Shop Til You Drop

Clures and I have been doing our part to support the local economy over the last two days. We have visited numerous local quilt shops (I can not believe how many there are!) and a yarn shop.

It seems like most of the shops are owned by friends of Clures and I’ve met some very nice people!

I have also made a few good finds. I bought the following fabric for an as-yet unstarted twin quilt for a friend’s son who will graduate from high school one of these years. (That’s when I plan to give it to him.)
Top: Cityscape fabric (2 3/8 yds for sale at $4.99/yd) at Linda’s Cottonpatch which I plan to use for a backing fabric. Landmarks from cities around the world are suitable for a high school graduate, don’t you think?

Middle: Light print for alternating blocks at Judy’s A Little Bit Country Fabric Shoppe. (4 yds at $4.50/yd—unbelievably, that’s the regular price!)

Bottom: Fat quarters mostly from D&T Quilt Shop (on sale for $1 each)

I didn’t have the pattern with me so I took some guesses at amounts and just bought enough fat quarters to get me started.

I also found a perfect backing fabric for my Hawaiian star quilt at D&T Quilt Shop. Looking through the wide backing fabrics, a bright red caught my eye first. But after a little more looking I found this lovely blue paisley and it won out in the end. Three yards gives me a piece that is 110” by 108” and that should work for the quilt which will end up about 96” square.

A lot of the collections of backing fabrics I see in stores are very conservative (or dare I say, boring?) and I wasn’t going to wait to snatch this stuff up. And not to make it all about price, but at $8/yd it’s not really a hard choice to make.

I did not find anything to buy at the knit shop. They had a lot of cottons which I’m not really interested in right now; a lot of silks which I can’t really afford to buy just because it’s pretty (and feels like…well, like silk…mmmm); and a lot of big name brands which I’m not too inclined to buy. But I enjoyed looking around and appreciated Clures’ patience as she indulged me.

During all this shopping, I have been diligently knitting away on my Christmas surprise like a good little girl. I got one unit done on Thursday and another one done today! Woo hoo. (And yes that is authentic bug splat on the window.)
I am almost out of this blue and I will miss it. It makes me happy. There are colours that I am attracted to and love (such as red), some that get me excited (purples, yellows) but blue is the only one that can make me happy. I had a paint colour in my previous bedroom that did the same thing. That is a good colour to have in a bedroom. But anyway, I’m running out of the blue yarn and will have to make do.

Another bonus find at a late-day yard sale stop was two wool sweaters. The first was a black GAP sweater that is too small to wear, but never too small to felt:

And the second was a bright neon yellow sweater which someone has already started to felt [full] for me. (I suspect that’s why it was offered at a yard sale.):
Don’t let this picture fool you--the actual sweater is even brighter. I have two big bags of sweaters to felt already, but I liked these enough to buy and add to the pile. One day I’ll full them all, cut ’em up and go to town making pillows, bags, camera covers, and patchwork blankets. Can’t wait til that inspiration hits!

All for now!