Supply Time

Getting back to dyeing after many years off, a new box of provisions from Dharma Trading arrived and now I'm all excited to get to jump in again and make a colorful mess. I bought some new dye colors, most especially two reds with great names: Atomic Fireball and Dye-no-mite. I also got one ready to dye tank top for myself to throw in with the reds.

I also got two cotton fabrics to use for dyeing, one is 60" wide sheeting, and then some mercerized cotton print cloth. Mercerized refers to a fabric treatment used to help with dye uptake. 

I also received my order from Hancock's of Paducah, which is where I normally buy my batting as they usually have a good price on the ones I like to use. I got one Hobbs 80/20 that is fusible and one that is not. I discovered I didn't have a big enough non-fusible batt for one of the quilts I was trying to sandwich the other day. I also got a big cone (6,452 yds!) of Aurifil 50wt thread, a couple of super on-sale fabrics, some Steam-a-Seam2, Chenille needles (friend Jaye recommended to try for hand-stitching).

For Hancock's free shipping deal, you can only buy two quilt batts at a time. It definitely makes for a big box to pick up at the post office, but at least it's not too heavy.

Fusible Shop

More fabric shopping happened, but I had kind of forgotten until the package showed up and surprised me. It had been nearly 3 weeks since I ordered. If you need something very fast, don't order from Missouri Star Quilting. They are not super fast on shipping, but they have a great selection. They did have something I saw in a lecture and wanted to try out. So these super on-sale fabrics landed in my shopping cart, free shipping at a certain $ point really works on me psychologically. 

A Tula Pink, a Kaffe Fasset, and two mum prints that I liked the colors of. Stacking them up together, it looks an intentional fabric pull for a quilt...hmmm. Usually my fabric choices in online shopping are rather random.

I also ordered another type of fusible batting that I've never tried, Quilter's Dream 80/20. And Missouri Star also carries American Made solids which I really like. One is just black, and the other is PFP white, prepared for printing. Since I'm doing this printing/quilting quilt I thought it would be worth a try.

This cute little canister is the reason for the whole order. It's sprinkle-able fusible powder, Free Fuse from Quilters Select. In one of the quickie lectures in the Global Quilt Connection sampler, I was really intrigued by the fabric fusing technique presented by Julia McLeod.

Now that I've been sewing more with solids I've encountered an annoying issue. Solids don't have the usual ID on the selvedge that prints have, so it's hard to tell who is who and which is which. Sometimes I'd remember and pin a little piece of paper with the info, but invariably those fall off.  So, I used my alphabet stitches and stitched it out right onto the selvedge. My plan is to cut from the other end first and once I get to the stitched area, I'll trim the label off, and baste it to the remainder pieces.