Kelli’s Stash Report!

A post from Kelli–

I usually don’t go fabric shopping very often, but this past week has been a bit different.  I don’t really think its the new year, but maybe just a drive to get some things cleaned up and finished.  This next year, I really want to work on doing things that I like, not just something to tide me over until the next thing.  I also want to be more purposeful, so rather than doing something I kind of like, I want to do things that I really like, even if they cost a bit more money, take more time, or make me step out of my comfort zone.

A while back, mom and I found cross stitch patterns by Lizzie and Kate.  I think there were three separate patterns with three stockings each.  I had some cross stitch fabric that would maybe have worked for some, but we decided that we wanted them all to look similar, so we bought the fabric.  At the time, it was on back order so we had honestly forgotten about it.  We got to talking about projects we wanted to work on and that got back up.  Around the same time I got an email that the fabric was back in stock–So we bought it!  Being the nice daughter that I am, my plan is to get it cut into the proper size for 1 stocking all at once.  That way I know that it’s for that specific project and partially because cutting cross stitch fabric can be a real pain!

Last Saturday, I took a class on bullet journaling and on my way to the class in West Union, I was talking to mom and she mentioned that she might run over to West Union.  We got it figured out that she would meet me in West Union and we would grab lunch and check out the quilt store there, One Block Over to see if they had some batiks to finish our On Ringo Lake quilts.  Side note–My bullet journaling class was awesome!  If you have any resources or you bullet journal, let me know!

I ended up doing a little stash enhancing with some neutrals and this lovely green?  Isn’t it great?

Then–As if I haven’t bought enough yet–Yesterday I had a dentist appointment at 8am.  I have been really bad about going to the dentist in the past few years (many while I was in nursing school) and so I have always just put it off.  When Mom chipped her tooth in November, I happened to schedule myself an appointment as well.  Now, that appointment has turned into three under my belt and another three that are scheduled out.  I really hate coming off of the numbing medication and get pretty nasty headaches, so I try to schedule them after I work an overnight so that I can just wake up after falling asleep and feel pretty good.  This time it didn’t work quite as nicely!  I ended up finishing around 9 and started making the rounds in Decorah as it seemed that if there was an errand to run, yesterday they were all getting done.  I headed off to the Depot and Spectrum thrift stores and found these cotton men’s shirts.

At the Depot, shirts are $2.00 each, so I usually look at the Large and XL sections first.  I pull anything that is a unique color from there because they are a bit more spendy.  Then I go to the Small and Medium sections and pulled anything green as I really want to make Criss Cross Applesauce out of Bonnie Hunter’s Scraps and Shirttails II book.  I got all of the ones in the box–close to 17 I think.

Then I headed over to Spectrum.  They are currently having a $5.00 bag sale–but have been for a few months!  There, I pull anything 100% cotton.  The nice thing is that sometimes if they have a bigger bag, it’ll still be only $5.00.  I didn’t have quite enough to fit in one bag, but I did find some good ones for sure!

One of my last stops before heading out of town was Red Roxy.  When I made the On Ringo Lake mystery, I didn’t have any batiks.  At the same time I also started making garlic knots and wanted something to use as a constant for my cornerstones.  I cut a few strips off of my fabric for On Ringo Lake so I ended up short when cutting for the mystery.  I was at a place that if I needed to substitute a new fabric in it would be okay and had planned on doing that, however I happened to find the exact same batik at Red Roxy!  They have an awesome selection of batiks that would read similar to a solid in batik world and I was able to walk right over and get what I needed.  And I couldn’t leave without a few little extras!

I even found a brown that I’m going to use as part of a shashing and for the binding.

Now for the not so easy part–getting it all cut up and into it’s proper place!  That’s the hard part!