Free Wheeling Fabric

 

At the recent BAMQ meeting, there were some super interesting printed canvas pieces of fabric available on the Free Table. I resisted at first, but then they were kind of left behind, sitting there all alone. So I felt sorry for them. Not really, but kinda, and it helped make my mind up to take them home.The bird one just cracks me up and I love purple and red together. It's only a FQ plus a bit, so it might work as a good feature pocket on a bag? The other print was so beautiful, by one of my fave designers, with a grellow/yellow background so it will go with some of my other canvas pieces that I have. Hey, it's Anna Maria Horner, I didn't know she was doing canvas designs. 

Updating my 2026 fabric tracker with these additions and also subtracting for recent finishes:

 Net Total Fabric for 2026 so far this year is: -12.85 yards 

Shopping Local

 

I haven't been to a quit shop in a while, but I needed some more Best Press and a certain type of elastic. Imagine my surprise when I was handed this lovely gift bag at checkout of Santa Cruz Vac & Sew. They had just celebrated their 7th anniversary, and had gift bags for customers. Which was super nice! Shopping local is so necessary.

The three FQs on the right are called Cotton Shantung, they have that lovely slubby texture and almost have the weight and drape of a silk shantung. I thought the patterns were lovely and they had many color combinations available at Hart's Fabrics. Some smiley face wooden buttons, more needles (always more needles just in case of an apocalypse), very wide elastic and a big bottle of Best Press. 

Adding these onto the fabric tracker, and also updating with my recent finishes, I've found that my

 Net Total Fabric for 2026 so far this year is: -11.5 yards 

Yes, you read that right, I'm in the red, I've used up more fabric than I've brought in. Yay, me! We'll see how this holds up through the year.

Poppies, Bunnies & Wander

 

The very first new fabric purchase I made this year is this one yard of California Poppy fabric, which I bought at the lonely remaining Beverly's Fabrics, to make the name tags for the upcoming retreat for BAMQ. (which happens to be named "Quilting Among the Poppies")

And they had Scotch glue sticks, which I haven't seen in absolutely ages and they're my very favorite-ish. Also some waistband elastic to use for some clothing sewing I'm planning.

I also ordered some new MistyFuse and am trying their new product, BunnyPaper. It's supposed to work well for printing and transferring designs to fabric. And they also published the Yvonne Porcella Memoir, so I got one.

A free book from the Free Table at BAMQ Sew Day, a Kaffe Fassett book I was pretty sure I didn't have.

Also, my pre-order of four yards of the Kona Color of the Year arrived, Wander is a beautiful green. Not at all planned but rather serendipitous, as I think it looks rather fabulous with the poppy fabric. And then there are two cloth ribbons (soft! NOT scratchy!) for hanging the nametags around our necks. I have to chose just one to use.

Fabric Tracker for 2026 so far: - 8 yards

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. 

Cupro and More

I tried my best to avoid any Black Friday buying, except for my LQS's sale. Harts Fabric is always 

 fun for getting clothing fabrics, and they had a new one called Sandwash Cupro (which auto correct just changed to Cupronickel!?) The description of the fabric was intriguing so I decided to try some and go pick it up in person. While there, I fell prey to the W.o.W. fabrics and other white prints to use in the Lupine Mystery quilt.

I love that they suggest buying a matching color of thread in their online ordering. This color is Cognac.

This is one of those fabrics because of the surface treatment of "handwashing" means it catches the light very differently. Look at that color change! Hopefully this isn't a "nap" fabric that you have to match up so that it's all going in the same direction of your garment. It's a flowy, beautiful feeling fabric, so I'm looking forward to wearing it.

From Folkwear, a pattern for a tunic, a Sashiko kit, and a Clover buttonhole cutter.  And from Amazon, two more Clover notions that were recommended on SewShare. A Hot Hemmer, and a pattern cutting guide. Both of those will get a tryout when I make the tunic. And then from a recent museum visit, the show catalog which is a big beautiful giant book: Routed West: Twentieth-Centruy African American Quilts in California.

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!

Poetic Supplies

I'm taking a class, called Poetic Cloth from Jane Dunnewold which is really fun so far, but it required me to source some new fabric from a new supplier that she suggested. Online Fabric Store (yes, that's actually the name of it). For the class I bought two fabrics to try printing with, two yards of 60" white cotton broadcloth, and 2 yards of 45" bleached cotton muslin. What an interesting picture this is for white on white, right? I tried my best and held the two fabrics up to the window. I need to wash and dry them before I actually get started on pulling prints.

These fabrics will be used along with the new and much bigger Gelli Plate that was suggested that I just invested in. The one I had was only 8x10", so buying this much larger one will make it easier to print something as big as FQ which will be more usable in quilt making. Think of this as the before picture, taken while it's pristine and untouched.

I had most of the paints, and inks on the supply list already, but I didn't have these four. I've never used a paint retarder before so I'm interested in learning how that works.

Also at The Online Fabric Store, I found two kinds of felt. In the class notes, it was suggested to try out the display of smaller works we'll be making on this sort of sturdy dark grey felt, it seemed like it would be a good thing to learn. 

And after looking all over to source it locally, I finally found a grey wool felt that I can use in the Circle Sampler. Wool is really hard to find, especially in the size that I needed. I should have just bought it fro Sue Spargo back when I bought the pattern. I had even tried buying a wool coat at GoodWill and deconstructing it, but the largest rectangle wasn't even close to big enough. Now that I have the background, I can actually start this project.

So, after adding in those 7 yards, it brings my fabric tracker up to a net inflow of 11.8 yards.

Tangerine Shopping

I got to have a little field trip this week with friends to a new-to-me quilt store, Quilts & Things. Definitely not as close as my LQS, but it was super fun to get to visit with friends while checking out new fabrics. I got two fabrics from Art Gallery Fabrics studio, in the Tangerine line to make myself a summer top. I really love tangerines. The darker one, which is an odd green-grey-blue will be the main part and the lighter tangerine fabric will be the contrast parts.

I also picked up this intriguing sort of origami-ish folded bag pattern. It's very clever and I'm going to try it out at Sew Day on Saturday.

Next door was an enormous Dollar Tree, where I only found two things to buy, some rather oddly colored alphabet beads and some craft cubes. Nothing in particular planned for these two.

And then when I returned back home I had a package from Feral Notions with all the above fun and sparkly goodies. And one from Amazon with a new ironing board cover that is new but not terribly sparkly. The window rainbow maker went up in the top of my studio window, instantly delighting the studio assistants with new colorful things that aren't really there to chase around.

A thread cutter for cutting chain piecing that uses an old rotary cutting blade between the two big stars. It went together very easily and safely. And it made me change my rotary blade out.

It works very well and is very cheery as well as safe.

And also a new ruler that has embedded confetti and laser cut printed markings. Packaged up with those clear grippy dots which makes it very stable. 2.5"x10" is a good handy size, that is easy to use.
 

Selvedges Showing

Another year means another challenge from MQG, and this year's palette is pretty great. Using six colors of Windham Artisan Cotton. These fabrics are really lovely to work with, so I'm looking forward to sewing with them. They're now available in 90 colors. Along with the challenge fabrics I got the two prints in the picture from Sewtopia.

Because of how they're woven, (cross-weave)  I really love the look of the selvedges. I'm going to try to find a way to utilize those in the design. I would probably not use the blue and pink fabric's selvedges as that bright white might be too much.

I started playing around with a design in EQ8 with some fairly simple blocks.

I'm trying to imagine this design if it was pieced so that some, but not all, of the seam lines would have the selvedges visible on the front of the quilt. Not a thing I can sketch out in EQ8. Just a starting point design idea here, not likely to be the final one I go with.

Just Barely A Box

 

My final subscription box for the Pink Door Fabrics Tula Pink club arrived. The box itself was still barely still taped together on all sides, yikes! I was a little worried for the contents inside.

But everything was safe and sound, and there's as usual, a whole lot of goodies. This is the newest Tula Pink release of Full Moon Forest II line of fabrics along with all kinds of coordinating stuff. I love the Emperor's Wheel pattern example done in these fabrics.

The coordinating Tula Pink solids are great. and the webbing has a beautiful tree print on it.

There are a lot of FQ's and it's always so hard to untie these beautiful rainbow bundles.

A Bob-Sled was the most clever new notion I've seen in a while. It's a bobbin holder that has a little front part (like a bobsled) that lifts up and you can put needles in there. So cute, and I love the Deco-Bob pre-wound coordinating threads included.

A Tula Pink neon pink bee key fob, Renaissance Ribbons sampler pack of the coordinating ribbons,  and a long 72" of ByAnnie zipper with contrasting hardware.

An interesting bag pattern, 1"hexagon papers and these clever plastic mini bolts for organizing fabric. They included an idea of making feature parts of the fabric you'd use for the bag out of hexies which I thought would be very cute. Especially with using that printed webbing and color coordinated zipper.

The Tula Pink solids are really nice color choices.

A better view of the print FQs, quite a wide variety of big and little prints. 

A lot of these will be really easy to use in block making.

And the more interesting detailed prints will be used elsewhere in bigger pieces.

I like the inclusion of the light greys and white prints too.