Time to start sewing!

This afternoon, I cut the rest of the green strips for my Weed Whacker quilt, including a few extra so I don't run into the same trouble I did with the red quilt. It feels good to have those done, but now I've got the three and a half inch light squares to look forward to. I think I'll sew some of the strips together first.

Or I'll play with my Bento Box. I'm delighted at how quickly the first few blocks came together, and surprised at how much fun I'm having with that fabric since my relationship with it started out so badly.

A few weeks back, a friend and I went on a little shop hop to find fabrics for her next quilt. I wasn't buying much of anything (mainly because I'd already splurged on the sale fabrics at Connecting Threads), but at the last shop I got sucked in by the Moda scrap bags.

I wanted to make selvage potholders. The bag that someone else had opened was full of selvages with pretty dots and words. I picked out one with dark edges visible and asked the saleslady if they all had selvages, took her word for it, and didn't open it until we'd left.

Not a single selvage -- not even the edges without printing. Every strip of the fabric was cut along both long edges. I did call the shop (which is 80 miles away) to let them know what happened, so they didn't unknowingly promise selvages to anyone else. They were very nice and offered to let me bring it back, or send it with a friend, or mail it back to them so they could send me one that did have selvages...

At that point, I wasn't about to spend any more money on the problem. The fabric was gorgeous, I'd done the math and figured that it worked out to about three yards of fabric for ten dollars, but I couldn't make my selvage potholders and I wouldn't have BOUGHT the fabric except for the potholders, and I was feeling crabby about the whole thing.

A while later, I sat down with the Bento Box pattern that I'd planned on using with my Root of the Madder fat quarters and realized that I didn't have the right balance of lights and darks. But I did have a bag of gorgeous fabric with lots of lights and darks that would trim down to 3" strips without wasting much fabric at all.

I'll have to throw in some lights and darks from my own stash, but as long as I can find prints that don't stick out like a sore thumb, I'm a very happy quilter.

That trouble I was talking about in my last post -- I did get myself into it yesterday. One of the dealers at Grandma's antique mall had brought in a bunch of quilting fabric for fifty to seventy-five cents a yard. I'm not sure exactly how many yards I got for my fifteen dollars, but I came home with at least twenty yards of nice fabric. And I hear she's bringing in more.

I was looking through a library book while Alex was in karate yesterday and found another five quilts I want to (and probably can) dig up fabric for -- and the quilt show is tomorrow, so I'm sure I'll come home from that with another dozen or so in mind!

How many quilts do I have to make out of my existing stash before I deserve a special treat? I discovered Bee in my Bonnet this morning and I'm absolutely enchanted by her patterns, especially Women's Work and Grandma's Kitchen. I can't decide if I'm more in love with the applique pressure cooker and hand mixer or the iron and vacuum cleaner with their little rick rack cords.