Month: October 2025

This blog was published in February 2021. It’s no secret I love all things 1930s and 1940s quilts and this little Miss is my very favorite.

I love to write blogs about the history of quilt blocks!  There is so much more than just fabric and thread behind many of them.  I had such wonderful response to my blog about background of log cabins that this week I would like to discuss the ancestry behind this block:

Sunbonnet Sue.

Admittedly, there are very few quilters who are neutral about this young girl.  If you poll just about any group of quilters, strong feelings will rise to the surface.  Several in the group will absolutely hate her.  Then there will be those who love her to pieces. 

I place myself in the second group.  I grew up in the 1970’s – barreling through that decade from age 8 to 18.  Sunbonnet Sue was present in my house through a series of watercolors my mother painted (remember, she’s an artist).  I fell in love with the pictures of the sweet, little girl dressed in a pink pinafore dress and big bonnet.  For whatever reason, they made me happy.  My day could have completely gone to hell in a handbasket, but those prints made me smile (I think it had something to do with my obsession with the Little House books). 

When I moved away, and the Sunbonnet Sue prints were left behind along with my high school yearbooks and stuffed animals, I completely forgot about her.  Until I began to quilt and realized there were not only entire quilts made of Sue, but there were BOOKS explaining how to applique and quilt her.  My love affair with the pudgy, sunbonnet miss was renewed.  Through years, I’ve acquired several Sunbonnet Sue quilts and have made a few blocks.  I do have a Sue quilt in my plans.  I’m collecting fabric now and may begin it this summer.  Currently, I have three hand sewing projects which is really two too many and want to wait until I get one of them complete. 

I’ve never really understood why some quilters have such animosity towards such a sweet, quilty soul.  Afterall, she’s a quilt block born on a dare….And we all love a good dare.

Let me explain.  But first, let’s delve into the ancestry.com DNA of Miss Sue.  Like a lot of us, Sunbonnet Sue began her existence as an English immigrant. Her “grandmother” was Kate Greenaway.  Greenaway was an illustrator of  children’s books and fashion plates.  Her work was published in America in both Ladies’ Home Journal and Harper’s from 1880-1890.  If you look at her illustrations: 

It’s easy to see how her art influenced the American version of her work.  Greenaway and her drawings were nearly as well known here as they were in England. 

Then in 1900 a woman named Bertha Corbett self-published a book called The Sun-bonnet Babies.  

This version of Sue was born in Minnesota and is the one we’re most familiar with.  And this is the one birthed on a dare … or challenge, if you like that word better.  Prior to 1900, Corbett had attended several art schools and had illustrated for many newspapers and magazines.  Around 1897, she began working on her early Sunbonnet Sue’s – lots of rough sketches, but nothing definitive.  Then an artist friend asserted emotion could only be shown in the face.  Corbett countered by saying that pose and gesture could do the job. 

“Prove it,” the artist friend is claimed to have said.  And Corbett did.  She drew a child in a long dress with a simple white bonnet covering her face and hair.  Thus, the American Sunbonnet Sue was born – on a dare.  To prove a point. To assert Corbett’s faith and trust in a little girl and her friends who were destined to invade the art, book, and quilt world.  The longer Corbett drew Sue, the more the little girl evolved.  An apron was placed over the dress to protect it as Sue worked and played.  Her shoes went from the high-button models to patent leather Mary Janes.  In many of Corbett’s drawings, Sue held a four-leaf clover.  When asked about the clover, Corbett said, “The clover is the reason why all succeeding babies were healthy, happy, lucky, and wise.” 

During the time span of Sue’s early popularity, Corbett also wrote poems to accompany Sue’s adventures.  She published two editions of poems and drawings in 1900.  She also wrote the poem “The Unexpected Guest,” which was published in Good Housekeeping in 1898.  It was all good work, and the payments for poems and drawings paid the bills, but Corbett wanted a larger audience.  So, in 1901, she submitted her ideas to Edwin Osgood Grover, who was an editor at Chicago’s Rand, McNally.  Grover had a sister, Eulalie, and Eulalie (a former elementary school teacher) had just begun what would become a solid career writing children’s books.  Eulalie was a bit of a rebel herself.  She thought the primers and early reading books used in primary schools were “colorless and dull.”  She set out to change them into something interesting and colorful.  Eulalie liked Corbett’s drawings and suggested they collaborate on a book.  

Over the course of three decades, the pair published nine books about the Sunbonnet Babies.  They added their masculine counterparts – The Overall Boys – who, for the most part, wore large straw hats which covered their faces.  And here’s where I will blow another quilting gasket:  for years, we’ve called her Sunbonnet Sue.

That’s not her name.

Her name is Molly:

Yes.  That’s right.  We’ve been calling her the wrong name for years.  Corbett named her bonneted darling Molly in The Sunbonnet Babies Primer in 1902.  Later she introduced Molly’s sister, May.

The Sunbonnet Babies became just as popular as Kate Greenaway’s.  At the height of their popularity, Corbett had 15 assistants helping her draw, paint, and publish.  The Sunbonnet Babies were on everything – Christmas cards, booklets, blotters, calendars, valentines, etc., etc. 

Eulalie and Corbett collaborated until 1908, when Corbett, who was clearly not happy with the arrangement, asked for a pay increase of either a flat fee of $2,500 per book contract or a 10-percent per-copy royalty.  We don’t know if Rand, McNally agreed to either demand or not.  It is apparent Corbett moved to another publishing house for her new projects in 1905.  She continued to illustrate the Sunbonnet Baby books for Rand, McNally, but the publishing house received none of her new or other ongoing projects.  Eventually Corbett moved from Minnesota to Chicago to be near her publishing houses.  Here she met other artists, enjoyed other collaborations, and met George Melcher, whom she would marry in 1910.  They would go on to have two of their own Sunbonnet Babies – Charlotte and Ruth.  She would continue to draw, write, and illustrate until 1928, when arthritis ended her career.  She divorced Melcher in 1930 and moved to Los Angeles to be with Ruth.  She died in 1950 at the age of 78. 

And that is how Sunbonnet Sue (or Molly) was birthed into existence – which in no way explains how she evolved into a quilt block.  You can clearly see the drawn Sue:

Looks radically different from the quilty Sue:

How did all of this happen?  By 1910, Sue was so popular that embroidery artists transformed her into a red work image, which still remained strikingly similar to Corbett’s drawings.

For quilts, Sue would have to be appliqued and until this moment in quilt history, most quilts were pieced.  Applique was still a foreign concept to most quilters.  Marie Webster (who I’ve mentioned before – seriously, if you’ve never looked at her applique quilts, do yourself a favor – as soon as you’re through reading my blog, Google her and spend a few moments being inspired and awed by her work) interpreted Sue for applique in her quilt “Keepsake,” which appeared in Ladies Home Journal between 1911 – 1912.

From this point on, quilt designers used Sunbonnet Sue in quilts.  As applique goes, she’s an easy figure to assemble, even for a beginner.  There are only four pieces: the bonnet, the dress, arm, and a roundish figure to represent a hand and a shoe.  Sue reached her height of popularity between the 1920’s and 1930’s.  It was also during this time the Sunbonnet Baby’s name changed from Molly to Sue.  And after this period, the quilt world slowly began to turn it’s back on the cherubic child. 

By the time the 1930’s drew to a close there were at least 200 different examples of the Sunbonnet Sue pattern.  Seventy-nine Sue quilts won the sweepstakes awards at the Kansas State Fair in 1978.  The saturation of the applique pattern in the quilt world soon had quilt historians calling her “too cute, too corny, and too trite.” (Jean Ray Laury, Quit Historian).  And evidently too easy.  Sue was great for a beginner project, but was far too simple for an advanced quilter to consider serious work.

Thus, the quilting revolt on our heroine began. Two groups designed different quilts which outlines her tragic demise.  The Seamsters Local 500 of Lawrence, Kansas created a quilt they named “The Sun Sets of on Sunbonnet Sue,” showing Sue’s death by hanging, lighting strike, nuclear fallout, etc.

The Bee There quilters of Austin, Texas took a different tact.  Their quilt is called Scandalous Sue, and it shows the bad side of Sue.  In this quilt she drinks, smokes, and is pregnant. 

The shock factor is obviously there.  It appears to be a deliberate attempt by the quilt world to rid itself of a saccharine-sweet, far-to-easy quilt pattern from the past.  As a quilt collector and semi-historian, an ample part of my soul rebels against this because I remember how Sue made me happy during the trying days of adolescence.  Maybe it was my over-identification with Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Little House Books.  Or maybe it’s the very grown-up part of me, who at this point in her life, longs for some of the innocence of childhood again. 

However….

Another part of me – the feminist, modern, worked-my-way-up self realizes Sue needs to evolve in order to maintain a place in our quilt world.  In many ways, Sue is a part of a long link in our quilt history.  She began as an English immigrant in 1880.  She survived and thrived through the end of the 1930’s.  During this time span, she took over a good chunk of the marketing world, changed the entire universe of young children’s readers, and made the dark days of the Depression a little bit cheerier.  She spawned another young marketing maven in the 1970’s through her influence on Holly Hobbie. 

It seems a shame she’s kind of been, well, given the shaft by many of today’s quilters.  There are great books about her in today’s market place:

So, if you want to make a Sunbonnet Sue quilt, there is certainly ample opportunity to do so.  However, the pinafore-bedecked Miss is still hopelessly out-of-step with today’s twenty- and thirty-something quilters.  That’s why, while shlepping through stacks of research for this blog, I was soooooooo delighted to find this:

Let me introduce you to Sinbonnet Sue embroidery designs by Urban Designs.  She is great.  She is current.  She is relevant.

And you still can’t see her face.

Did I purchase this embroidery program? 

Absolutely. 

Once a Sunbonnet Sue lover, always a Sunbonnet Sue lover.

I hope this blog has at least spike some interest in Sue/Molly (Molly-Sue?) As a southerner, I love a good double first name).  You may never want to make a block, but at least you know how she got here and the influence she has.

Until Next Week, Quilt On!

Love and Stitches,

Sherri and Felix

Here are a few of my Sunbonnet Sue Quilts.  They’re all made of feed sacks.  They live on a quilt ladder next to my bed.  And she still makes me smile every morning.

References for this blog are:

Bertha Corbett Melcher, Mother of the Sunbonnet Babies, Moria F. Harris.  Minnesota Historical Society (www.mnhs.org/mnhistory), Spring 2010

The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Sunbonnet Sue, Carla Tilghman.  AMS 801, Dr. Hart, December 2012.  Graduate papers.o

And you thought I wasn’t posting today...

I publish my blog on Wednesdays and Wednesdays are also chemo days. So I will continue to publish on Wednesdays, but the blog may be a little late, depending on what time my chemo appointments are.

__________________________________________________

It is time for an update.

I know I need to update everyone because I’ve recycled several old blogs and many of you have asked about how things are going and how I am feeling.  Medically, things were running smoothy.  My medical team was hitting the growth on my pancreas hard and it did itss work.  However, on September 10, we hit a little snag.  There’s a test called Carbohydrate Antigen (CA) 19-9 that counts wonky cells in your body.  The normal count is less than 37 U/mL.   On September 10, my reading was 3,682.  Cancer cells were coming from somewhere else.  More scans were done, and it was discovered a lesion on my liver had decided to show off.

This was terrifying, to say the least.  However, my medical team is wonderful.  Consults were made.  Meds were changed.  Instead of nine-hour chemo sessions every other week, I now have two weeks of chemo and then a week off.  I don’t have to haul a chemo pump home with me.  On a good news/bad news scale, the bad news is this new chemo makes me more nauseous.  The good news is there’s meds for that and they work wonderfully.  And the even better-than-that news is when the med team ran the CA 19-9 this week, it dropped to 1381.  I may be sick as the proverbial dog, but things are looking up!

I will continue this regimen at least through the end of October. 

I am so thankful for modern medical technology.  I am so thankful for my husband who has been my absolute rock since day one.  I am so thankful for my kids who call or text daily to check on me.  I am so thankful for my brother, who is a cancer survivor himself, for being such a great cancer coach.  I am thankful for my guild members who have “baby sat” me to give Bill a break, brought food, beautiful flowers, and helped in so many ways.  And I’m thankful for all my readers who have messaged me offering words of encouragement  and love and most of all prayers.

Cancer is not a sprint.  It is a marathon.

And just for a chuckle —  the funniest thing that has happened on this journey?  I was in the middle of a PET scan at the hospital, and the fire alarm went off.  Could only happen to me.

I also have an addendum to add to the blog I wrote about non-quilty, quilting tools.  If you’re looking for some simple applique shapes, try cookie cutters:

They’re easy to trace around, and the shapes aren’t complicated.  I have a biscuit cutter set which ranges from super small circles to large ones.  It’s come in pretty handy through the years for tracing circles.

Until Next Week,

Love and Stitches,

Sherri and Felix.

This blog was first printed in April 2020

This week I’m dealing with a topic that most quilters love to discuss —  fabric.  Initially, the plan was to continue estimating fabric for an on-point quilt.  We just finished up the process with a horizontally set quilt, and it was natural to just jump to the next step and deal with setting triangles.  However, as I read back over those two blogs, I discovered something: That was a lot of math.   And even though it was pretty simple stuff, there was a lot of numbers tossed around.  I realize while math doesn’t really bother me much, I’m could be in a minority.  So, while we will “math out” an on-point quilt next week, this week, we’re taking a break from number crunching and will talk about fabric – more specifically your stash.

I’ve quilted for nearly 34 years.  In that 34-year time span, I’ve been to a lot of quilt shows, shop hops, and quilt/fabric stores.  I’ve inherited stash from quilters who have passed away or had to stop quilting.  I have bought serious inventory from quilt/fabric stores going out of business.  Yet, by some quilters’ standards, my stash is modest (for those of you who aren’t acquainted with the word “stash,” it’s the extra fabric quilters hoard store to use later).  I know some quilters that have floor-to-ceiling-come-to-Jesus stashes.  I’m not one of them despite what my family says. The last quilting statistics I read about such stockpiles suggested the average fabric stash is worth about $6,000.00.  And I believe every cent and yard of it.  Fabric has become more expensive in the past ten years because world-wide cotton crops have not done well.  One of the reasons I love to go Lancaster, PA is the range of quilt shops there and the reasonable prices.  I can pay for the trip in what I save in  fabric.

I do try to carefully cultivate my fabric.  While on occasion, I will come across some fabric I just love and will purchase the entire bolt, that is the exception and not the rule.  Through the years I have developed a purchasing plan for my material.  This plan allows me to use what I purchase regularly and keeps me from busting my budget.  And nothing gives me a bigger thrill than looking through my stash and finding everything I need to make a quilt. 

The very first thing that must be considered when cultivating your stash is your storage space.  When I began quilting, my sewing machine was in my kitchen because that was the only space available. The house we lived in then was much smaller than our present one and had no extra rooms.  This was actually an ideal situation because my daughter was just a few months old and the location allowed me to keep an eye on her while she played in the family room (which was literally three feet away), and gave me access to our kitchen table (where I cut everything out).  But this set-up meant my storage space was limited to two file drawers and one cabinet.  My time was also limited, between having a small child and a job.  Fat quarters became my go-to fabric purchase because I only made small projects due to time and material limitations.  These took little storage space and I could procure a wide variety without breaking my budget (which in the mid-eighties was admittedly tight).  If your storage space is small, you may want to limit your purchases to fat quarters or other small pre-cuts or to only the amount of fabric a quilt pattern calls for.  You don’t want to over run your storage space.  This makes it difficult to keep it organized and hard to see what you have.  Nowadays, my storage space is much bigger – I have a large studio and a storage closet – so my stash is greater.  I store fat quarters and up to one-yard cuts on small bolts and my flat-folds are stacked on shelves.  Fabric destined for a particular project is kept together in boxes along with the pattern and is labeled.  This works for me – and it’s a process I came to after years of trial and error.  Survey your storage area and research a plan that will work for you.

After you’ve mapped out your storage area, the next issue to wrangle is what to buy.  The longer you quilt, the more opportunities you’ll have to go to fabric sales and shop hops and participate in fabric exchanges.  Quilt shows – especially large ones – are easily overwhelming.  If you don’t go in with a plan or a pattern, you may end up coming home with material you’re not sure what to do with, so it ends up in the back of a drawer or closet.  If you shop with a pattern, it’s easy to come away with what you need.  But if you’re in a situation when you don’t have a pattern in hand or you’re just not sure what to buy, it’s always great to have a purchasing strategy for two reasons.  One, you won’t overspend on fabric you won’t necessarily use, and two, if the sale is a really good one, you will invest minimal cash in resources that will be used to its fullest capacity.  It’s this second reason we’re focusing on with this blog – what I call investment fabric resourcing.  Listed below are the types of material I purchase regularly when presented with a fabric resourcing opportunity:

Solids

Admittedly, solid fabrics are not my favorite.  I like prints because they give movement to a quilt.  However, solid colored fabrics make up the backbone of quilting and quilt shops.  One of the first pieces of information I pass along to beginning quilting students is to obtain a color wheel – either a physical one or one on their phone. 

Use this tool to help you purchase solid fabric.  For instance, if you’re at quilt shop or purchasing from an on-line site, and they have all of their solid green fabrics on sale in March for St. Patrick’s Day.  It’s a sale you really can’t pass up, because it’s all $3.99 a yard.  But you’re not sure what color to purchase with the green fabric for a quilt.  If you take a color wheel and find the green, you will see yellow and blue are next to it and reds are across from it.  All of those colors will work with the greens.  The colors on either side of the color you’re considering and the one directly across from it will harmonize together.   

Another good suggestion is purchase some of your favorite colors.  This sounds like a really simple idea – and in many ways it is – but it’s a good thought to keep in mind.  If you’re making quilts, you’re going to find a way to work in colors that appeal to you.  For instance, I can count on one hand the quilts I’ve made that have a lot of brown in them – approximately three.  But purple?  I work it into every quilt I can.  Same thing with blues, pinky-reds, and yellows.  Buy the colors that make you happy and I can guarantee you’ll use the fabric up.

One of my favorite ways to use solid colored fabric is to utilize it as the “zinger” fabric.  In most quilts I make, there’s one fabric that’s used to give it a little extra “sparkle.”  Nine times out of ten, I use a deeply saturated solid fabric for this.  It’s used sparingly and evenly over the quilt top, usually in smaller patches where a print would lose its integrity because the space is too small to frame it. 

So, when I get a chance to shop for solid fabrics, I use a color wheel and look for my favorite colors in deeply saturated tones.  With this in mind, let me introduce you to my favorite solid colored fabric line:  Painter’s Palette by Pineapple Fabrics. 

I love this fabric more than Kona.  It pieces like a dream, but it’s so soft that it’s wonderful for hand applique or hand piecing.  If you’re interested, you can find it at Keepsakequilting.com.  I recommend you order their color card – it’s exactly the color of the fabrics.  I’ve never been disappointed

Backgrounds or Neutrals

Let me state this first and get it out of the way:  I realize that nowadays, what’s considered a background or neutral can be nearly any color.  I acknowledged that about seven years ago when the Best of Show at Paducah used bright yellow as the neutral.  However, for this blog, we’re using the term neutral and background in its purest forms – all varying colors, shades, and hues of beiges, ecrus, grays, blacks, and whites.  If you’re at a fabric sale and can’t find anything you need or like, you can’t go wrong with a few yards of a neutral.  Neutrals and backgrounds will always be used. 

Personally, my favorite background or neutral always has either tone-on-tone or a fabric with some kind of background figures.  Solid ones almost look too stark (in my opinion), unless you’re making a modern quilt or an Amish one. 

Another background or neutral you may want to add to your stash are the low-volume fabrics.  These are generally neutral colored fabrics that have another colored figure printed on them, but the spaces between the figures is fairly large and the print is so small that the material “reads” solid (looks solid from a distance). Low-volume neutrals are quickly becoming my favorite neutral.

Prints

Prints are my favorite quilting fabric.  They offer color and movement, in addition to nearly endless variety.  Prints fall into four categories:

Small Prints – These prints are so small that they almost look like a solid from a distance.

Medium Prints – I tend to categorize these into fabrics with designs that are no larger than a quarter.

Large Prints – Fabrics with prints that are larger than a quarter.  These are typically used in border work, but if you have large blocks with large units, they work great in those.  What’s even more fun is when you can fussy cut a large print to use in a block unit.

Blender Print – I love blender fabric!  It’s just so versatile. Loosely defined, blender fabric is a tone-on-tone fabric (though typically not a traditional neutral), that can pull two or more of the quilt fabrics together.  It can look like a solid from a distance, or it may offer a bit of contrast, although the colors will be in the same family.  I like them because they tend to give movement to a quilt. 

Within these four categories, you will probably want to have some of the following: Polka dots, checks, plaids, geometric prints, stripes, and florals.  I have found that stripes and checks really make interesting binding, especially if they’re cut on the bias. 

Holiday Prints

I put holiday prints in a separate category from “regular” prints because not everyone purchases them.  I am one of those people.  While I do have a few Christmas, Halloween, and Easter prints, I tend to purchase colored fabric that reminds me of the season (greens, reds, blues, blacks, acids greens, oranges, purples and a bevy of jelly bean colored material). I’ve never been one to buy yards of fabric with Santa Claus, Jack O Lanterns, and the Easter Bunny on them.  In my mind, the seasonally colored fabric could be used even after the season, where as any material with a direct holiday print would be limited in use. 

However, if you’re one of those folks that love holiday prints, let me caution you to keep this collection balanced (small, medium, and large prints, as well as blender fabric).   I would also keep this group small in comparison with the rest of my stash, since it is really limited in its use.

Precuts

To have or not have precuts in your stash is a personal choice.  Some quilters love them and others…not so much.  When they first began to appear on the shelves of my LQS, I was skeptical.  I finally (after much thought and internal debate) did purchase a jelly roll on sale and brought it home to try.

And was completely underwhelmed.  While the fabric selection was stellar, I found the cutting to be inaccurate.  Not all the strips were exactly 2 ½-inches, and some were off as much as a quarter inch.  But fast forward to 2020, and it’s a completely different ball game.  The cutting is accurate (for the most part), the selection is through the roof, and there’s a great deal of variety – charm squares, layer cakes, jelly rolls, cinnamon buns, mini-charms. 

If you find yourself increasingly cutting 5-inch squares or 2 ½-inch strips, you may want to consider adding these precuts to your stash.  If you like patterns that call for precuts, definitely add them to your stash as you find them on sale and in the colors you want. However, if you’re not sure where you stand on precuts, then I would hold off.  If  you find a pattern that calls for 2 ½-inch strips of a neutral, you may find it a better budget deal to purchase a jelly roll in neutrals rather than buying yardage of several different ecrus, grays, or whites.  I personally have found doing this is less expensive and a time saver – no cutting involved.

Personal hint here:  I’ve always found jelly rolls to be “linty” when they’re unwrapped.  To avoid hundreds of stray threads all over my floor and sewing machine, I’ve learned to open them outside and run a lint roller over the top and bottom of the roll before I begin to sort the strips.  While this won’t get rid of all the lint, it does go along way to dispose of most of it. 

With all of these in mind, how do I know how much to buy to build an effective stash?

This question has several issues to consider, and even then, there’s no really right answer.  Most of it has to do with you, your quilting space, and what kind of quilter you are.  When you’re purchasing fabric for a quilt, it’s really easy to round up the yardage and purchase “just a little bit extra” – round that half a yard up to a yard, etc.  So the first two concerns to be addressed concern money and space – can I afford the extra fabric and do I have space for it?  It makes no sense to bust your budget and it’s equally unwise to overflow your storage space. If you can’t afford it and don’t have a place to put the extra, the answer is “No” – don’t buy the extra fabric. 

But … if you have the money and the storage space, you should ask yourself, “How much do I love this fabric?”  I truthfully have used a fabric I’m not crazy about in a quilt simply because it worked well in the color scheme.  Given a choice, once that quilt was done, I would never use or look at that fabric again.  This would not be a wise choice for my stash.  If, in the process of purchasing fabric for a quilt, there is a blender, solid, focus fabric, or print that you love, a half-a-yard extra or so would be a good addition to your stockpile. 

If you’re not purchasing material for a quilt, but simply shopping a sale, it’s always a good idea to bulk up on traditional neutrals and solids – especially in the colors you love.  It’s also a wonderful idea to inventory your stash before you go to a sale – not a hard review, but know what areas are lacking.  If you need blenders, shop for those.  If you need small prints, look for those.  My yardage suggestions are just that – the guidelines that work for me.  If I’m purchasing for my regular quilting stash, I will buy between one and three yards.  Since I applique, I’m constantly on the look out for fabric that will work well for flowers, leaves and vines.   For material with applique potential, I generally buy one-yard cuts. 

However…with focus fabrics or that once-in-a-great-while event when I fall head over heels in love with a print, I purchase five yards.  Why five?  Two reasons – no matter what size quilt I make, five yards will cover the yardage need and probably the binding, too.  The second reason is a manufacturer will rarely ever re-print a line of fabric once it’s sold out.  Buy it now or regret it forever.  And if I love it enough to buy five yards, I will quilt it all up, I promise. 

To sum it up, you’re the one that will have to determine the size of your stash and what it consists of.  The type of quilter will also play into this – do you only piece or do you applique, too?  Do you make primarily bed quilts or wall hangings or small quilts?  Those characteristics play into the size and monetary value of your stockpile.  I encourage every quilter who has fabric storage room, to balance that stash and shop wisely:  Have a list, shop local, use sales and coupons.  But I also caution will leave you with this – if you see a fabric you love, just buy it.  Pay full price and have no regrets.  Life, as it has shown us lately, is too short to wait on somethings.   

Until next week, Level Up Your Quilting!

Love and Stitches,

Sherri and Felix