Thread Usage

 

I regularly use Bottom Line thread in my bobbin, especially when piecing, and I bought this cone of "Silver" and started using it, September 2022. I only know that because I marked it on the inside of the cone when I first unwrapped it. This thread is extremely thin and works really well in my machine, very smooth, winds on the bobbins easily, etc. 

I was taking this cone off my machine when my DH came in, and I told him this information, he quickly in his head calculated an estimated usage rate. I did the math and he was very close: 3,000 yards, 1228 days which is 2.44 yards per day. Not terribly useful information, I know, especially because this is not the Only Thread I ever use in the bobbin. I use different thread when I'm quilting, and free-motion quilting. But I will do the same thing again and then I'll have at least one comparison point. Will I make a spreadsheet? Nope, not enough data to make it worth the time.

I also had to write on the top of the cone what type of thread it was so that I'd remember to use it when it was time to wind a new set of bobbins. Guess it's time for me to get some more!

Free P.O.T.S.

 

You just never know what's going to be on the Free Table at the Bay Area Modern Quilting meetings and Sew Days. This time it was this kind of large, two sided opening thread organizer box. I think this will be a much better solution to corralling all the embroidery threads I've accumulated instead of digging around in a bag for the right one. It won't be one that I carry around with me for a project on the go. And, Yes it's yet another P.O.T.S. (Plastic Organizer ThingieS) but one that I'll hopefully actually use. If not I'll put it back out on the Free Table.

I like the idea of the two-sided doors too. I'll have to fill it up and show how it looks.  It seems like it will hold a lot of different size/shapes of spools which is a good feature. 

Also seen above another of my favorite batting Hobbs 80/20 fusible that I just bought to replace the last one I used earlier this year for both my SAT 25 piece, Our Mistake and Sky Structure, made for the Sister Artists auction.

Rainbow, Rare and Knotty

After a visit the other day with friend Jaye to the long arm artist, Colleen Granger to drop off quilts (City Sampler is now approaching the finish line), we made a stop at Bay Quilts just before they closed.

I managed to find some good stuff in a short amount of time, a few fabrics to add to the Medallion Quilt box, as well as this FQ rainbow pack of collage images. Now I need to find a good fat quarter chunky sort of pattern as I don't want to cut these up into too small of pieces.

In the fat quarter bins, this Tula Pink neon lion caught my eye, the store clerk was very excited for me as she said it was a rare one now. I also got two more colors of Spagetti embroidery thread. I also couldn't resist the small retablo, especially once I read the back of it.

Here's the back of the Our Lady Undoer of Knots retablo from Lynn Garlick Retablos, cool huh? I might have to do an Undoer of Knots quilt.

Now to go update my fabric tracker for the year.

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.

Mom's Sewing Room

 

After a whirlwind few weeks of getting my mom moved out of her home, I'm unpacking the treasures I brought back to my own home. There wasn't a lot in the sewing area that I nabbed as she'd already been generous in sharing a lot of the fabrics and stuff from her mother. But there were of course a few items, as seen above. I wrote about her sewing room back when we were fire-evacuated and staying at my parent's house. So much has happened since then!

These are the type of pin I really like to use, and they're "the quilter's pin" so that's so very official and all. I'm probably going to toss the cute and somewhat vintage box. But maybe I'll make something with it.

There were two pincushions, one the red traditional tomato (or strawberry) red and the other a mid-70's wild floral in the same shape. Some of the pins are rusty, so I tossed those. And a silver thimble that maybe fits my pinky finger, but it's really pretty. A wooden box with wooden spools of thread that are likely too old to use. But I'll try them out to see. Some empty wooden spools that are just lovely all on their own. A box of miscellaneous buttons, one heavy duty zipper and some cotton-polyester threads in dark colors that I can use.

And lastly, I brought home an unfinished hook latching project from my rainbow-obsessed preteen years. I was willing to part with it, but my daughter said she wants a pillow made out of it, so I'll have to actually finish the project after 50 years. Polyester yarn is of course-- forever.

SF Stitching

 

I actually sat in the sunny window in our hotel room in SF and stitched on my go-to handwork project, Snake in the Garden. I used the newest color thread that I had at hand, thanks to the shopping I'd just done at Britex Fabrics. The green sashiko thread was used to fill in part of the dark blue leaf between the gold print. 

These are the two sashiko thread colors that I bought at Britex. I chose them because I hadn't seen colors like that on offer in other shops.

Color of the Year and More

 

Here's a catch-up post on new stuff I've bought this year so far. I was shopping at Hartland Quilt shop on Etsy buying supplies for the Jane Sassaman class I'm taking this month, Golden Threads quilting paper and I also bought a half yard of 

this really interesting butterfly fabric by Faye Guaniper from Dear Stella. For the class I also had to get a pretty big quantity of Pellon interfacing, so I bought it from Amazon along with another fusible Hobbs 80/20 batting. Not worth a picture on those two items. I'll let you know about using this quilting paper stuff after the class, it looks pretty interesting.

My pre-order of the Kona color of the year, Nocturne arrived from Keepsake Quilting. I got three yards of it and I love love love this purple. It's a really beautiful, rich color.

Mx. Domestic has an online shop and they announced a great sale so I snapped up this assortment of fat quarters from the fairly new fabric line, Scrawl by Giucy Juice. 

I love all the print and fonts as well as the colors which will play well with the Alison Glass fabrics I have left over from the Trinket quilt.

To support this great and very inclusive store in Washington, Wyldwood Creative, I did a little browsing on their website. This looks like such a fun local quilt (and more) shop. I'd seen this Art Gallery Fabrics binding fabric in a couple of other fabric shops but hadn't bought any, but this color way was interesting to me. I think it might be usable as is, I really like the dashed cutting line and scissors. They also had this really pretty checkered ribbon, it has a lovely hand, very soft. And their sticker selection was pretty awesome, yes that's a banana slug sticker. The two shiny holographic stickers do not photograph well, but they look cool in person.

I saw this embroidery project when friend Jaye and I visited Cheryl in Oregon, she'd finished all these ladies and it was so wonderful. I want to try it, so I bought the little kit and book that Brooklyn Haberdashery sells. Just a note, I want to make the ladies that I embroider of more diverse body types. This cellulose PFD fabric looked very interesting and it is very very smooth, I can't wait to try and dye it to see how it works out.

And lastly, I bought myself the Victoria Findley Wolfe book, The Quilting Experience. It's really beautiful, I haven't read it all yet, but the pictures are great.

Yikes, that was a whole lot of shopping, hopefully that's out of my system for now. Inspired by friend Jaye, my newly created Fabric Usage Tracker worksheet is getting a real workout. With my two quilt finishes, I'm currently in "the red" by 5.25 yards. As in, I've bought more fabric than I've used. Not a surprise given all this shopping! Okay, back to working on using some more of said fabric up.

Yesterday's Mail

 

Yesterday was a Good Mail day™ because my subscription box from Pink Door Fabrics arrived. It is chock o' block as per usual with all kinds of fun stuff. But I have to say, I really really enjoy the boxes and have a hard time throwing them away. I've been using them for storing current projects, they're roomy enough and easy to move around. Better than buying even more P.O.T.S. (Plastic Organizer Thingies).

There's always a pattern included and this one is super intriguing to me, I've always liked this block but have never tried it (due to the curves and needing to make templates. Well, it includes the acrylic templates, and equipment for doing it EPP style. There also directions for piecing it by machine. We shall see. I quite like the examples on the pattern cover of the fussy cutting these great Tula Pink fabrics.

I'm excited about the Renaissance Ribbons that were included, they're so pretty and match the fabric so well. Another Sewline fabric glue pen is always useful, now I can have one in my to-go box and one in my workroom, some very pointy butterfly scissors, John James Milliners needles, a spool of DecoBob for hand sewing. Oh and a package of seeds, alyssum.

There was also a swatch deck with pictures of each of the prints in the Untamed fabric line. Not sure what those are really for, maybe I can use them in a collage?

Untamed is all about flowers,  there are no animals included in any of these. Except for the check and houndstooth fabrics, it's all gorgeous flower or plant related shapes like seeds..

I really enjoy the variation of patterns used in the backgrounds of the florals.

I'm really into the rainbow houndstooth fabrics. And the patterns on the seeds (or water droplets).

The neons are Very Neon.

A lot of these would play very well with other Tula Pink fabric lines, there are similar motifs that are similar and the colors would work together.

The Tula Pink solids are super pretty. The fabric quality is very good for a solid.

The neon checkerboards are super stinky with the heavy neon print. It's very stiff and plasticky as well. I hope that it washes out and softens somewhat.

Always fun to check out the selvedges.

I like the colors on the selvedge being represented in water droplet (or seed) shapes.

I used my laundry marker to write in the names of the solids, just in case I end up needing more of one color.

Circling Round

 

I'm gathering the supplies to make the Sue Spargo embroidery sampler, Toned Down Circle Sampler. I had bought a bag of wool circles ages ago. I used some of these to make my 5-4-5-7 quilt earlier this year. The circles came in two sizes, 1" and 2". The pattern calls for 1" circles so I counted out all the 1" circles required. Almost enough to do the pattern.

I chose four of the 2" circles to cut down to 1", so now I have enough circles for the pattern.  I now need to find a piece of wool for the background to appliqué these onto. The only piece I have on hand is a FabMo sourced one that is a very bright orange and is quite heavy-weight. I haven't gone through my felted wool box yet though. 

I'm trying hard to use what I already have on hand, but as I said earlier I did buy this package of threads along with the pattern. They are a wool-acrylic blend thread called Ellana which I've never used before. The other three spools of Eleganza perlé cotton were previous purchases that happened to match up with the specific colors called for in the pattern. 

I still have to look through the rest of my embroidery threads to make sure I have a good enough assortment of colors and types that will work well enough with the colors of the circles. Hopefully I'll have enough of the embroidery threads of many of the types and weights that are called for. I think I'll likely have enough as I'm not trying to exactly match the sampler pattern. The actual Toned-Down Circles pattern is basically a recipe book of stitch combinations with fairly simple illustrations that refers to the Creative Stitching book by Sue Spargo. That's a book I've had for a while but haven't worked with too much yet. It's a really well-done presentation of a variety of stitches that I've seen but never tried myself.