The Good Thing About Cheap Fabric

The good thing about cheap fabric is that it is cheap. People who buy cheap fabric may not know that some fabric can cost more.

I went to a second hand shop a couple days ago and found this fabric:

It is a total of 4 yards of fabric. Two yards of the Americana postcards by Marcus Brothers and two yards of a homespun plaid. There wasn't a price on the fabric. I only wanted it if it was a good deal. I asked the price trying to look as though I didn't care. She said it would be $1 for one of the fabrics, and $1.50 for all of it. I'd say that's a price I can buy it even if I don't have anything in mind. I've always wanted to attend an estate sale of a quilter whose relatives didn't know what fabric is worth. I don't even know the first place to go to find out about an estate sale, and I don't really want to wish for the death of a quilter. 

Where have you found the best deals on fabric?

Sewing in Funny Places

The end of April I took a trip with a friend to a quilt retreat in Pennsylvania. I jumped at the opportunity of taking this "business" trip when I found out my daughter was going to have surgery during spring market.

 

One night we made reservations at a little motel that we hadn't seen first. It was a tiny little room that looked like my grandmother decorated it. There were little hand written notes left all over the room reminding us to make sure lights were turned all the way off, etc. I didn't get a good picture of the notes.

 

 

Don't  you love my bedspread!

 

 

 

This was my sewing spot. Good thing it wasn't the winter or the heater wouldn't have worked very well. The space was just wide enough for the sewing machine. Do you see my chair? It was one of those things you put your luggage on. I put a pillow on it so I didn't feel like I was going to fall through! 

 

Here's Machelle's sewing spot, the end table, not much bigger than mine.

 

For being so old, it was clean and the beds were reasonably comfortable. It was also just for one night, so we were able to enjoy a good laugh!

What Doesn't Kill You. . .

Makes you stronger. So the saying goes.

 

Is it true? If something doesn't kill you, but it leaves you a paraplegic or in a coma, are you stronger? Recovering from the brink of death should make you stronger mentally knowing that you can handle more than you thought you could. . . theoretically.

 

Even if it does make you stronger, it doesn't mean that the experience is one to be relished. It also doesn't mean it isn't extremely difficult during the experience and that you don't wonder if you will survive.

 

Mid-May my 14 year old daughter had major corrective hip surgery. She now has 4 pins keeping her hip in place. I can't believe what a common experience major surgery is and yet how traumatic. It has been two months and my daughter has just gotten clearance to start walking again. There were two parts that were scary for me as a mother.

 

The first worst part was right before the surgery someone was telling us about some of the possible complications. One of them was fatal bleeding. I hoped my daughter didn't know what that meant. I felt like laughing because it was in the middle of a list that included many not so threatening conditions. Well, she could have numbness that lasts a while or we could cut a major artery and she could bleed to death.

 

The second worst part was that during the four day stay at the hospital my daughter had some reactions to the pain medication that scared me. It felt like she was two weeks old again. I worried constantly and didn't even take a shower until the last day because I didn't want to leave her.

 

I think the worst part for her has been being patient with sitting around waiting for the healing process to take place. She has tried to be good. The surgery went well, and she is healing as quickly as can be expected. This was one of the reasons that I was MIA for a while. Thank you for your patience.

 

Brown Bag Quilt

I finished this year's Brown Bag Quilt a week or two ago.

 

You can read about past year's quilts here:

http://moosequilts.blogspot.com/2011/07/brown-bag-challenge.html and here:

http://moosequilts.blogspot.com/2011/07/quilt-show-part-ii.html and here:

http://moosequilts.blogspot.com/2012/07/obsession.html.

 

Last year I loved the quilt I made. I wanted to love this one too. I was inspired by my friend's churn dash quilt and wanted to make one like it.

 

This is what I ended up with:

 

 

I am sad because I don't love it.

 

I think it would be better if it had more blocks, but I was tired of it by this time. I didn't want to spend more time with it.

 

I also wonder if the fabrics weren't crazy enough. I think I'm too close to these fabrics. The fabric in my friend's churn dash were older than I am, so it is a crazy that I like rather than a crazy that I don't like.

 

And I should have taken out the shamrock square - or cut it up. It is like my three year old child. It demands my undivided attention.

 

It was still a learning experience. I like the brown bag challenge for that reason. I experiment. Sometimes I like it. Sometimes I don't.

Challenge Quilts

This is a follow up to my Quilting Peer Pressure post. These are the other quilts in the Challenge Quilt category at our local quilt show.

 

Here is my quilt, on the left, and another one.

 

 

This is made by a fairly new quilter. It's paper pieced. She has had it done for a while. As she was working on it, I thought for sure it would win the viewer's choice award.

 

 

 

 

This one was made by a young girl. I forget how old, 13 or 15.

 

This one was made by Marion. It got the Emily Herrick Award.  We took advantage of having a local fabric designer. She came down and picked a quilt to give an additional award to.

 

 

This quilt won viewer's choice award. It was made by a friend of mine. She had a neighbor draw out some designs on her cricket. She turned those into applique pieces and needleturned them.

 

I love this category in the quilt show!