Another Saturday night

I don't really have a lot to say. I have two whole blocks done for the batik exchange now, and some of the units made for the 3rd one. Holly should be proud. (Also, I have evidently made a liar out of my mother, who admitted that she told somebody I wouldn't start these blocks 'til the week before they're due.)

Mom has started working on her angel blocks again. Also she is "graduating" from physical therapy on Monday. (Still going to speech therapy, though.)

Quilted Missile Cozy

Yup, that's right, I said a quilted missile cozy. (Here it is without the missile inside.)

Quiltmaker's Puzzle

This isn't exactly how I made it - at least, not the one I already made - but it shows you what I had in mind, anyway. (The wonders of EQ5.)

Another door quilt

the "new" one (as mentioned below)

Saturday report

Well, it's not quite Saturday any more, but close enough. Mom & I went shopping again so the quilting time was somewhat limited. But I finally got started on the blocks for the batik exchange. I can't show you a picture because I still have no working camera - I'm thinking that's going to have to be my birthday present because it's really bugging me - but it looks pretty good. I could put up the mockup I did on EQ but I never quite got the colors the way I wanted them. I might put it up anyway, just for the heck of it.

Mom is back to working on the angels. She's decided to finish the angels before she works on the Santas any more, because the angels are fairly close to being finished, anyway. She has gotten started with the applique again, which tells you that her rehab is coming along quite well. (She is halfway through with the radiation treatments now, so yay for that, too!)

Meanwhile, she was changing the quilt on the door while I was there, so when I get a chance I'll put up a picture of the new one. I'm pretty sure I already have that one somewhere around.

Friday picture

another one of my mom's seasonal quilts

Technicalities

It has been pointed out to me that I don't have an e-mail account listed in my profile. So now I do.

Which reminds me, does anybody want a gmail account? Because I have lots of invitations to give away.

(Also, why is it that my profile is updated with the new e-mail account but it's still showing me "recent entries" from October?)

a Valentine

My mother has this hanging on her door this week. She has a whole series of small seasonal quilts that she rotates.

(Semi-)Weekly report

I know I didn't write anything last week, but there wasn't a whole lot to write. I did get two blocks made, though, so I have 5 of the Ohio Star blocks. They are coming out very nicely. Mom hasn't really gotten a lot done in the interim, either, because she's going to radiation therapy and still to all three kinds of rehab, so she doesn't have a lot of time left for quilting right now. She is working on that fall batik block-exchange we are both doing - I think she has about 7 blocks out of the 12 finished.

(I don't think that I ever said this, but I went to Quilts by the Bay one day last month and bought enough batiks to do all my blocks for that exchange, but I haven't actually started making them. I did work up a sample on EQ so I'll have to remember to post it as soon as I find it. I reformatted my hard drive last week and a lot of my data is still on CDs.)

Oh, I told my mom that if she wanted the pattern I won (see previous entry), she could have it, and she did. She absolutely loved it, actually, and wants me to see if there are any more in that series that she can buy. (As I have said before, I think that those prizes tend to be really good marketing tools. That was on the occasion when my mother's entire bee went out and bought copies of a book that I had won.)

Anyway, yesterday I decided to take a break from Ohio Stars and see if I had enough of the string blocks to make a community service quilt, and I did. So I assembled 9 of the 12" blocks (so it was actually 36-6" blocks) and started making a Chinese Coins border for it. I know that last year the place we were sending the community service quilts requested ones that were around 40" square, so that's what I'm shooting for. (Although I'm putting a 4" border all the way around so it will actually be a little bigger than that.) Making Chinese Coins is rather fun - that may influence me into doing one for the Maple Leaf quilt as well, whenever I finally get back to that.

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all!

I won!

Didn't I say a couple of entries back that you could really win prizes for doing the Mall Crawl or the Shop Hop? I didn't do the last FabShopHop, but I did do the Mall Crawl, and I just got an e-mail saying I won this pattern! Which is cute. I don't even do applique normally, but I might have to make an exception. (Or maybe I can just talk my mother into doing it instead.)

Another triple four-patch

(They couldn't find a spot for this quilt that didn't have a pole in front of it?)

Somebody was admiring my triple four-patch (here) and I remembered that I had this picture. This is my friend JoLynn O'Neil's quilt, and it was in the Houston quilt show in the Texas Timeless Treasures exhibit. I thought it was worth putting up because it looks so different in the 30s fabrics! I like it a lot.

I've never seen one done in more contemporary colors that I can think of - there have been at least three exchanges for these blocks that I know of in our guild, but they've all been in the 19th-century color schemes similar to mine. I bet it'd look good in brights, too.

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.