Use what you have!

Well it's officially begun, April is "use what you have" month. This means no more buying crafts supplies for a whole month! I signed up for this group on Flickr and I think it's such a great idea. It goes against my natural instinct, which is to acquire crafts supplies and squirrel them away in little kits and boxes and baskets all over the place. But I have been amassing a lot of fabric and notions over the last little while, so maybe it won't be too hard after all.

For our anniversary Bradley bought me the fabric in the picture above and the grab bag pictured below (among other things). They're all from a quilting store, except for the one in the middle which he actually found at Goodwill - it's a vintage pillow case and I think the fabric is SO beautiful. He gave me this one in advance - feeling that an old pillowcase wasn't quite anniversary-present-worthy, but it is actually my favourite. And as if that wasn't enough, I went on a last minute thrift shopping expedition on Friday with my friend who loves textiles as much as I do. We went out to Islington and visited the quilting store that Bradley had found. They don't have any reproduction fabrics, but it's a nice store. Then we visited the Goodwill in that neighbourhood and also a yarn store. Believe it or not, I'm all yarned out and didn't actually buy anything there.

I found these pillow cases at the Goodwill store, they have nice material, and I thought the colours were well coordinated. I like light blue and brown together. The background is a tablecloth I found a little while ago from my local Goodwill.
Here's a detail of the floral fabric:Speaking of my local Goodwill, that's where we went next. I found more great material in the sheets department. The pink gingham is really really nice, you can just tell when the fabric is good quality. It's kind of soft and heavy and smooth.
And finally I bought this crazy garment bag. I thought the fabric was kind of hip but a bit too much at first glance, but then I had an inspiration for the perfect project for it. It's something I've been meaning to make for ages, which I think will be really cool and quite useful, but I'm going to keep it a secret until it's finished!