Think before you Spend

Think before you spend.

Do I need this or do I just want it?

When it comes to quilting, there's an ongoing joke about how buying fabric is a separate hobby. The constant push for consumers to buy, buy, buy, and build their stash has bypassed the actual art of making a quilt.

I recently read someone's comments about how expensive fabric is these days and how she remembers her grandmother telling her that fabric was $0.25 a yard. I was curious, so I did a Google search and found that between 1900 and 1910, fabric was indeed $0.25 a yard. Never in my 63 years of life have I ever witnessed fabric being priced at $0.25 a yard. Heck, my own mother, who passed away last year at 91.5 years old, never saw fabric priced at $0.25 per yard. I think there might be some exaggeration going on there.

Here's the thing: with more and more people getting into quilt design and fabric design, and the downturn of our economy, the push will become greater than ever to get us consumers to buy, buy, buy.

Do I have a fabric stash? Yes.

Why? Because years ago I chose the wrong mentors.

Those mentors were of the mindset that 'you never know when you'll need it.' If ever there was a saying that I no longer believe in, it's that one. I've downsized my stash of fabrics considerably. I've given countless yards of fabric away to friends, 4-H, and Quilting Guilds. I have a hard and fast rule of 'shop my fabric stash first' before I purchase any fabrics for a new project.

I’m proud to have raised a daughter who buys project-specific fabrics and has only one project going on at a time.

It didn’t escape my notice when I saw people posting on Facebook about how they got in trouble for getting caught up in the pandemonium and purchasing more fabric than they had budgeted for when they went to the ‘going out of business sales at JoAnn Fabrics’ before they closed their doors for good. Those consumers played right into the company’s hands with their panicked purchases of tons of stuff that they may never use and obviously really didn’t need. I read countless stories of women buying 100 or more yards of fabric simply because they were in a panic about that store closing as if there would never be other options on the Internet or in person in which they could purchase fabric.

Did I go to JoAnn Fabric’s going out of business sale? No. And frankly, I wasn’t even tempted.

We as a society need to become mindful consumers. It's not only about buying more than we need it’s about not buying more than we can afford.