Sister's Outdoor Quilt Show - PART 2: Shop Till You Drop

A week ago today I was in Sunriver with "the girls" having a great time.  We wavered back and forth between hitting up a few new-to-us fabric shops in Bend or hanging around the house sewing.  Guess which plan won out?!  I made a cup of coffee, grabbed my bag and out the door we went!

Our first stop was Quilt Works.  They opened a year ago and we were glad to help them stay open.




I love the "DREAM" sign in the background.  It was a dreamy weekend!  Also behind Barbara on the left was a cool thing I'd not seen before, chalk cloth!  You could write on it like a chalkboard and wipe it clean.  It was pretty neat.  Barb bought some.  I would've have but what would I do with it?




Charissa has a happy day fabric shopping.

Not only did they have a shop but they also has a small gallery upstairs where they were displaying a variety of quilts.  I wish I'd thought to get the names of the artists but I was a little distracted. There was some nice stuff.




The Three Sisters Mountains




Smith Rocks



















While I wasn't bowled over by this pattern I LOVED their selection of Japanese fabrics, which this sample shows off nicely.  I wish I'd bought some now... ah well.




I put this pattern book on my wish list too.  I adore aprons and that middle one is calling my name.  I probably would've picked it up but I'd bought an apron pattern the day before at the Stitchin' Post.

The next place we found ourselves at was at Sew Many Quilts.  That place really had a lot of eye candy!  I didn't take many pictures there but it was a fun place.  I spent too much $$. However I can partially blame my mom, ha!  She's really wanted me to make the quilt in the picture below for her.  There was a local shop that used to carry the kits but she hemmed and hawed for so long they sold out and stopped carrying them.  Then she was really sad that she didn't get it.  So when I walked into Sew Many Quilts and saw it hanging on the wall I called her right away.  They had four kits left when I'd walked in the door and by the time my Mom had finally made up her mind (she had to think about it and call me back) there was just ONE left!




I got the last one!




While waiting to hear back from my Mom I wandered around the store Oooing and Awwwwing.  I really loved this Halloween sample they had on display.  I think I need to get back to embroidering, it's been *ages* since I've done any but as I recall, I really liked it.




So much fabric so little time!

To be continued....

What could it be?

Remember that fabric I bought a month ago? Well, it's slowly but surely on its way to becoming something.... I'm almost there.

Fabric Friday

Remember when my friend Kristel sent me some lovely limey greens for my pending patio quilt? Well in the same package she also sent me some Heather Ross "Mendocino". This is incredibly generous of her! I tried to buy some of this fabric after the fact and it has become very coveted and rather over priced (IMHO). So WOW! I feel very special that she chose me to share a bit of this little treasure with. I also now feel a great deal of pressure to make the coolest thing evar with it! lol I'll have to find some worthy project to put it toward. If anyone has any pattern ideas please let me know, I could use the help... though I do have a vague notion bubbling in the back of my brain. The Mendocino amounts are pretty small so I'll have to be extra creative.



The other thing she sneakily snuck into her package was a covered note book. It's adorable!


I may put this little cutie to work when I pay my bills. I have a little note pad I keep track of spending in, and the one I'm currently using expires in August so this may step up and take it's place. I always need a little bit of HAPPY when paying bills and what better to fix that then pretty fabric that came from a friend?

Last week you may remember me talking about giving up fabric shopping. Laurie over at Dodging the Butterfly asked a couple of great questions in regards to that,

I am curious to know how 2009 went? Is this something you do every other year?

I started to answer her in the comments but realized that I was *rambling* and I thought for anyone else that might be interested I'd answer here.

I quit my day job and became a SAHM in mid 2008. Naturally we went from two paychecks to one. As we adjusted to a new income bracket lots of things that we took for granted were cut. Fancy cable? Out! Eating at restaurants? Out! Excessive fabric shopping? Out! This was probably the first time in my life I'd ever made a conscious effort to not buy fabric. The truth is, if we could have continued to afford it, I never would've given it up. Heh. But as it turns out that was not the case.

At first it took some getting used to. I'd still try to sneak in a FQ or two every trip to the fabric store (when buying other supplies like thread) but after a few times doing that I realized I was "robbing" our grocery fund to realistically have fabric just sit in a bin in my sewing room because I thought it was pretty. It was easier to give up then.

I do have my exception rules: it's okay to buy a FQ or two if we take a day trip out to the beach (which doesn't happen but a couple of times of year at most) or if some other special occasion presents itself, like going out to the Sister's Quilt Show.

It was good to embrace the heart of quilting again, which is use what you have. Yeah, it'd be nice to buy all contemporary fabrics in the same line that are color coordinated and aesthetically appealing but where's the challenge in that? ;^) One of my most favorite quilts I've made to date came out of this thrifty decision. Forced to use only what I had - and a lot of it didn't (and still doesn't) really "go together" I had to get creative in how to use the fabrics to make a cohesive aesthetic. Enter, my Colorworks Quilt.


I only strayed once or twice in 2009 and then after New Year in 2010 with my "resolution" over, I kinda allowed myself a little freedom. Apparently given an inch I'll take a yard mile! By the end of 2010 I was spending more then I should have and was having a hard time reeling back. While a little better off financially due to raises and payed off bills, etc. I was still straining our budget. (Wow - that makes it sounds like I was spending a lot more then I actually was - lol) I'd also bought enough fabric to make more quilts then I'll get around to in the next year so it was easy to say in 2011 I needed to go back to not buying fabric.

In case you haven't checked out my Nu's tab I've got enough to keep me busy for the next five years at least... not to mention my WIP's and UFO's... okay ten years. I really don't need any more fabric. I think it's time to just enjoy the quilting process.

Honestly though, I wonder if that's possible without a little bit of fabric shopping thrown in? lol Maybe I'll keep up my abstinence till I go back to work though and just try to take more vacations. ;^)

WIP Wednesdays

Portland Modern Quilt Guild
I went to the PMQG meeting Thursday night. Click the link to see what we're up to. Want proof I was there? Third picture down (on the PMQG blog), that's me in the black hat right behind the lady in green. What? You can't tell that's me? lol Sadly I didn't win anything this time around but it's still fun to be excited for those who do get the give-a-ways.

For the FQ swap I wound up with a cute little green one - my favorite color!

Hexagon Quilts
Also it was *awesome-possum* to see Tania finish the bulk of her squid hexagon quilt - so cool! We both started our hexagon quilts at the same time. She's super speedy. I loved getting a chance to look at all the fabrics close up. We had a nice little chat after the meeting about hexi's. (Yay for crazy english paper piecers!)
And I didn't know they took a picture of my hex in progress... ::grin:: Yeah, it's been stalled out a little bit but you can see I've finally finished the orange star. Next up with that project is to add in the diamonds around the blue star and attach the teal and orange stars so it's all one big piece. Then I can start working on the outer stars. What? You thought that was it? No, no. I am insane. Ha.


Kaleidoscope Quilt
Sunday was not a good quilting day. I was in the middle of working on my sister's quilt when...

...my kiddo comes into my sewing room with a red permanent marker. Yes. You can imagine what happened next. I nearly knocked her over in my rush to run from my sewing room to the laundry room, quilt in hand, to hit the effected area with a stain remover. The good news is, I was able to get most of it out.

You can hardly see where there's just a little bit of the red pen mark left.

The bad news, it was sitting there mostly stain free but also with a couple of spots of stain remover on it. The stain remover isn't supposed to dry on the fabric so I really needed to wash it out. However, because it's still all mostly pinned together, there's no way I could put it in a washing machine. I knew if I didn't treat it right away though it'd have a permanent mark. So after I sprayed it, I tried my best to rinse out just those spots. There was a big drippy chunk of it that then needed drying. I draped it over the shower curtain rod in the bathroom where it took all day and night to dry out enough to move back into the sewing room.

After all the rinsing and scrubbing I couldn't find any mark once it was dry. Whew~!

Apron
So in the meantime, instead of working on my sister's quilt I started the apron my daughter's been begging me for.

The Lola Apron

She picked out the pink fabric and I chose the coordinating fabrics to go with it. I'm not planning on any rick-rack (as shown in the pattern) since she said she didn't want any. I love how sophisticated this will all look together.

The pink will be the main body, the light grey patterned one will be at the top chest and for the pockets, the solid as the binding.


Here it is all done and sitting on the work table long after everyone else had fallen asleep.


She tried it on the next morning and it fits her perfectly!

Fabric Fix

Well I made it to the fabric store and managed to only find one of the former cream fabrics that I was using before. I found a second one in the same pattern but a slightly different colorway. There are so few blocks left and they'll still be intermingled in with the other lighter blocks that use the older creams, so I don't think it'll be overly noticeable. I also have just enough of the dark teal pieces left to finish the inner part of the quilt. Whew~ I also found a beautiful fabric for the outer 7" border.

I got a few minutes to work on it tonight. It was so nice to sit and sew with Snookie (who's just turned five). We hit up a craft store this afternoon and I got her a beading kit. She LURVED it! She made little necklaces for her cousins for Christmas while I sewed. She also wanted to listen to Harry Potter audio books. Sweet! So we hung out together being all crafty and geeky. I love that my little babe is turning into such an awesome kid. ^^

Oh and I think I've finally figured out what quilting I'm going to do once I get it all basted together. While I really wish I had a long arm (saving, saving, saving!) I'm still shoving all my quilts through the Bernina which is a bit more challenging then putting it on a frame but I'm hoping for help from a few quilting stencils. It feels kinda like cheating but then again, not. Heh.

And just so this post is not totally devoid of pictures I'd like to share a lovely little quilt that I might have to stick in NU list. This fun little jem is from Barbara Brackman's Blog. I believe she refers to it as Fireball. In my head though I like to call it Dots and Diamonds. I'd love to make it in a bunch of really bright whimsical fabrics and colors. Maybe the strips a collection of dots on white/light ground? The big dots hot pinks and the diamonds in... blacks with dots? That's just my off-the-cuff idea for it.

I need to win the lottery

I love all the fabric bundles from fabricworm... too many quilts, too much beautiful fabric, not enough time!

I've not been on-line in the evenings because I just want to sew and have been like a fiend. It's good. I think I finally found a rhythm that works for me. Work a little bit on a lot of quilts for a short amount of time. I've been putting together blocks for my sister's quilt, and working on the 30's repo quilt that I'd already half assembled a few years ago, hated, ripped this past winter and now I'm sewing all the pieces together again in a different pattern that I like so much better. In fact there's a kinda funny story about it.

My BFF had come up to visit a few years ago and she'd picked a pattern and bought fabric for this quilt (you know the one, the one we just finished this past weekend in one day!):

So she was asking to see all my UFO's and I popped open a box I'd completely forgotten about, the one with my own set of 30's repo pieces in it. Guess what? I'd chosen the same pattern and mocked up four blocks about six months ago. Great minds and all that... lulz.


Also thought I'd give you a little peek at the hexagon quilt I've been working on. It's nice to have a traveling piece.


I took it out while at my daughter's Tae Kwon Do class and my BFF thought it was such a nice take-a-long project that we had to run right off to the fabric store after the class finished up so she could put together her own little kit. I love the fabrics she chose. I can hardly wait to see her make some progress on it.


I might have mentioned that they gave out a bunch of salesman sample strike offs (headers) of quilt fabric at last month's guild meeting (PMQG) that someone had picked up (yay! whoever you were!) from some conference or other. I got a bundle before they were gone and the little stack has been staring me in the face since. Tempting me.


I don't know why but I'm completely fascinated with them and well you know me, I love a new project! So in between working on everything else I've been cutting fabric and sticking it to my design wall.... If I can just keep working in the evenings I can easily see finishing up this quilt in a few weeks. (Pattern is Schnibbles X-Rated quilt - it'll finish at about 60" x 60" I think)

Fabric Friday

I probably won't do a fabric friday very often but since there's new fabric in my life, what the heck?

First off my sister has been bugging me for a decade to make her a quilt. Okay, so - I'm finally getting around to it! She's a big fan of batiks which is nice since I really like them myself AND she let me pick the pattern (she chose the colors) so it should be a fun little project. I'm making her a kaleidoscope quilt. Here are a few of the fabrics...

I still have four more yards to buy just to get all the blocks made (never mind the border, backing or binding...) What I've purchased so far I've also cut out. I really wanted to have all the fabric bought, washed and cut before heading out to Sister's next weekend. I'm excited to work on it.

I'm also quite pleased to corrupt my 8yo niece by teaching her how to quilt. I can see she's already got the bug bad. We were picking out fabric for her first quilt and she was talking about making a second one! lol I'd asked her to pick out one fabric that we'd build her whole quilt around. She chose the hedgehog fabric which will be the outer border...

The little red polk-a-dots are for a small inner border and "chimneys" the white fabric is for a large background area in the Hip to Be Square pattern that she picked out.
These are all the fabrics that will make up the strips around the chimneys.

It's been fun watching her discover the dangerous world of rotary cutters and hot irons. ;^)

Traveling, fabric and being single

Well, lookie there - two posts in the same month! I'm on a hot streak. lol

All sarcasim aside, our family recently took a little vacation out to the southern Washington State coast. The hardest time for me to resist buying fabric is when I'm on vacation. I'm a sucker for a new quilt shop or at least one I don't get to shop in but once or twice a year. While we were driving out to the beach last weekend we passed two shops. I made DH stop at both. The first one was in a little tiny town; the name escapes me. I also can't remember the name of the shop. I'm terrible! Anyway they were a very small shop and had a few interesting things. I bought a few fat quarters. I was thinking I might start stashing for a Christmas quilt but I really should just finish any one of a number of just regular ol quilts first, eh?


When we got to Astoria we had to drive past the only quilt shop in town. DH tried to drive by it but I made him go back around the block. He's fights it but understands how giddy I get and so indulges me. He waited with our daughter in the car. I know they were bored so I tried to hurry - except this is a fun little shop. It was hard not to linger over every little bit and bolt.


They had a nice collection of fabrics that would work with the Single Girl quilt I've been stashing for so I picked these up and tried not to buy more. ::g::


Not too bad overall, I only stashed 2 1/4 yards total. Could've been much, much worse!

Also a sneak peak of the first block of the Single Girl quilt. If you look closely you can see a few of the above fabrics worked in already. I don't remember exactly but the four quarters sewn together as shown makes about a 20" square block. I've had a lovely time so far working on this. I might even be motivated to knock this top out. Then again... I know myself. 0.o Here's hoping I don't peter out.

Fabric Bliss

I had so much fun last night! It was really hard to stick to the objective and just buy fabrics I liked with no plan! I'm such a planner - it was hard. HARD I SAY! lolz... I believe I might have cursed the gift givers several times under my breath. ;^) Corse if that's the worst thing in my life to curse about, well bring it on. Heh.

I want to make my sister a quilt so I thought I might get her fabrics and started filling the cart with fabrics for that... but then it just wasn't fun. She wasn't there to help and I didn't have a good idea yet of what I really wanted for that quilt. It felt rushed and obligatory. That was not in the intended spirit of these gifts. So, I put them all back! After all, these were supposed to be splurgy fabrics just for me.

I tried again. That's when it started getting fun. But holy cow! Shopping a whole city block worth of quilting fabrics makes the mind boggle. I couldn't even look at ALL of them - there were just too many! Really, at one point I couldn't shove another bolt into the cart without it toppling over and I hadn't even gone through a third of what they had to offer. They were all fabrics just for me with no real plan, rhyme or reason. Heehee. It was awesome. I will have to say that I picked out about 20 different patterns varying in yardage from one full yard all the way down to 1/4 yards. It was pure bliss. BLISS I SAY!

I didn't spend it all on fabric though. Sadly I actually needed a few notions and some thread so I could actually sew them together! Oh and a box of candy. Because candy makes me an extra happy sewer. Sew happy!!

All the batiks are nicely lined up when you first come in and I've always had a fondness for them so it seemed a logical place to start. I got 1/2 yards of each of the following...


I also couldn't resist a couple of few fat quarters of blacks for my potato chip quilt. I also just love them - so in the basket it goes! Plus a few needles and pins. My pins always seem to disappear... sewing room elves I'm sure.


Then of course there were a bunch of fun bright colors that I couldn't resist! With some summery white on white to set them off... I'm thinking these might go for the Single Girl quilt. Okay so I couldn't buy fabrics totally without a plan. ;^)


Best for last... I wandered off into a section that I don't normally visit in fabric land and found this beautiful little set! I think they'd make a perfect bag - I love, love, love the birds. Now to just find the perfect (free) bag pattern. I bought a yard of each.


Now if only I could get into my sewing room to play!!

Oh the temptation

So I made a commitment to not spending any money on new fabric this year. I've been very good so far but my friends and family conspired against me and got me gift certificates to my favorite fabric store for Christmas and my BD. Tonight I went and blew the whole wad. Zowie it was fun!!! Soooo technically I didn't spend any of my money - that was the deal right? *Squeee* I shall post some pictures tomorrow.

One last hurrah!

So my last hurrah on quilting goodies* came just before Christmas while I was visiting the in-laws in Greensboro NC. My MIL took me to Randy's Quilt Shop. I bought a few yards of really cute fabric for a bento box I'll get to later this year and one pattern. Normally I don't buy patterns because there are so many free ones out there or I can pretty much figure it out just by looking at it but I couldn't resist this modern take on the double wedding ring quilt designed by Virginia Robertson. I've never made a DWR so I wasn't sure at all how it was constructed. Glad I bought it.
Glowing Wedding Ring


I really want to make it for my sister. She's been bugging me forever to make her another quilt. I gave her the first quilt I ever made. It's uh... funky. Now she wants a nice one. ;^) Who could blame her? lol...

* New years resolution - buy no new fabric for one year! Work on making the fabric stash smaller.

5" Charm Swap

I'm starting the collection process for a thousand pyramid charm quilt. I'm using any and all fabrics for 1/2 the pyramids but the other 1/2 I want to be mostly black. I have a few of these kinds of fabrics but will need many, many more. So I'm here appealing to you all to help me. If you could find it in your hearts (and stashes) to pull some 5" x 5" swatches of good quality mostly black fabrics (see picture below for samples of what I'm looking for...)

I will happily pull an equal number of whatever I have that you might be looking for and mail some 5" swatches back to you. I have batiks, calicos, kid prints, solids, etc. Just pop a note in your envelope with what you want.
Any takers?! Thanks for all your help!
Cheers~
Jenn

PS: E-mail me for address.