Spring Sprucing?

It's been raining for almost a week. yay! The garden is starting to lose the bare look of winter and brave little flowers are poking their heads out.

I used to have masses of violets, but something happened to them, I'm not sure what. I could accuse the Round-up king, but that wouldn't be nice of me, would it? I know I've been guilty of pulling out many plants, trying to keep them from overtaking the entire flower bed. But today, in February? I am more than delighted to see them poking up once again.

While it's wet outside, I've felt the urge to spruce up inside. Last week it was the closet, this weekend it was the fabric.

Every year our local quilt shop has an after Christmas sale, and I go SHOPPING. When the back room is 50% off, I leave self-control at home and go for it. I think I came home with about 77 yards of fabric. This is what it looked like.

For the past two months, it has been in bags on the floor of my sewing room. sigh. I ALWAYS, ALWAYS prewash my fabric before putting it away. I've had too many episodes of wayward dye to ever want to repeat the experience. I wash the fabric with a bit of orvus and color-catchers. What doesn't bleed goes into the dryer. What does bleed goes through the washer again, with either retayne or synthrapol and more color-catchers. I wash until the bleeding stops, and if it doesn't stop after 3 or 4 times, I get rid of it.

This is what my sewing table looks like this morning. Not quite so nice and neat as it was post-Christmas, is it? I'm about one-third of the way through the pre-washing, and I need to take a break and get caught up on ironing before I add more to the pile.

Once it is pressed, the fabric will be separated by color or theme and put in one of the stash storage cabinets that I showed you a while back.

And now, the fabric is calling me. I'd better go see about making the wrinkled pile smaller and the neat and tidy piles larger. Wish me luck!!