The fabric stash has already outgrown it’s original home, and is beginning to spread across the entire house.  And yet that beautiful little number you’ve just spotted is calling to you.  So pretty, so perfect for that certain something you are sure you will be making one day soon.  Yep, decision made, you just HAVE to have it.

Why is it so very hard to say no to buying new fabric?

1. It’s just so darn pretty/cute/colourful…

Words cannot quite convey the delight of finding that exquisite pattern or perfect colour combination, like nothing you’ve seen before or will ever see again.  Too quaint, too beautiful, too petite for it to be left in the shop.  It cries out to be transformed into something lush (what exactly you are not entirely sure right now, but that is a detail that can be worked out later).

Fabriholic  n: one who can’t control the urge to buy fabric They don’t have a project for.  Again.

2. You need something very specific for a project

There is something about buying a new pattern that, whilst you have so very much fabric at home you could usefully apply here, has a picture on the front made in THE most adorable fabric that you simply can’t imagine using anything else.  And so you enter into a drawn out period of tracking down said fabric before you can even contemplate making this particular piece, simply nothing else will do.

Fabricologist n: 1. one who has perfected the art of stashing fabric.  2. an expert accumulator of cloth intended for future use.

3. What if you never see it again?

We’ve all been there.  We were strong, we said no, we walked away.  We regretted it.  And when we return to put right that mistake of a decision, disaster, the fabric had gone.  And so begins the quest to find it again, one day, always holding out hope that you will spy it in a bargain bin or a random web-search.  And you swear, never again will I do this.

Nothing haunts us like the fabric we didn’t buy.

4. It was a bargain

Half price sales.  Beautiful fabric.  Need I say more?

Too much fabric?  I think the phrase you are looking for is too small sewing room.

5. It makes us happy

At the end of the day, irrational as it is, those little piles of pretty fabrics bring us an inordinate amount of joy.  Yes, strictly speaking we don’t NEED to buy more, but then you could argue we don’t actually NEED a lot of things in life.  Happiness however is a commodity you can never have quite enough of.  And if that can be found through the ever growing mound of loveliness that is our fabric stash, well really is that so very wrong?

You can’t buy happiness but you can buy fabric, and that’s pretty close.

If you love to sew, why not sign up to my Creative Sewing Challenge?  You’ll receive a new prompt each month to inspire your sewing.  Sign up below, or find out more here.