Fabric Fads

I enjoyed a trip down to Birmingham on Monday and was able to accomplish several errands. I sadly wasn't able to get to one of them, due to becoming thoroughly lost. I had printed out maps and researched my route, but without GPS or someone to help navigate, I could only get so far! I've always been proud of my map reading skills, but this proved the point that we should probably invest in a navigation system.

But, back to the topic at hand. One of the items on the agenda was visiting King Cotton, a great fabric store I had heard about from several people. I'm rethinking my kitchen fabrics a bit and wanted to look at what they had. Well, they had a lot! Their store is set up a bit differently; it has rows and rows of tidy samples folded and hanging by colorways. You can check out these large samples and take them home for several days to try out. When you know what you want, they cut the yardage from the bolts in the warehouse and send you on your way. It's not seconds or remnants, but because the owner buys in bulk, she gets a good price and passes it on to the customers.

In addition to finding several promising samples and chatting with knowledge sales staff, I discovered that they actually have a branch store only 30 minutes from me! So I could check out the samples in B'ham and return them in Huntsville. Of course, I had to take advantage of this, so I came home with several fabrics to test out.

I narrowed down the pile quite a bit once I got home, and hung my favorites up for review. I really like the two on the left. I'm considering one for the sink skirt and one for the window seat cushion.

They are more per yard then I usually spend, but I think I can get away with just a little splurge on these two visible areas and then use some inexpensive solids and subtle prints where I need a lot of fabric. The little yellow sample between my two favorites is only $3.99/yard at my favorite remnant place, so I should be able to stretch my budget pretty far with that!