Like I needed more fabric in my stash....

 

I stopped at Marden's  on my way home from church yesterday afternoon. 

It is a chain of stores here in Maine, which stocks surplus and salvage goods:  clothing, some furniture, dry (boxed, bottled and canned) foods, home décor, small appliances, you name it, you never know what will be in stock this week.  And the prices are deeply discounted. It's kind of like a treasure hunt, and you can spend more time than you intend to...  I went in to rummage through discontinued yarn.  They always have a lot of yarn, but I tend to forget to check there.  Yesterday, it occurred that since I am lamenting that Bernat is no longer offering their light-fingering-weight baby yarn, that maybe Marden's would have some.  Nope.  They had less yarn than I have seen there before, and can you believe it?  I didn't buy a single skein of what they did have.  Nothing appealed to me.  There were lots of novelty yarns, the type whose mere existence irritates me.  I don't believe it deserves to be offered up as "yarn".  It should be called "wacky craft goods" or something.  How many uses can you dream up for something with dyed rabbit fur puff-balls worked in at periodic intervals?  Unless you have the "fashion" inclinations of say, Lady Gaga or Helena Bonham-Carter.  I hope I'm not offending you, but I think you've probably surmised that my fashion sense is solidly conservative and old-fashioned.  Avant-garde for me is to wear something that is both boldly-patterned and brightly-colored.  Wearing white slacks or shoes before Memorial Day and after Labor Day makes me feel devil-may-care. 

I consoled myself in the fabric department.  They were selling remnants @ 50% off.  Most were in the 1-2 yard range.  Hmmm....just right for making baby clothes.  I am also quite conservative when it comes to baby clothes.  I agree with Michie' (see her gorgeous blog), who opined in one of her posts that she didn't like the clothing to overwhelm the baby.  I don't care for prints to be loud or large or busy.  I love color, but I like it to be soft, and often, pastel.

 I like the trend of using more "muddy" or muted colors.  (Have you seen how Alicia dresses Mimi?  Brava!)  I love simplicity of form, but with judicious touches of detail, like embroidery, tiny bits of piping, and definitely tucks and smocking.  Oh, and fabric-covered buttons on a simple sweater, yummmmm....
For the special-occasion, heirloom type things, you can't beat Michie' or Jeannie Baumeister.

You can see that I found some fabrics I can embrace...they are mostly plain-weave cottons, like for quilting, but I was pretty picky to stick with things that were smooth and soft.  The peachy-pink solid is a fine-wale corduroy.  The one to its right is the palest gingham I've ever seen, you almost can't tell it's gingham---it seems to be like...ramie (remember that stuff?)  and it's very sheer, so will likely do best with a batiste lining (as it isn't as silky as you'd like next to a little'un's skin).    Some of them feel a little like lawn (the posy pinky one on the left above), and one (blue flowers on white in the first picture) has a twill weave and is brushed like flannel.  The little packages of buttons were 2 for a dollar.
Now I need some patterns!