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Fabric Friday
April 14, 2006
Instead of working today–Good Friday is a Purple Systems holiday–I happily spent some time with Denise and Tess. After fortifying ourselves with lunch, we commenced with the fabric shopping. I know, I know–I already have a closet full of fabric, so why the shopping? Well, as it turns out, I don’t have quite what I need. Really. Over the last week or so, I’ve been pulling fabrics for Cordelia’s quilt, and things were going very well until I got to the teals and aquas. Then my stash failed me. I have teals and aquas, sure, but the tone-on-tones I have aren’t the shades I want to match the scheme in my head, and when I tried putting the more contrast-y prints into the mix, it just made me unhappy. Life’s too short to make quilts that make me unhappy. Thus the shopping.
We started with The Quilting Season–my first visit to their new store. (Some months back, they moved out of the little red barn where they were when Mel and I went during her visit here last year.) They’ve got lots of room to grow here–space for more shelves and more fabric in future, which wasn’t the case at the old place. I picked up a couple possibilities for Cordelia’s quilt, and a few for the larger cousin of Magical Mushrooms that I just started on. And yes, I got a few pieces that I had no immediate use for. Two were just so pretty I had to have some, and one is the kind of stripe that I know will come in handy. (Yeah, I do already have a lot of stripes. Hush.) After I checked out, I got a chance to play with Tess while Denise made her final decisions. The shop has nice little area set up with a VCR and books and toys–we watched part of Mary Poppins while Tess explained about the dinosaurs and cavemen and wooden block tower she’d set up while her mom and I were looking at quilting stuff.
After Quilting Season, we made our way to Viking Sewing Center, which also had changed since my last visit–they’ve expanded into the space formerly occupied by another store next door, which means no more having to squeeze between stacks of bolts leaned up against all the shelves. It’s quite nice. They now sell Berninas, too. While I was drooling over the Aurora 440 QE on display, the salesguy walked by and told me they had them in stock. Too bad the sale price was only something like 10% off full retail–if it were more like 80%, I might have taken one home. Ah well, someday maybe. I did get some nice fabric–a couple of aquas that I think will be just dandy in Cordelia’s quilt and a few batiks, two of which I think will go nicely with the mushrooms and one that was just too pretty to leave behind.
Most of what I bought follows–
Possibilities for Cordelia’s quilt. Yes, I do plan to put the pale pink and the bold aqua in the same quilt. It’s all about the proportions.
Possibilities for the mushroom quilt. Even if I don’t use them for that, it’s never bad to have more batiks on hand.
Just pretties.