Sticker shock…
July 1, 2008 
No progress picture of Shores this week. I wasn’t able to get any stitching done on Monday night, because I was frantically finishing up an exchange piece. I hope to find a night later in the week to do some stitching on Shores, but don’t hold your breath!
You may recall me writing about my dilemma with the linen for Shores of Hawk Run Hollow. The chart called for Lakeside Linen’s Vintage Autumn Gold in 40ct.
I knew immediately that I wasn’t going to stitch it on the 40ct, so I went looking for a suitable substitute. I wasn’t even sure, initially, if I was going to spend the money on buying the hand dyed linen, but when I saw it in person at House of Stitches a couple of months back, I fell in love with the color. They had 28ct. in stock, so I bought a fat ½ of the 28ct, and almost immediately started to second guess myself, so I decided to go ahead and order a fat ½ of the fabric in the 32ct.
It seemed to take forever for the 32ct. to come in to the store, and in the end, I got too impatient, and called Lois at Elegant Stitch to see if she had any of the 32ct. in stock. She had one fat ½ left, so I purchased that. It cost $50, which was the same price I’d paid for the 28ct.
Since I’d already asked Linda at House of Stitches to order me the 32ct, I didn’t want to let her down, so I didn’t cancel my order. I figured when the order came in, I’d buy it, and find something to stitch on this new piece of fabric (and the 28ct. I’d previously purchased).
I finally heard from Linda late last week that the fabric had arrived, so on Saturday, I took a trip down to the store, to pick up my fabric. Imagine my surprise to discover that the price had gone up, and the fat half of fabric that had cost me $50 just a month or so ago was now priced at $70! I did a double-take, and almost said I wasn’t interested, but since I’d ordered it, I ended up buying it. (I wasn’t by any means faulting Linda – she didn’t set the price of the linen – the price is comparable to what I’ve seen online this morning at other ONS; if you can find it cheaper at your own LNS, and have been thinking of buying it, don’t hesitate!) That is by far the most expensive piece of linen I’ve ever purchased, and I don’t currently have any project planned to stitch on it. One thing’s for sure – I won’t be using it to stitch “smalls”!
How about you? What’s the most you’ve spent on a yard (fat 1/2, fat 1/4) of linen? Was it worth it?
Waow !!! But why is so expensive? Is it a special linen?
I won’t put that much in one piece but I understand you fell you had to buy it
Anyway, everything is going up and one day, it seems we will have to live on our stash ( I have enough for some years thankfully
)
Well, it is a gorgeous color and will be good for a lot of different projects. But yeah, that’s spendy for sure.
Hmm, I bought a piece of custom fabric from Mindy (SMF) for And They Sinned, but I had a 40% off coupon so it was less than $70. I recently bought a piece of fabric from Countrystitch for Chatelaine’s current “mystery” mandala (the celtic one). I think it was about $60 with shipping. I went through some shopping binges though in the early days of hand-dyed fabrics, where I spent upwards of $200 at one time, but that was for several pieces of fabric. Oh, I bought the fabric for Shores from SB&B when it first came out but I don’t remember what it cost now…Anyway I’d have gone ahead and bought it too if I’d special ordered it; now you just need to wait for the perfect chart to come out for it!
One thing you might think about doing is joining the Silkweavers Fabric of the Month Club. I did this and now have several colors of overdyed linen in my stash, they are all fat quarters. You obviously can’t pick the color that arrives in your mailbox, but each month I thought of something that I could stitch on the color I received.
I cross-stitched the Precious Moments Noah’s Ark on linen and it obviously was bigger than a fat quarter and just like you I nearly passed out when I saw the price, but I with that price I knew I had to finish the project.