Buying with a purpose... mostly

A bit of backstory for today's post:

I'm a craft supply hoarder..  yeah, I said it.  I have a TON of craft supplies, to make a TON of things.

I've tried to be more purposeful in my acquisitions though, only buying something if I have a specific project in mind for it, rather than, "That's cool, I'm sure I could use it for something!"  So, with that in mind, I've seen a LOT of awesome things in the many craft stores here and I've managed to talk myself out of most of them.

One thing I've always been able to talk myself out of is fabric.  Sure, I have a pile of fabric with crafting in mind, but it's all stuff to be recycled - such as old sheets and clothes.  As I can recall, I've never actually bought fabric for craft purposes.  

Recently, I had talked myself out of buying a small roll of fabric that had foxes on it.  I love foxes and have a little collection of fox things.  I had the fox fabric in my hands and thought I had to have it.  Then I thought... But what would I DO with it?  I didn't know, so I put it back.

Now, here I am, embarking on a journey to start making Arabian costumes.

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Yesterday, during my "kidnapping", we stopped by a couple of craft stores.  I was curious if I might find any fabric that could work for the costumes.  The stores have hundreds of... squares, maybe they are called?  (I know next to nothing about any sort of actual fabric crafts - quilts and so on)  They were small bundles of fabric in many, many different colors, designs, textures...  I liked the idea of getting some of these little samples of fabric, since I don't need much.  Unable to talk myself out of buying some fabric for the first time...  here's what I ended up with.

A couple of plain pieces with a nice texture.  My idea for these is to try some hand embroidery on them:

I think this is the best type of pattern I found for the specific purpose I was looking for.  I might do some hand embroidery on it too, for more color, texture, and accents:

I thought this one was nice and I have some costume ideas for it too:

These are just gorgeous.  I've had the idea to do a "Jingle horse" costume for a while now and I think they might work for parts of that:

Oh, and the fox fabric I mentioned at the beginning of this post?  They had it, in various colors, in these little packs and...

I got the orange one.