Thursday, April 12, 2012

Fun With Fabric!

Time for a little breather!  The most recent set of blocks for the Farmer's Wife quilt is done (I'll post photos later this week); the Charming Baby Quilt is on its way to its new home in California, and I'm biting the bullet and returning to machine quilting the long-postponed Q-911 quilt.

The Charming Baby Quilt

I've since learned that the cutting/piecing technique in this quilt is fairly common and is known as a Hidden Nine-Patch.  Whatever, I really liked making the quilt.  I'm happy to report that I have a new grand-nephew.   I'll bet he's a charmer, too.


I puzzled over how to fill the space at the bottom of the triangular label.  Too small to applique and my free-motion skills are not up to the task.  I finally just hand-embroidered a flower that kind of mimics the larger flowers in the quilted motif.  Happy birthday, Wilder!

Fabric!  More Fabric!
Like any quilter, I love fabric!  I'm totally a sucker for the daily deals that await me each morning in my email and I can't walk into any store that sells fabric without some up.


Now really, how could I pass this one up?  One of today's daily deals is 40 10-inch squares of the same fabrics.  What should I do?!?

There's so much variety in this roll, all subtle prints. 













Here are the strips laid out.  I figured that this collection would go with any of my little stash to go into the Farmer's Wife blocks.  But I'm really tempted to just sews the strips together and cut them up to make a little quilt all by themselves.

My favorite color is the really deep indigo, 4th from the bottom.








As I posted on my Facebook page last week, I dropped in to Pieceful Quilting to look for some small prints.  I picked up a few fat quarters.  I like the teal/brown color combination and the dotted-Swiss look of the slate blue.  The two florals will be wonderful in the Farmer's Wife quilt.  I got the purple just because I only have one other purple.  If I don't find an interesting use for it, I'll cut it into strips, add some pastels and make an Easter table runner for next year.

And, PQ had some special Easter eggs for their VIP's (Very Important Piecers).  Each VIP got to pick an egg from a basket.  Each egg had a piece of candy and a piece of paper describing what you "won".  I got half off any book in the store!  Guess I'll have to go back to pick something out...  :-)


 And Now For Something Completely Different

Great fabric can be found in lots of places for little or no money.  The other day Bonnie at Quiltville posted a wonderful video showing how to "de-bone" a shirt in minutes.  Really impressive -- made me want to run right out to Goodwill (or leave my husband with nothing but t-shirts).  I recommend it.

However, the laundry basket called.  There I found a pillowcase that had bit the big one -- one side was nearly shredded.  Instead of throwing it out, I "de-boned" it!  Lots of really soft cotton fabric (800 thread count!) in a pale peach.  And as Bonnie showed in her video, if you rip the thing apart, the edges are on the grain.  It didn't work quite so well on the pillowcase, because of the high thread count, but I still got lots of fabric.




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