Born to buy fabric (a very selective shopping guide)

Somebody I know told me the other day that they had never bought fabric online, which I found very suprising. I wouldn't have been surprised had this been somebody like my mother who doesn't have a computer, but this was one of those "internet people" (as my mother likes to call them). I guess you'd have to say I was a fairly early adopter of online shopping - I know that I was buying on eBay (and then selling as well) in 1998. I'm not quite so sure when I first bought from other online stores, but I had definitely mastered the online shopping cart well before the dotcom bubble burst in 2000. I don't remember exactly when I started buying fabric online, either - probably not as long ago as that since I only started quilting much around that same time - but it was several years ago, at least.

So, here's some of my favorite online places to shop. -- Do I need to put up a disclaimer? Your mileage may vary. Unfortunately, stores change hands, etc. - yesterday's great store may not be so great tomorrow. Because of that, I'm categorizing these by how recently I've shopped there.

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I've ordered from all of these recently, and always had good experiences:

You have to order from Hancock's of Paducah once in a while just to make sure you keep getting their catalogs. I salivate just thinking about them. (Although you can go to the site and request a catalog without ordering, if you're feeling broke.) Their service is always excellent. Also - great clearance sales, from time to time.

Born to Quilt is under new management, but I've always liked them and hopefully the new management will have the sense not to screw things up. They have a wide variety of fabric, but their specialty is probably orientals. They have the best selection I've ever seen in that area.

I just ordered from A.H. Mercantile for the first time the other day, and my order isn't here yet, so I can't say for sure about their service, but they sure have a nice selection, and cheaper prices than most places, to boot.

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These are stores I have had good experiences with, but it's been a while since I ordered from them. (Don't infer anything bad about them from that; unfortunately I can't afford to buy fabric constantly, the way I'd like to!)

Cherry Lane Quilt Shop
Contemporary Cloth, aka the "funky fabric people"
Fabric Blowout, which specializes in discontinued fabric and the like
Sew-Sew Crazy (want cat fabric? boy, have they got it)
Virginia Quilter - one of my favorites, has good selection and frequent free shipping specials (hmm, why haven't I ordered from them lately?)

And there's also Web of Thread, which isn't actually a fabric shop, but specializes in thread and notions instead. Particularly when I go on a crazy-quilting binge, they are a great source for some items that are otherwise hard to find.

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eBay
It took me a ridiculously long time to think of looking for fabric on eBay, and it turns out there's a ton of it. I've mentioned my favorite seller Jane V. before - she's not the cheapest but she always has really nice stuff. Christa also has good selection and she is often considerably cheaper. Don't be afraid of eBay, really - as long as you stick with sellers who have good feedback, you're usually ok. (Just bear in mind that by "good feedback" I mean good feedback - I usually think if they're below 99-point-something-% positive, something's wrong.)

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I found a lot of these stores through QuiltIndex or the FabShopHop, both of which run periodic scavenger-hunt-type events as well as being good resources in general. (QI has the Mall Crawl, where you hunt for a quilt block, while FabShopHop is the one with the bunny. Don't sneer, I've won prizes from both of them in the past. If you have the patience to hunt through a lot of quilt sites - and the budget for all the fabric you can't resist buying in the process - it can be fun.)

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On a (more or less) related note, I was looking at the links in this entry and at least one of them has changed: Sharon's weblog is now here.

A winter pastime

This article amuses me, for all the wrong reasons.

"It gives me something to do," Farquhar said.

Imagine that.

Unfinished

I brought up the subject of UFOs earlier and now I can't stop thinking about them. So I give in; here's a list of what I have that's unfinished.

1. The Frank Lloyd Wright panel I talked about below
2. Halloween panel w/pieced border - very simple, so how silly is it that I can't even get around to finishing that?
3. Crazy quilt in peacock colors - I knew this one would take years so I don't really even count it, normally
4. Jan Mullen teacups - black & white & red - I have a lot of blocks and no plan for what I'm doing with them (I gave a few of them to the guild for the auction last summer, but I still have plenty. They're fun to make and I got carried away, I think.)
5. Maple leaf blocks (from here, look for a "foundation patterns" section) - blocks are done, ready to sew together
6. String quilt - since I've decided not to use this one for a gift, I will probably give it to community service instead

That's it? I thought there were more. That's really not too horrible.

EQ rules!

Here's what my Ohio Star will theoretically look like, with the sashing and borders.

Update

My digital camera is on the fritz right now - I got it wet accidentally, I think I may have killed it - but I got EQ for Christmas, so I can show you quilt designs instead! I got blocks similar to the ones below for a door prize last month, and I think I'm going to give that quilt for that retirement gift I've been talking about, instead of the string quilt. They aren't exactly like that, the centers are different, but as far as the layout goes, those will work. (The centers are samplers - each one is a different miniature block.) I think I'm going to do a set with sashing rather than just setting them plain. I'll post a picture of my setting, too.

Mom still can't do her applique but she is sewing on the sewing machine, and when I was over there Monday, she was figuring out how to use the rotary cutter left-handed. She picked it up pretty fast, too. (She also figured out that for some reason she can do counted cross-stitch pretty well, even with a weak hand, so she is doing that for her handwork in the evenings for now.)

Oh, and the quilt guild speaker this month was Hollis Chatelain. She was excellent; she made me sorry I didn't take the class.

Ohio Star blocks

Frank Lloyd Wright panel

My mother's, c.2000
(see below)

Frank Lloyd Wright

Columbine's rant about Frank Lloyd Wright reminded me that I have an unfinished FLW quilt someplace. I started it when I took a Jackie Robinson workshop several years ago - it's one of only a couple of long-term unfinished projects I've got. (I say "long-term" because I don't even want to discuss my unfinished projects from this past year!) My mother finished hers - of course - but I never went back and worked on mine at all. I think I have a picture of hers around someplace, I'll have to dig it out. Mom's was shades of blue and mine was green, so theoretically mine would look similar to the one at the top center of that Jackie Robinson page I linked to above. I've seen all the pieces of it fairly recently, I need to dig them out too - and find out if there's really enough of it there to finish it. That would be a very good idea. We did the hard part of it in class anyway - the part with the funky angles - so it wouldn't be that hard to finish. And after all, I liked them enough that I even bought the book!

(In response to Col: no, I wouldn't want to live in one of FLW's houses either, even though I'm well under 5'8" - but the man was still a genius, just the same.)

Learning applique the nonconsensual way

My mother brought her applique with her to the hospital, but since she can't use her right hand too well, she hasn't been able to do much. She tried doing it left-handed, but I guess she didn't get far. So Saturday when I was there, she decided that I should do it for her. I have only done a tiny bit of hand applique and I really don't have much desire to do more - it just doesn't appeal to me. By which I mean that doing it doesn't appeal to me; I like looking at other people's finished products just fine. For some reason, however - I guess because she likes doing it - she thinks that if I would just learn how, I would like doing it too. And she thinks that maneuvering me into doing hers for her is the way to get me to learn. But the thing is, even if I did, what I do at night is fiddle around on the computer, and if I didn't I would probably read, so I'm not looking for anything to keep my hands busy at night. I did start her block for her, and it looks pretty decent, and I really didn't even mind doing it, but I can't say I've been seized with the desire to do more. (And really? The best part of it was, I got to say to the visitors who came in while I was doing it, "She's forcing me to do applique!")

Update

There's not a lot of quilting going on in my (extended) household right now. My mom had her surgery on Wednesday, and while it went well, she is very weak and I don't think she's going to be doing a lot of applique in the hospital like she did before Thanksgiving. And I'm sure I will be going to the hospital again tomorrow rather than quilting. (She is holding out hope that she will get out this weekend, but from what I saw yesterday I would say it's going to be Monday, at least. Maybe she will surprise me and make rapid progress, though - I would be happy to be wrong.) I did set my sewing machine - the Jem, that is - up in my living room, though, and maybe I will get some done this weekend on the triangle quilt.