I fell off my stash enhancement austerity program by buying several yards of prints by Sue Beevers; here they are in a pile waiting to be washed earlier this week. She came to speak to my quilt guild last month, and her presentation was very fabric-centric—how she gets inspired for her designs, how she comes up with the colors, ideas for using the different prints, those sorts of things, with plenty of slides to illustrate all this. Right up my alley, basically. She had brought some fabric to sell after the meeting, and I was very close to buying a piece of yardage when another quilter snatched it up right in front of me, so I decided it was not meant to be and went home, fabricless. But I kept thinking of that print, with the snail-inspired spirals and soft colors, so when it was still in my head weeks after the meeting, I decided to see if I could find some even though it was from an older collection. I turned first to QuiltShops.com, which makes it easy to search many stores at once, and found the snails. It was a different colorway than the one I’d been coveting, but still Karen colors, and it was even on sale. I put it in a cart, then got distracted and didn’t finish the transaction. When I went back a few days later, I couldn’t immediately find the fabric again and got anxious, so when I did locate it, I knew I was buying it. By this time, I’d started pulling fabrics from stash for what I think is going to be my next quilt project, and some of the other Sue Beevers prints looked like they’d go great with the focus fabric I had pulled, so I added those to my cart, too. I was very pleasantly surprised with how fast my order arrived and even more surprised to find a handwritten note in the box along with my purchases. I’ve never had a bad experience with any of the QuiltShops.com shops, but Quilt This really stands out as good one. So yes, I brought more stuff into the house. On the other hand, I did put three bags of clothes out for charity pickup this morning, so considering that, it’s a net reduction of stuff. Small victories are often the only ones I can manage to achieve.

(Note: none of the people and businesses I’ve mentioned in this entry have paid or have promised to pay me, in either money or fabric, to say nice things about them.)