Sew far to go

Welcome to Yards to Go, the blog documenting my sewing exploits. If you have come here from my knitting podcast, Stash and Burn, thanks for visiting!

I started sewing sometime in the late 1990s on a used Singer sewing machine that gave me nothing but trouble. At the time I made lots of purses, bags, and started making clothes. A few years later I got a lovely Bernina, which sews beautifully, but it got some direct competition from knitting, which I picked up in 2002. Over the years, my interest in sewing has waxed and waned, but my interest in acquiring fabric did not. Going into a fabric store usually resulted in taking something out with me. Occasionally I have gone through the stash and carted bags and bags away, but when I moved last fall I still brought more than eight good-sized containers with me.

Yikes.

At the beginning of this year, I felt completely overwhelmed and resolved to just get rid of it all. That was it. I was done. I had been sewing on and off for years and I didn't feel like I was improving or that the process was getting easier. It just felt like I had a lot of fabric. At the same time could I really just get rid of it all?

The weather started to warm up and I started thinking about sewing dresses. Visions new curtains danced in my head. Maybe I could make stroller bags out of that cute Japanese linen. And another line of thinking came about.

Perhaps if I pushed myself to sew more often, I would get better. The process would feel less daunting. And maybe I could even make more of my clothes. So I started trolling sewing blogs and decided to give it a try with one catch: I have to use the fabric that I already own.

I decided to start this blog for two reasons. One, to have a place to document the use of my stash. I hope over time to reduce what I have by more than half. To have a manageable stash of fabric that allows for me to purchase for projects that I want to make. Two, I get so much from the online sewing community--tutorials for projects, ideas for patterns, and reviews and hints on patterns that I am making--that I thought I should contribute by sharing what I am learning in the process.

My plan is for this to be a sewing blog, but I am an avid knitter so I will probably feature a bit of knitting along the way.