Irresistible Florals

I  am hopeless, dear readers. For all the blustering I share about no more buying and using from the stash, just one look at an online fabric offering, and I fall off the wagon. You recall (see last post) that I had to acquire more Aboriginal Dots in ivory about a week ago. That meant a quick foray into online fabric searching. 

Help me, Lord! The temptations! When sellers couple a pretty fabric offering with a discount -20%! -  I am a total lost cause.  Here's what I bought the same day I bought the one yard of ivory dots.

The fabric was listed on an Etsy shop called Cottage Couture Fabrics out of White Lake, MI.  The need to own this fabric overcame me, I swear! Clicking that "buy" button was way, way too easy. 

Now, I do not - DO NOT! - have one ounce of buyer's remorse. I am thrilled with this little pack of fat quarters, and I have ideas swimming in my head of how I will use it. 

First, let me show you what I plan to pair them with. I have two polka dot fabrics that seem perfect for these tiny pastel florals. Take a look at both and tell me which you would select.

Option one is this delicate blue with creamy white dots. Love it. A lot. 

Now here's option two.

The dots are smaller, and even though it isn't very evident in these two pictures, the blue is slightly different. Do you prefer one over the other?

Here is my current inspiration photo, taken from Pinterest.  Click the photo to be taken to the shop, another Esty shop, and this seller is from right up the road from me in Columbus! Sweet!

Isn't this a dreamy vintage quilt!? I would love to recreate it with my new fabrics. It would be fun to make all those hourglass blocks with the florals, then mix and match them with different florals around the centers of the stars. Glorious Ohio Stars on a creamy white set together with blue polka dot setting squares. Simply dreamy.

This quilt has to be made.

A thought: Did you know that I will have to live to be about 258 years old in order to make all the quilts?

Well, while I figure out how I will accomplish that sort of longevity, have a few more looks at this pretty floral fabric.

When shown with both options, the smaller dot is the obvious choice.

Have a great day! My list is long, the day is gorgeous, and I must get in gear!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

 

Road Trip!

Years ago, the words road trip meant an entirely different thing, didn't it? For us quilters, road trip means either shopping, conventions, quilt shows, seminars, classes, or combinations of these. The little quilt group I belong to took off early yesterday morning to a quilt show in Lebanon, OH. It was held in the Warren County Historical Society Museum, and offered a unique opportunity to display some of the antique quilts in their collection. In addition, there was a special exhibit called "Inspired by Red and Green," which was interesting in that several top-name quilters in the industry reproduced an antique red and green applique quilt from a picture. The workmanship was extraordinary.

My one complaint about the show was its crowdedness. It made taking pictures impossible. I am sure the sponsors and vendors were thrilled with the attendance, but as one of those attendees, I was all too ready to get out of there because it was just too cramped to be comfortable.

My only pics are ones I took today of the stash enhancement I did with a few of the vendors at the quilt show. I wanted to buy more (I know, I've fallen off the wagon!), but the booths were just impossible in some cases to get into.

The top photo features all reproduction fabrics. The rolled set of 8 fat quarters is from the Sturbridge Village collection. The folded stack is an assortment of 1-yard cuts.

The set of 4 blues is called Ivana by Sentimental Studios of Moda. It was a total impulse purchase. I saw that intriguing combination of blue and green as a perfect group of fabrics for a bag I've been wanting to start. If I don't do that, I will make a quilt with large pieces, as these are telling me they'd look best this way. Their charm would be totally lost in small pieces.

No progress to report on any projects. I did however spend a good amount of time today straightening up my sewing room. A few bloggers I follow posted pics of their spiffy, newly-cleaned workspaces, and so I decided I needed to put mine in better order.

Happy stitching, all!

And a Gift from the FedEx Man!

I keep getting these lovely packages from strange men! Yum! Not the men, the contents of the packages. Here is the little treat I got this morning. One pinkish Kaffe Fassett, and 4 others that just caught my attention as I glanced through the sale fabric. Dramatic florals and paisleys always catch my eye. I think they will enhance the stash quite nicely.

I have had the time of my life these last two days! I promised myself that I would work only on the baby quilts and the 2 tops that needed only the borders added. And I have done a decent job of sticking to those self-imposed rules. One baby quilt is completely done, binding and all; the batik circles has its borders on and awaits a trip to the long-arm. The second baby quilt is in the quilting frame and has about 18 blocks quilted. The final quilt top - Erin's - is still waiting on its borders.

But yesterday afternoon, I just had to break my rule! I could hear the Kaffe Fassett Broken Dishes fabrics calling out to me, all the way from up in the sewing room! There they sat in a nice little box; they were cut and mated into pleasing pairs, and even marked on the diagonal for sewing and cutting purposes. When I did these things, I do not remember, but they were patiently waiting for me to get back to them. Well, once I broke down and dug it all out, I sewed "just a few" squares into hourglass blocks. Then 3 hours later, I had enough hourglass units to make 6 blocks! It was a delightful afternoon!

The pattern has small hourglass blocks in the center of the quilt, surrounded by larger hourglass blocks as a border. I am working on the small ones now. There are 16 units of 64 pieces in each block! Those are some small hourglasses, to be sure! It has been so much fun seeing them come together. I was chain piecing them, of course, as this makes quick work of such small pieces, but I found myself wanting to see how some particular fabrics looked together, so I often broke the chain to finish off a block and peek at it. It was like I was experiencing the thrill of Christmas morning, or something!

Here are some pics of the work I accomplished - about 3 hours yesterday, and 3 hours today.

These pieces are just laid out on a mat so far. I have not sewn them into the full block yet. Each individual hourglass unit shown in the photo on the right has approximately 4 more stacked underneath. The photo on the left shows just one block (not sewn; just laid out) and beside it is a pile of units waiting to be laid out. Mixing and matching all of these tiny pieces will be quite an undertaking. But it is one that I look forward to.

Now, I will, will, WILL get back to those other unfinished projects. The baby quilt is the most pressing, but I really want to finish Erin's quilt, too. Maybe I will report some progress on these two items in the coming week.

Gift from Mailman

Does your mailman make deliveries like this? Doesn't it look delicious? This was in my mailbox yesterday. I am always interested in adding to my Kaffe Fassett collection, and a quilting friend had just introduced me to some of his older polka dot and target prints. (My dear friends, the "Frienzies," made my retirement quilt out of Kaffe fabrics because of my recent love-affair with his material -the fabrics and the quilts. That will be another picture in another post.) In searching around on the internet, I found a site that had clearance-priced some of these older pieces, so I was prompted to take advantage. The out-of-place floral in the mix is an Alex Anderson print which I took a fancy to as I was "shopping." Online fabric shopping has become the norm for me, lately. I just haven't had the inclination to make it out to the actual shops. And, I do think I am getting pickier, in that I want fabrics that will enhance what I already own. Won't these fabrics look great in my stash? And even greater in a quilt?

Okay, now I already own more fabric than I will ever be able to use. Quilters know this reality, I am sure. This fact, however, does not stop said quilters from continuing to add to the stash. I wish I could explain this phenomenon. Perhaps it's inexplicable. Besides, who needs an explanation? We just "need" more fabric! This next statement will be shocking, so prepare...I truly am cutting way back on my fabric stash-building! Yes, it's true. Since I have retired, I plan to focus on the making of quilts, rather than on the accumulation of fabric. As a matter of fact, I will go one step further...

My goal for this first year of retirement is to see how many quilt tops I can make. It'll be sort of like a contest I will have with myself. I have an unlimited number of patterns to choose from what with all my magazines, books, and print-offs from the internet. I also have a more-than-ample stash of fabrics at my disposal to use on these quilts! Won't I have a great time making gorgeous quilts? I am very excited to get started.

What is stopping me from proceeding right now? I have one more baby quilt to finish hand-quilting. The completed one is shown here. The girls, my nieces, will be 2 in October, and I've set their birthday as my arbitrary deadline. A second UFO that I want to strike off the list is Erin's quilt - the one that just needs to have the borders added. Finish those, and I will, in earnest, get cracking on quilt-top creating!