilt. The embroidery will give me a place to refine stitches I already know and pursue the perfection that has been keeping needleworkers occupied—and mildly dissatisfied—for centuries. I know perfection is not actually going to happen, but that has rarely prevented any of us from continuing to negotiate with it. I will also explore balance without a repeating block pattern to create it for me and decide when a section needs one more detail—and, perhaps more importantly, when it has quite enough going on already.

Perhaps the most important thing I will learn is how to rely more on my own creativity.

Coordinated fabric collections are beautiful, and I am certainly not opposed to them. They make it easier to see how colors and prints will work together, and sometimes that is precisely what I want. But they also arrive with much of the visual problem already solved. When I work from my stash, combine unrelated scraps, or cut usable fabric from an old garment, I have to make those connections myself.

I have to decide what belongs together, where contrast is needed, which unexpected combination is more interesting than the obvious one, and how to create unity among fabrics that were never designed to meet. A seam, pocket, worn edge, or limited amount of fabric may influence the design rather than disqualify the material. The limitation becomes part of the composition.

That brings quilting back to its artistry. It asks me to see possibilities rather than simply follow a supply list. The crazy quilt may be the clearest expression of that because there is no single correct arrangement and no coordinated collection waiting to keep me safely between the lines. Every choice—fabric, placement, embroidery, texture, color, restraint, and the occasional complete lack of restraint—becomes part of my own visual language.

Using what I already have may save money, but I suspect it will also make me a more inventive quilter. When the answer cannot always be “buy the perfect fabric,” I will have to look longer, think differently, and create the answer myself.

Working from the stash will teach me other lessons, too. Limited choices may force me to think harder about value, scale, contrast, and color. Finishing the projects already underway will show me what I genuinely enjoy and what I keep avoiding. Repurposing clothing may lead toward quilts, bags, repairs, or garment sewing. Some experiments will work. Others will produce highly educational objects that never need to be seen in public.

And I am genuinely looking forward to it.

What began as a sensible response to the economy is becoming a personal creative challenge. Working within limits may lead me toward combinations, techniques, and ideas I would never discover while shopping for the ideal fabric.

I am not pledging never to enter a quilt shop again. There will be supplies I need and fabrics worth bringing home. I simply want to become more intentional about what I buy—and discover how much creativity emerges when the answer is not always to buy something new.

Maybe doing things a little more like they used to be done will change how I see what I own. A scrap may become material rather than clutter. An old shirt may become color, texture, memory, or structure. An unfinished project may become an opportunity to solve a problem instead of proof that I started too many things.

There is an entire sewing room full of possibilities waiting for my attention. The challenge now is to see them differently.

Who wants to join me? What is waiting in your stash, closet, or unfinished-project pile—and what could you create from it?

~Chris