Monday is all about Fabric – #13 – Vie de Boheme + thoughts on purchasing only the kind of fabrics you are drawn to

Hello Quilt Makers!

Sadly, (with more than enough self pity) I have been put on a fabric lock down.

Whole collections are sometimes hard to justify purchasing, especially when you look around your sewing space and see fabric in every nook and cranny.

Sometimes I look around and see fabric that I know I was looking at five years ago.

The thing is (and I know that most of you will agree with me) that sometimes it’s not the right fabric.

I know that you know that I make A LOT of quilts, so you can’t say I’m not using my fabrics.  I’m using them daily.  And I rarely purchase fabrics for specific quilts.

I just like to buy fabric.

And I want it to be there when I need it.

Sometimes the budget just doesn’t allow this.

And I have been working on the past year to purchase only those fabrics that I tend to lean to in my quilts.

I tend to like smaller prints that don’t have an overwhelming amount of different colors on them, but not quite tonals either.

I’m learning with each passing day to pay attention to fabric pulls and that I don’t have to have every print that pops up in your IG feed.

So…..fabric lock down.  As much as possible.

With that in mind, sometimes a fabric comes along that you just can’t pass up.  So I snuck in a little.

This is what I’m talking about.  I wanted THE.  WHOLE.  LINE.  Naturally.

I saw this collection in Pat Bravo’s feed and I knew I had to get my little fabric greedy hands on them.

I chose this one print in both colorways  available, since it was the one that struck me first.

The print is called Vie de Boheme, which is french for Bohemian life, and these are both from her newest Indie Boheme line.

Here’s the line.

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The birds spoke to me the most.  One, I love birds.  Two, I love the delicate hand which they are drawn with.  And three, the background colors are the yummiest ever.

I want to put them in a hoop and embroider over them, just a few.

See how delicate.  This might be my favorite Pat Bravo print ever.

You can see that both prints have very limited amount of colors.  This is what I tend to lean to.  But they are obviously more than tonals.

I find tonals easy to work with when quilt making, but not necessarily anything to get excited about.

These birds with their sweet little lines, blooms and leaves get me all kinds of happy and excited.

I’m going to fussy cut a few birds to embroider for the wall, and save the rest for future unknown quilts.

You can find:

Vie de Boheme in sunrise (the minty one) for sale here.

and Vie de Boheme in sunset (the corally orange one) for sale here.

One of my current projects is Pat Bravo’s EPP party that she is hosting.  If you haven’t checked out her blog, you should.  She is an amazing fabric designer and if you are watching some of her how to video’s you will see how fun and full of energy she is as well.  Any how to video that can make you smile and laugh is a good one in my book.  I’ll be posting my progress on the EPP party very soon.

I will leave you with these questions:  Do you know what type of fabrics you are drawn to?  Do you make a point of purchasing only those fabrics?  Or are you just a grab what you think is pretty and go kind of quilt maker?  How do you decide what fabrics to purchase when you are not purchasing for anything in particular?

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