Fun or Fabulous Fabric Friday #9

New Brunswick Day Edition

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I bought this fabric a couple of years ago at a flea market. I didn't quilt then, I just bought it because I thought my son would like the flags. Who knows what I figured I'd do with it. It was only $2.00 for a giant piece (maybe 5 or 6 yards) so actually I didn't think too much about anything besides whether or not I had a toonie* in my pocket.

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Anyway, fast forward to 2010 when I decide to take up quilting. It is a totally treasured fabric to me now! I have fussy cut the New Brunswick flags out of it for two different quilts so far. I LOVE the unique touch of having flags of our own province in quilting cotton. I am soooo glad I have a big piece of this fabric as the NB flag only repeats so often.

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I have no idea about the original source of the fabric as it doesn't have a printed selvage. The flag of Nunavut is not on it, but the other two territories are, so that dates it. That means it is pre-1999 fabric!
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*Toonie = Canadian $2.00 coin.

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Happy New Brunswick Day and happy weekend!

Les Iles Inspired Quilt

Almost done. Just the binding to go. This is the Les Iles de la Madeleine Inspired Quilt that I designed as a souvenir of our trip there in June. Many of the houses on the islands are painted beautiful bold colours, so each square on the quilt represents an actual combination of house main colour and trim. The three white and red squares represent the lighthouses we visited. The green border is grass. The next border is a combination of beige for sand and sand dunes and rust for the reddish cliffs. The outside border is the ocean complete with white wave crests.
The binding will likely be the deep turquoise ocean colour.
The quilting was done at my local quilt shop (Thanks Tina!)
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Overall, I certainly like this quilt, but I don't love it. I am thankful to have tried solids, but I have realised I much prefer prints.
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My son has claimed this quilt as his cuddle quilt. I tried to talk him out of it, by suggesting I would make him a great I-Spy quilt instead, but our trip to the islands meant a lot to him. (Sorry, Mom, you got bumped off the top of the list. It was going to be a surprise. Really. Better luck next time.)

I Was Done the Top Until ...

... I decided I needed one more row of squares. I have had 63 blocks (8 inch) done for this quilt for a long time and I finally decided to put them together. I had originally been planning on putting a border around them all, and even went so far as to cut and sew some of it, but I soon knew it wouldn't be right. I love the wild energy of this quilt, the I-Spy busyness, and I really didn't want to tame it down with a nice cohesive border. That wouldn't be any fun now, would it? ;-)

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Each square is different. I'm not sure how many fabrics are in there, but it is a lot. I will need seven more squares. That will give the quilt enough length to go nicely on my son's twin-size bed.

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I looked through the fabrics I have left and there are enough, I just have to be careful not to repeat anything that is already in the quilt. Many of the fabrics I have used up completely.

But I definitely still have time before Halloween.

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Thanks for stopping by!

Fun or Fabulous Fabric Friday #8

I've been posting about some second-hand finds lately, so I thought I'd continue the trend with these shirts. They were bought specifically for the fabric. Neither has ever been worn as near as I can tell and the quality of the fabric is wonderful.

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These shirts are actually pretty tame compared to most of the others I have been buying. I have realised that there is a direct negative correlation between the likelihood that my husband would wear a particular shirt, and the likelihood that I think it will be perfect for quilting. When I told him -- hee, hee -- that I bought him the striped shirt above I believe his comment was "Uh, No." And it is so plain in my mind ... I just bought it because I like the simple orange stripes and nice tiny orange stripes strike me as something that may be hard to find.

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Anyway, at least I don't have to worry about him claiming a shirt from me after I have my heart set on cutting it up.

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Happy weekend!

Upholstery Sample Inspiration?

Lately I've been in a lot of thrift stores. I hadn't shopped in any for a long time, but I'm glad I started again. It is fun. And now that I like to quilt and sew stuff, there are all kind of different things I can look for.

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I wasn't exactly looking for these upholstery sample fabrics, but I found them anyway ;-). I got a giant bag for the extreme expenditure of $1.00. I thought it would just be nice to look through them, see if there was anything I wanted, then donate the rest back to another charity store and share the fun.

So these are the ones I saved. I may make some reusable grocery shopping bags with them ... or at least out of the ones that look like the fabric will wash okay (some are a nice cotton/linen blend). I think these fabrics would make some sturdy and snazzy looking bags. They are nicely sized pieces with some as big as a fat quarter or bigger. Or maybe something else will come to mind. Or maybe I'll just let them sit in a drawer for a while, then pass them along to someone else ... as fun as they were to look through, I'd happily trade them all for some pretty quilt fabric.

P.S. Look at those prices!! $235.00 on one sample. Is that for a yard?! (Click the photo to enlarge.) Wow.

Design Wall? EQ7? Nope. How About ...

Magnetic Quilt?!

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Although this is a toy for my kids, it actually is kind of fun for me to play with too ... the little triangles are about a 1/2 inch in size and come in lots of colours. The triangles are the magnets and the design square is metal. It is black on one side, white on the other.

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And there are 1000 magnets! (Or there were at one time anyway.) I must say I love the creative play this toy offers but I do not love that many tiny parts to get strewn here and there. At least they don't hurt when you step on them -- like Lego. Or Yoda. I stepped on a Star Wars Yoda figurine the other day and Owwww his pointy ears didn't feel good ;-)

Anyway, I bought this toy at a church bazaar. $2.00 and worth every penny!

Fun or Fabulous Fabric Friday #7

As mentioned in a previous post, I have been cutting I-Spy squares lately. These fish have joined the stack. The fabric has the most beautiful light turquoise colour for the water.

As you can see, the fabric is actually this Columbia brand shirt. The fabric is 100% cotton, wonderful quality, and it feels so soft. I bought the shirt at a local second-hand store. I was looking for more basic plain men's dress shirts (also for a quilty project), but I saw this and threw it in the cart. I like that the fish are very realistic looking and not cutesy.

My Husband the Mer-Man

So I'll get to the Mer-Man bit in a minute ... but first, the preamble.

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I'm going to my first quilt show in September. I'm actually even going to enter some quilts in it! It is the Kennebecasis Valley Quilting Guild Show. I'm quite excited about it.

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I found out that I could enter about a month ago and the deadline to do so is in August. I have two quilts already done that I am going to submit, but I also thought that making one specifically for the show would be a really good goal. Now I feel like a kid getting ready with a project for the big science fair!

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Of course what I'm working on is a *secret*. Oh my, I would LOVE to show some pics of what I have done so far, but if I leave pictures until the end then that is another motivator to be sure I finish.

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It's going great so far though, and if I may say so (in my humble beginner-quilter opinion) it is awesome. It's just kind of this wacky thing that mixes traditional and modern and is sort of a good memory of my first year of quilting. It involves pretty much every fabric I own.

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But back to the Mer-Man. I love to fussy cut and one thing about this "secret" quilt is that it involves quite a few fussy cuts. Some of these are representations of my family members. I didn't intentionally buy the "Mermania" fabric so my husband could make a quilty appearance, but today once the idea struck me, there was no turning back. My son and I were laughing so much when I said that it could be Daddy. I could go into a detailed description of how it does and doesn't look like my husband, but all in all it is at least a pseudo-real, comical representation of him. And it will forever be an in-joke for us.

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But, now onto the rest of the family ...

My daughter. I also used to this little girl to represent her in her princess castle quilt. It is just perfect for her!
My son. He plays T-ball so he picked this fabric for himself.

Me. I also used this fabric in my daughter's princess castle quilt. I love it!

Happy Quilting!

Fun or Fabulous Fabric Friday #6

Lately I have been cutting some I-Spy squares from my stash, making up a nice stack to be used eventually to make some Christmas gifts.
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Some of the fabric I very specifically bought with the thought of an I-Spy quilt, but the bulk of what I'm using is just fabric left from other quilts I've made.
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I like that I can simultaneously have a scrap quilt and an I-Spy quilt.
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Fun.

Wordless Wednesday: Almost Done

Les Iles de la Madeleine Inspired Quilt

Not Quilty, But Please Check it out Anyway

In February 2009 my mother had a stroke. I was instant messaging with her when it happened and I was suspicious something was wrong when her messages came through to me with almost everything spelled incorrectly. I got a bad feeling and called her. We talked and with more info from her about how she was feeling, I said I thought she was having a stroke. And yes, unfortunately I was right.

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But she has since had a wonderful recovery and I am so proud that she appeared in a TV commercial with me about the signs of stoke. The commercial was on television in our province for the month of June. It was quite cute when my kids saw it. My daughter who is three would run and hug the TV.

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 The signs of stroke are important to know. It just takes a few minutes to commit them to memory. Thanks so much for reading this and checking out the video.

Fun or Fabulous Fabric Friday #5

Today for Fun or Fabulous Fabric Friday I thought I'd talk about my favourite quilty shopping destination: Marden's, in Calais, Maine. Local quilters know all about Marden's and many drive, like me, across the US border for some bargain fabric treasure hunting.

These photos are from last weekend.

Marden's is a surplus and salvage store, so the prices are amazing. The quality is also amazing with lots and lots of designer names mixed in.

I've found Kaffe Fassett, Denyse Schmidt, Jennifer Paganelli, Moda, Michael Miller, Henry Glass, Alexander Henry, Prints Charming by Marcus Brothers (love this fabric, so soft), Joel Dewberry, Thimbleberries, Valori Wells, Tina Givens, etc.

Anyway, I'm just mentioning this in case any of you are travelling through Maine this summer and were unaware of Marden's. There are several locations throughout the state, so if you click here for more info, maybe you will find you are driving right by a store. I would recommend a stop to all my quilty friends.
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P.S. -- I have no connection with Marden's other than being a shopper there. This is just my opinion, but I think if you asked other quilters around here, they'd agree that it's a fun destination.
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Another P.S. -- I bought the rest of the bolt of that Flea Market Fancy in the first photo. (And no, I didn't see any other fabric from the FMF line there.) So now I have more to use for future giveaways here on the blog. Yay!