Final Advent Update

 Time to catch up on the Advent FQ "calendar" goodies from Global Fiber Shop. I haven't posted about them since the middle of last month. I love all the great patterns in these fabrics. But I especially love the red/purple woven with the great texture.

The orange one in the right bottom corner is just a lovely shade and the pattern is terrific.

I like this little notepad, it's so pretty, and it makes me want to make that block. Also, "Let It Sew" is super clever and I haven't seen that.

I really love these two, especially together. Soft and peaceful but still interesting.

Oooh two FQs on the 25th! I love that twelve days of Christmas print, so cute.

There they are all stacked up together. I think these would all work together well in a scrappy sort of looking quilt. There are only a couple that might need to be removed to really work. Would I have picked out all  100% of these fabrics? No, definitely not. There are many that I would have chosen, but I do like that they feel cohesive overall which is pretty tough to achieve with this variation in patterns and colors. The main thing was to give myself (and friend Jaye too) a little surprise present to open up every day. 

So, adding all 34 of these FQs into my fabric tracker for 2025 I ended up with these totals: 

• 103.3 yards bought/brought in 
• 71.3 yards used in projects/quilts 
• for a net of 32 yards

As I haven't tracked my fabric before I don't know if that's a lot or a little for me, so I'll keep tracking this year and find out.

More Advent FQ's

 

My right wrist is really hurting, I think I strained it while I was traveling. That means that I'm taking a few days off of sewing activities to rest it up. So here's the most recent Advent FQ's up to the 11th, and some goodies that have come along in the envelopes as well.

Here's all of them so far, stacked up together. Would I have chosen these fabrics? Definitely some of them, but overall I like the choices so far. When you look at them together, the color palette and variety of prints work. I think they'll end up making a good quilt next year.

Advent Adventure

 

I saw a few quilt-related advent calendar type things for sale this year, but I decided to buy myself a birthday present and try out the one from Global Fiber Shop.

All those intriguing polka-dot envelopes filled with FQs!

First things first. A really nice print!

Ooh this one is pretty too.

Wait, another pretty print and a notion was included too! So far, so good on the fabric picks, all will work for me. 

Travel Shop

 

The fabric shopping on the way to, and in Portland with friend Jaye, was pretty great. The above picture is  what I found at Sewlarium. First is the new Ruby Star toweling, I'll be making napkins out of this beautiful stuff. I think it'll go well with my pride month table runner. FQs of the PDX airport fabric, a black on grey houndstooth, and odd yellow grid, a pink/caramel ribbon print. A mushroom print that I plan to make a pillowcase with, a really interesting print with odd yellow shapes (I thought it looked like a tile floor), a beautiful (instead of ugly) Frida Kahlo print, and an on-sale pearl bracelets in a dark grey almost black. 

At Pioneer Quilts, I found more of the Ruby Star toweling, because I hadn't bought enough at Sewlarium. An odd grellow star print, a pretty purple halloween print and then the ingredients to make the witch hat "pin keeper" (not a pincushion I guess?). They have a great selection of wools in this shop.

At Mill End, I think I was fabric shopped out/overwhelmed with the vast array of choices, so I only got a couple buckles and a Tombow textile glue that I'd never seen.

In Eugene, we stopped in at Paramount Sew-Vac, a really great store, especially for sewing machine selections as they had all the brands and tons of room displaying them, I found a great remnant of this white and grey print, and then was excited to see Marcia Derse print on a lovely cotton jersey, I got enough to make myself a top.

In Ashland, we checked out Sew Creative and I found that I was really drawn to the Australian Aboriginal prints, they have a huge selection, but I managed to narrow it down and chose three and then found another print that I thought would work well with them.

The last shop we stopped at was Purple Frog Quilt Shop, where I found these 4 FQs, a Peanuts print, blue Grunge, and two lights on a string one dark green and one charcoal. They had a great selection of the American Made solids, so I bought the last of the light grey, a little over a yard. And a new nail file, because my travel one is worn out now and needs replacing.

And finally, at Powell's Books, I found this book, Ahead of the Curve(which includes 5 patterns!) by one of my fave curvy pattern designers, Jenny Rushmore of Cashmerette.

That was plenty of shopping to last me for quite a while, and now I get to add the new fabric purchases into my fabric tracker. At the last update, I was previously at a net increase of 11.8 yards. After adding all this new stuff in,  and subtracting out what I've been sewing since the last update, I'm up to a net of: 18.3 yards. I better get to finishing some big things before year's end to get that number down!

A Visit to Sew Creative

 

On a trip last week with DH, we stayed in Ashland, Oregon and walked around the very cool downtown. We were desperate for a bathroom opportunity, and lo and behold, a quilt shop appeared. I knew they'd have one, I don't think I've ever been in a single quilt store without facilities. Sew Creative is a really nice shop, they had great selections for all types of fabrics and many clever fat quarter presentations. Like the plastic sushi container filled with FQ's above. DH saw these at the checkout and grabbed this one insisting that I needed to get it. Apparently the shop owner is big on recycling and takeout sushi, so she recycles these perfect containers to make appealing FQ combinations.

Some of the pieces were even rolled up just like sushi which was super cute!  They also had packs of FQs tucked into painted metal cages hanging all around the store. They turned out to be suet cages that are supposed to be squirrel proof. This was a very clever marketing idea to go with their new BOM quilt Sweet Tweets which involves appliquéd and embroidered wool birds.

It was very fun to unpack this tray of goodies. And there was no sushi fishy smell at all. I would imagine they get run through the dishwasher or something like that. I love when business find ways to reuse plastic containers in such a clever way.

And then there were the bag patterns! I saw a bag designer on offer that I'd never come across, Charlie's Aunt - Vintage Sewing Patterns. Not that I'm claiming to be an expert or anything, but I have recently been on an extensive quilt shop trip with friend Jaye who is a literal expert on all things bags. I couldn't resist and chose this one because they had one made up in a great combination of solid wool. I love the angles of the flaps, those intriguing layers, the size of the bag and the three buttons. And yes, I'll admit, the beautiful leather gloves and cool coat on the model. I really like the sun hat pattern that Charlie's Aunt sells on Etsy.

Unfortunately, this is the only picture I took inside the shop, obviously in the bathroom. But is this not the cutest re-use of wooden spool and a piece of a vintage advertising ruler?

Hunt For Gray

I'm on the hunt for the right gray to finish off the sashing for my City Sampler. This was the closest Kona gray (Haze 94580) that they had at my LQS, Hart's Fabric. I thought it would be worthwhile to try it out in my workroom and see if it was close enough. Nope. Much too light.

I used a Fabric marker to write the solid info on the selvedge before washing it. Also one FQ ended up coming home from Harts. I also received my order of another fusible batting roll and a new roll of Scrap Tape, just in time to finish off my 100 Days.

I'm glad I kept the fabric marker in the package so that I could find my highlighted note.

The fabric marker did fade a slight bit, but not much. So washing didn't help matters as far as matching up grays. I'll take another swing at finding the right gray at Golden State next week. Luckily I have lots of other projects to work on. But I'm so close to getting the top assembled.

Appointments to Shopping

I had some time to kill between appointments yesterday so I ended up at Golden State Quilting. It is located dangerously close to my doctor's office. Was that a subconscious reason I chose that particular doctor? Perhaps. Here's a group shot of what I bought on steering wheel. How do you like that kinda wild-eyed cartoon/caricature of Eleanor Burns? 

And here's a more spread-out version of my haul at home in better lighting. Five FQ's,  three of which will end up in the Bohemian Wife quilt as they are Kaffe Fassett Collective prints, a new quilt marking pen from Quilters Select, A smaller wool pressing mat to use at Sew Day and retreats. I bought a Jaybird Quilts pattern, Northern Lights to use with the mini Hex-n-More ruler, mostly based on the fact that they have one made up and displayed and I really want to make one with my own hand-dyes.