When The Hobby Starts Getting Serious

 

I remember how 'scary' it was when I bought my first complete bolt of fabric from the fabric store.  That seemed like such a huge outlay of money.  Pfft!  NOW it's nothing to drop $40 at a time on fabric.  No more getting 1/4 yard pieces or 1/2 yard pieces.  The employees soon get to know your name, you are in the store so often. (Post office clerks get to know you too, from all the packages you send out).

 

You switch over to 'bulk' once you figure out how much of each item you use.  I used to buy the 14 gauge electrical wire that I use for wiring wings at the hardware store by the foot, but after getting 70 feet one time, I ended up just buying the entire 500 foot roll.  Been doing that ever since.

 

And thread!  I kept all the empty spools one year just to see how much I was going through.  The box had 75 empty spools in by December. That's when I switched over to cone thread.  I didn't have the stand to put them on so they'd feed into the sewing machine right, but that was easy to fix.  I used a coffee mug to hold the cone, took some wire and wrapped it around the top of my sewing machine to make a thread guide, and that worked really well.  Then someone bought me one of those plastic holders with the bent wire top on it for me and I've used that since.

 

A REALLY GOOD purchase was one of those wooden spool racks.  I had one for the smaller spools (it hangs on the wall or stands up on it's own).  They make them for the cone thread too.

 

And when your 'craft room' spills out into your kitchen and living room......well you probably are really serious about sewing!