Category Archives: crafting

Sometimes You are Going to Give a Gift Card

Sometimes You are Going to Give a Gift Card

I’m sure I speak for many crafty folks out there as well as myself when I say: every year, I vow to make all handmade gifts. I’ve been at this game long enough to know if you even want a prayer of doing it, you have to start in July. I’ve got that part down. But somehow, despite starting early, I never manage to get my handmade gifts done. By the time you are reading this, at best it is two days before Christmas. I want to tell you that it’s OK to just set that glue gun down. Here are some scenarios when its OK to forgo the handmade gifts:

  • When the list gets too long – Way back in July, I planned on making handmade gifts for all of the gals in my knitting group. In July, it seemed like a sterling idea. At the time, there were only 5 people in the group. But by November, the groups ranks had blossomed to over one dozen. Making over a dozen handmade gifts no longer seemed reasonably achievable. You can make 3 or 4 handmade gifts, but once you get into double digits, you have surpassed handmade and entered the territory of mass-production.
  • When the recipients aren’t going to be into it – Crafty people LOVE handmade gifts, and we know and greatly appreciate the level of effort and the expense that goes into making them. But if you are gifting people who are not crafty, they may not appreciate the effort. One year, I had a sister-in-law offer to give me money so that I could “buy good gifts next year”. Do not craft for these people.
  • When it’s going to make you stressed out – If making the handmade gifts is going to require you skipping sleep, staying up late nights, and yelling at your family to leave you the heck alone then you are not going to derive any pleasure from this gift giving effort. You would be better off to scale back your plans, make some popcorn and watch a movie with the kids.

If you find yourself picking up a handful of gift cards tomorrow, do not despair. They don’t have to be the “worst gift ever”. For example, one of the knitters in my knitting club lost her father this year. As a result, she’s just not feeling the big gift-giving spirit. But she found a simple but thoughtful way to come up with gifts for her family and at the same time honor the spirit of her Dad. It turns out, he loved coffee and Lindt chocolates. So, she is giving everyone in her family a little bag with a few Lindt chocolates and a gift card to a local coffee shop. On the cards, she wrote “Have a coffee with Dad”. In doing so, she’s not just giving chocolate and coffee, she’s giving everyone an opportunity to share memories of Dad.
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What to Do When You Run Out of Fabric


The “go to” defense of quilters accused of buying too much fabric is quite often “I have to buy it now because later it will all be gone!” This is a very valid claim. The way the quilting industry works is, most fabric lines are printed once or twice and then they are “retired”, never to be printed again. What if this was your favorite fabric? What if you run out in the middle of an important project? What are you to do? Here are some practical suggestions:

  • Find It at Another Shop – Obviously, you already checked the Local Quilt Shop where you made the original purchase. Now it’s time to look elsewhere, including online. You will need to know the designer and the name of the fabric line. You will find that information printed on the selvage. Many of the smaller shops, especially the online shops on eBay and ETSY, do not sell out as quickly as the larger brick-and-mortar stores. They are more likely to have inventory left long after the big shops have sold out. I was delighted to find fabric to make curtains from the same line as a baby quilt I made for my son this way.
  • Reverse Google Image Search – Believe it or not, I have successfully used a reverse Google image search to find fabric but I only learned about this capability recently. Go to the main Google search page and in the upper right corner there is a link called “Image”. Click there, upload an image of your fabric and see what Google can find. This works best for very distinct prints, but it does work. I once found some extra green and red candy-stripe fabric that I “needed” to finish a Christmas project.
  • Facebook – There are many Facebook Groups for Quilting and Sewing. Join some and upload an image of your needed fabric. You’ll be surprised at how many people not only know the name of the fabric line and designer, but also have some to spare. Quilters are inherently very generous people, they will share. I once found the very same vintage fabric from Denmark that my grandmother used to make a knitting needle case over 40 years ago!
  • Make Do – Well, you tried all of the above and are still out of luck. You are going to have to make do without it. Either find something “close enough” to finish your project, or deliberately mix it up and thereby “hide” your fabric shortage with some fabric that is completely different. Sometimes the most beautiful quilts are the improvised ones. Remember, that is how quilting got started – by cutting up old garments, flour sacks and other random bits and scraps.

Running out of fabric isn’t the end of the world. But, remembering those times that you did will be good justification for buying “just a little extra” next time!