Spinning gold out of cheap cotton

above: Annamoa and Barnslig I
below: Barnslig II, the Cecilias

Warning: this entry is strictly for fabric nerds and/or people who care to read my random thoughts about project design. No finished projects here, folks.


...will be one of this winter's challenges. I returned from an outing to Ikea with five new friends: two pre-cut Barnslig fabrics (3 meters = $8!), a one yard-plus chunk (clueless clerk seemed unfamiliar with concept of remnants and gave me what was left on bolt) of birdy Annamoa, and two one-yard cuts of Cecilia (this one and this one). Buying fabric at the Ikea counter involves stepping out of the store's seemingly flawless Northern Europe efficiency and into a dark corner of some second-world nation: there are no employees staffed to the area, and when you give up ringing the broken bell and find someone to help you from elsewhere, they spend oodles of old-fashioned effort to measure, cut, hand-search a binder for the product list, replace the bolts on shelves (while you wait? but of course!) and hand-write the barcodes and yardages on a plastic bag. I guess this is the fate meted out to those of us who stubbornly refuse Ikea's pre-sewn wonders and insist on turning to our machines. If any Ikea executives are reading this: please visit a national chain fabric store. They use machines that do all this work for you!

Okay, so on to what will come from this fabric. Herein lies the challenge. All but the Annamoa is thin cotton (flimsy or gauzy, depending on one's mood) and thus better suited to bedding than children's garments. But children's clothes are my thing, so I'm thinking about:

• linings for outerwear made of fleece or corduroy
• quilts that call for printed fabrics (I got this book for Hannukah and am scheming...)
• travel bags for dirty laundry
• quilt backings
• appliqués
• summer tops, pjs or shorts
• overalls or pants for pre-mobile babies

For the Annamoa, which is more of a home dec weight, I can imagine overalls or a spring/fall coat (with warm lining)...but the pattern is so large, its punch will be lost on a small body. This may be better suited to a wall hanging or large bag for a grown-up.

A few more baby gifts are in the works. If I get my son to nap properly in the coming days, I'll post again before I return to work.