I’ve had comments from people suggesting that I should “shop locally” and support my local quilt shops.  I’m going to take a minute and address that….

I buy my fabric as it presents itself to me….

This came from the thrift store….

This came from a garage sale…..

I get some fabric from blog readers….

This came from an on line store.

I also buy 100% cotton shirts from thrift stores and use them as fabric.  Occasionally we make design a quilt from a fabric line and get the fabric from the fabric company.

Overall-most of my fabric comes from the thrift stores or is gifted to me.

I make lots of quilts….most I give away.  Some are charity and many are gifts for family and friends.  When I give a quilt for charity, I am already giving of my time.  I don’t feel it is necessary to buy fabric from a local store for them.  I can easily  buy a piece of fabric at one of my thrift stores for 50 cents and I can bind a quilt and occasionally I can even get a piece big enough to back a quilt.  If I were to purchase all of that fabric in town at a local fabric shop, I would not be able to do very much charity work at all.  It doesn’t make sense to me to buy fabric, in this case, at a local shop.

The thrift store where I buy most of my fabric from donates proceeds from their sales into our community.  Hmm…that sounds like a good use of my money and a help to the community.  Other thrift stores in my area provide jobs for people who have disabilities.  Hmm…that sounds like a program I’d like to support too.

Most of my other fabric is bought on-line.  Recently I’ve bought fabric from Homestead Hearth’s Blow Out sale, from Whittles Fabrics and from Quilted Twins.  All of the fabric I’ve purchased has been VERY discounted.  I love a deal.  I’m not someone who needs to touch the fabric so it all works out good for me.  I’ve even provided links so others who enjoy a good deal can get things from them as well.  All of these places are run by people who are trying to make a living.   They aren’t big corporate shops.  All of these are stores in towns that are providing jobs to people in their town.

The customer service that I’ve gotten from Whittles Fabrics is some of the VERY best I’ve ever had in my entire life….much better than I’ve gotten at some of my local quilt shops.  I love Whittles and I love Cathy.  She’s the best!!  I’ve been in contact with the gals at Quilted Twins chatting about blogging and the like.  They have AMAZING free patterns and I feel one way I can thank them for the free patterns is to buy some fabric from them.

As for my relationship with local shops…. [Read more...]

Last week I did a blog post about a couple of the projects I had going on.  In that post I showed that I was drawing out and designing one project.  I had one on the quilt frame and I had just cut out two quilts.  In the comment section Betty in Canada asked, “How many quilts do have on the go at one time?”

Hmm…that’s an ever changing number but on the day I am writing this, here is what I can show you but first let me explain that my real life time and blog time (when you see things) isn’t always completely in sync.  I might have started or finished something sooner than you hear about in on the blog.  My life is so disjointed and at times hard to keep up with so I streamline it a big for you so it’s not so hard to keep track of.

For example….I skipped ahead and made three Virginia Bound blocks.  I’ve been auditioning to see if this is the next UFO I want to start on…At this point, I think it might be.  I’ll trim these up during nap time one day.

I got a bag of scraps on a garage sale that I’ll be telling you about soon.  I had and idea to put them together as a girl baby quilt and already have the blocks half sewn.

My long term nap time project that I don’t work on often is this pile.  I’ll eventually be making the quilt Moth in the Window.  The quilt needs 1 1/2″ strips and 2 1/2″ strips so while I was cutting out the Ohio Star blocks for Rectangle Wrangle I cut out these as well.  I only work on this if there is absolutely nothing else to do at nap time.

This quilt just got finished….at the time of my writing, it needed to be photographed and blog post written.

This is the start of the quilt for Hubby’s great niece.  I have all of these pieces cut that I need…some is even sewn together.  It’s going to be done in neutral taupe fabrics. [Read more...]

I always, always, always get questions from blog readers about the quilting motif I use on everything.  I love it.  Once you  get the hang of it doing it is no problem at all.

I’ve done it on so many quilt….Blue Skies….

I think that picture shows it off the best..but you can see it on the next quilt too.

I used it on Winston Ways….

Well here is the video that I watched and learned how from….. [Read more...]