Stashbuster Idea

I received a newsletter from the New England Quilt Museum the other day with a request for fabric and patterns.

"Are you getting cabin fever with all this snow and ice?? Do you need a reason to sort your stash of quilting fabrics, patterns and books?? Consider doing so and donate your extras and leftovers to the museum for the upcoming TEXT and TEXTILE EXTRAVAGANZA. Donations will be accepted for the event through April 15. Please contact Rhonda Galpern at 978-452-4207, ext 17 or at outreach@nequiltmuseum.org."

The event allows people, for a $25 donation, to fill a shopping back with assorted books, magazines, and fabrics. The money will help the quilt museum. If you're looking to get rid of some old fabric, this might be a great way to help the NEQM continue to preserve and exhibit some amazing quilts. The NEQM is located in downtown Lowell, MA, a city with extremly deep roots in textiles and quilts.

Mark Lipinski Visit

I've been quiet the past few days because I've been dealing with an overflowing toilet in my apartment. It turned into this big ordeal because it ended up being the central line in my building... ugg I hate plumbing issues.  

This morning a local quilt shop won a competition to have Mark Lipinski visit and personally introduce his new line of fabric.  Emma's Quilt Cupboard in Franklin, MA created an adorable display using his previous line of fabrics.  Here are some pictures of their display.

Mark started, in his notoriously humorous way, talking about how he designed his line of fabrics based off of his collection of Polish pottery.  He made them in two colorways, the traditional blue and green colors of polish pottery and a black, red, and white line.

 To introduce the line to us, he made everyone close their eyes even though I'm sure a lot of people already saw the line online like I did.  He then pulled in the fabric in a red wagon.

Here I am with Mark getting my "banned" copy of his magazine signed.  

What a fun day.  After the event I went into Boston to watch my sister dive at her conference championships.  She won the 1 meter diving event last night and is currently in 1st going into tomorrow's 3 meter finals while celebrating her 22nd birthday today.  I'll be spending my day tomorrow watching her in the final two diving sessions in the predicted snow.  More on my quilting endeavors shortly.

Autumn Quilt Progress

I made some progress on the autumn quilt tonight.  I didn't get as much done as I would have liked because I had some issues with my sewing table and then ran out of bobbin.  I figured that meant it was time to take a break for the night.  Up next is to finish the remaining 6 blocks that need the green frame and then it's on to adding a gold frame.  

Here's the border fabric for the quilt.  You can get a sense of where the colors in this kit came from and that it truly is an autumn quilt.

So here's the broken sewing table. My pedal usually goes on this platform, but as you can see by these pictures, the platform that usually lies a few inches from the ground broke off from the rest of the sewing table.  :(  I'm going to have the hubby take a look at this weekend to see if he can do something.  I really liked how this table had this platform because I'm so short and it allowed me to sit taller so that I'm at a better height to the table.

Autumn Quilt Kit

A few years ago I bought this quilt kit at an after Christmas sale at 50% off.  It looked like a pretty easy quilt, and the colors were really nice.  I decided that it was too cute and too good a deal to pass up.  Believe it or not, it was the first quilt kit I had ever purchased.  I much prefer to pick out my own fabric and deign the colors. That's half the fun of quilting anyway.  

When I got home, I realized I grabbed the wrong kit. :(  It was the same pattern, but had some slightly different fabrics.  I thought it was the same one, but it wasn't.  I had picked the package that was in better shape.  Because I wasn't too keen on the fabrics/colors in this quilt, it went into my pile of fabric and was forgotten for a while.  

Well, yesterday I pulled out the kit and decided that it was time to put this thing together.  There's one fabric in there that I would NEVER have picked.  It's a really burnt or rust colored orange. (seen below)  I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but orange has to be my least favorite color.  I like it with some other color combinations, but it just doesn't do much for me.  I thought about replacing the fabric with another one from my stash, but I realized that I would never use it in anything else, so why not use it now.

Here are a few pictures of my progress.  It calls for two more frames around the diamond and some sashing in between the 20 blocks.  It's definitely going to be an autumn quilt.

The next color to go on is a green, followed by a gold, then some deep gray sashing.  More on that later.

Border & Binding

Tonight I got the inner and outer border put on one of my UFOs.  You might recognize it from the pic in my profile.  At the time I made my profile this was one of the few quilts I had a picture of.  I've been trying to get some of my UFOs done so that I can begin to work on some new stuff.  It has been bothering me lately to see a stack of unfinished tops.  

I made this quilt entirely out of my stash, and out of a lot of small scraps.  All of the flowers were made from scraps (well, not the green, but the "petals" in each flower were scraps). I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this quilt, whether or not I'm going to keep it or give it away.  It was one of those quilts that I had everything for and could use up some scraps.  

I'm going to work on sewing the binding on the back of the "box of roses" quilt.  I haven't sewn it on over the past two days because I finally found the thread that I was sewing with.  My silly cat found it (he always seems to find any thread spool that's not in some place extremely secure.  I had wrapped the thread up in the quilt to shield it from him, yet he still found it.  I discovered it tonight as I was cooking dinner tucked in deep next to the fridge.  Silly cat.