Fabric Tragic

Yup, that pretty much describes me at the moment!! Two consecutive trips to two fabric stores and one egger-on = a whole lotta fabric!!

*Disclaimer:* All fabric was bought with an actual purpose in mind (which, of course, makes it completely justified :) )

Quite often when buying fabric I tend to buy with a very (very!) vague idea in mind of what I plan to make but, more often than not, I buy because:

• Its cheap/on sale (Can't go past a good sale now, can we!! I blame the Dutch ancestry for that one :) )
• Its one of 'my colours' ("Ohhh look its 'my colour' red!!" Must buy!!)
• Its pretty and I like it (Gahh!! One of the worst types of fabric tragic as its often not practical or doesn't fit in with my existing style/wardrobe)
• If I buy it, no one else can have it (Ahh yes this one takes the fabric tragic crown for all the wrong reasons. Remind you of a small child with sharing issues, anyone?? What happens if it falls into the hands of an inexperienced sewer who won't do it justice or *gasp* destroy it!! It needs to belong to someone who will be able turn it into the beautiful garment it deserves so I must buy it to 'save it' *instead it will languish in the bottom of my stash for years, waiting for that day*

Recently I've been making a real effort not to buy any fabric until I actually need it, instead sewing fabric from my stash. Well, sounds all good in theory until... you have your heart set on striped navy/white stretch knit for this project. Oh yeah, I thought, how hard can it be to find this? How hard?!? HOW HARD!?!?!?! Let me tell you, its near on IMPOSSIBLE to find decent stretch knit fabric in this corner of the world, let alone what I'm looking for. I looked in the major fabric stores here in Perth (Cannington Spotlight you officially suck when it comes to stretch knit!) then tried all the online fabric stores in Australia, then in a last ditch effort, I found *the perfect match* in Harts Fabric all the way over in America. Well that would have been fine if it wasn't for paying more for the postage than for the actual fabric!! *gulp* So long story short sometimes it doesn't pay off to wait until you have something in mind before you buy that fabric. Sometimes that's half the fun racking up a huge reasonable stash and go 'shopping' in your own fabric stash. The best part? Its *free*. :)

How do you fabric shop? Are you disiplined and need to have a project in mind before you buy a piece of fabric? Or do you 'shop n stash' like I do until the perfect project comes along?