Pattern Stash!

Some people have fantasies of rolling around naked in piles of hundred dollar bills... Others... sewing patterns...

 

You know how it is. You're a collector of vintage patterns. You must have them. Suddenly you find yourself overwhelmed with them. And then it's not just ~vintage~ patterns anymore because you have children. And then those children have "Melody" dolls (American Girl clones to the uninitiated). And then there are Barbies and baby dolls who must be clothed. Next thing you know, you're drowning in sewing patterns both vintage and modern AND vintage reissues.

 

One day you realize you have a problem: Fabric Super Store pattern sales. 99¢ pattern sales are like the Siren's song luring sailors to their doom. You try and stay away. But with a "10 pattern limit", you figure it's not that bad and that you can stop anytime. Sure you can.

Well, as I said, one day you look around you and realize, "Hey! I can't get in my sewing room. The piles of patterns are a recipe for a massive trip and fall injury!" So you attempt to categorize them by type. Which works OK for a while. You have "Women's Vintage", "Current Women's", "Childrens' Vintage", "Current Childrens'" and "Costumes, Accessories, Crafts, Toys". So you organize away. Now if you've got a photographic memory, all is well. But you don't. So what happens? Next time you run in the fabric store for "just one thing" knowing FULL WELL that there's a pattern sale on (you sly dog), you sit down and take a little "me time" perusing the pattern books. And you jot down the pattern numbers on your handy dandy notepad and then get the (Limit 10 per customer, please) patterns and off you go home.

Now the thing is, you saw some AWESOME patterns that you'd REALLY like to make. But what you DON'T realize is that you already HAVE said pattern(s) because you bought them LAST TIME. But you won't realize it. Not for a few MONTHS anyway. So what's a geekgirl to do? You saw this coming right?

Yeah. You write a handy little spreadsheet with columns for "Pattern #", "Pattern Co.", "Category", "Description", "Size", "Picture" (because you're thinking about that database app for your mobile phone that you want your Hubs to write for you) and "Notes". And you grab a bin and get to work. And it goes FAST all things considered. You groove to your favorite tunes on your music player and tippity-tap-tap goes the keyboard because the "Cows That Type" aren't in your office going all "Click Clack Moo". You're a much faster typist than a typing cow, anyhow.

So you get done (except for the UFO patterns that are lurking around) and realize a couple of things:

1. You don't have THAT many patterns when they're all corralled. After all, the bins still have room in them, so you MUST have room for more.
2. You've "only" got 165 patterns and you know people with more than that.
3. That spreadsheet you've got? Can be PRINTED and taken with you to the fabric store. Which would require a teeny bit of preparation on your part, but you can do that. Right?

All that remains is to stay out of the fabric store until you've sewn down some of the FABRIC STASH. Which we'll talk about in a later post.