Author Archives: Bernie

No Easy Solution

Have you been reading the on-going debate about Craftsy and their (possible) decision to release a privately owned fabric and/or yarn line? People are getting a bit heated about this and I am curious what you think. I am a loyal follower of Abby Glassenberg, blogger at While She Naps. Abby has built a successful blog, has a fantastic weekly newsletter and a lovely Etsy shop where she sells patterns to make childrens’ stuffed toys. She inspires me and I have learned a huge amount from her informative newsletters. (If you haven’t checked out her blog and newsletters, I highly recommend both.)

Last week she blogged about the fact that Craftsy has registered two new trademarks to (possibly) begin manufacturing and selling a line of fabric and a line of yarn. Because Craftsy has such a huge customer base, they sell a great deal of fabric and supplies at below retail pricing. People are in somewhat of an uproar because they are upset about yet another bigbox retailer squashing the smaller retailers. After Abby’s post, in which Craftsy declined to comment, there was a bit of conversation – most of it on the negative side. However, much of the arguments commented on this post centered around Craftsy’s treatment of pattern designers and teachers. I am not going to go into the specifics because Abby laid it out clearly in her post already.

My opinion is this. We live in a world of huge on-line retailing. Amazon and the like make it nearly impossible for smaller brick and mortar shops to compete. This makes it a big struggle for those shops to be profitable. I am a frequent on-line shopper (Craftsy included) and also a loyal supporter of my local quilt shop. There are benefits to each. With on-line shopping, I don’t have to make the twenty mile round trip to the LQS and can shop whenever I want. With on-line shopping, I usually get a good deal on fabric but there is a price to be paid for shipping. At my LQS, I can touch the fabric and get a better look at the colorways. I have a really hard time with color – it isn’t my strong suit and I have purchased on-line several times, only to be disappointed that the colors weren’t what I thought they would be. The added benefit of expertise, advice and a social experience offered at the LQS is not to be matched by shopping somewhere like Craftsy. There is a place for both in my fabric budget (and it is entirely possible the budget needs to be reduced!)

As far as pattern designers and paid bloggers, I am of the opinion they should work for a fair wage. If a corporation such as Craftsy or Moda (think Moda Bakeshop) isn’t offering a fair wage, don’t take them up on the opportunities offered. It is the decision of the designer. Personally, I love the patterns that are individually designed and offered on Craftsy. Many a quilt blogger/designer has their paid and free patterns posted on Craftsy which provides some exposure for the designer and a huge benefit to us, the crafting community, But again, if the designer doesn’t think the pay is commensurate, don’t go there.

In response to all of this hub bub, John Levisay, CEO of Craftsy, wrote an open letter to Abby for our community of makers. You can read it here. Nothing earth shattering is contained in his response. It is what I might write, were I in his position. They are a large, for profit, corporation. They sells on-line classes, patterns and supplies – for PROFIT. Just as Amazon, Jo-Ann Fabrics, and Fabric.com aren’t overly concerned about the profitability of the brick and mortar shops, I don’t think Craftsy is terribly worried. Is this the right thing? Who knows. It isn’t really a question of right and wrong to me. It is just the way things are and will continue to be. Overall, I thought the letter was respectful and it made sense to me. Things are forever changing as the world of technology grows and allows businesses to develop in new ways.

Finally, this is the first time I have written a post without pictures. Kind of strange so I am going to add one here for your viewing enjoyment!! What a huge mess. I have decided that it is time to clean this place up. My sewing room has become a huge disaster. Like beyond ridiculous. OK – how about you? Do you take issue with the Craftsy decision to market their own lines? Should they be able to sell below retail? Do I have to clean my room? Is your room messier than mine? Is a blog post without pictures acceptable? Do tell.

Have a wonderfully creative day all. 🙂

Stuck Inside

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Poor California. It is a mess. Currently there are ten large fires burning up and down the state with approximately 400,000 acres are involved. It is horrible. Smoke fills the air and ash rains down everywhere. (If you want to see more details, here is a good source of information.) Yesterday and today have been horrible as far as air quality goes. It was a stay-inside-kind-of-weekend. The photo above shows the pasture next door to us and was taken by Julia this afternoon.

Doesn’t take much to guess what I did. Played with fabric, sewed, cooked, and read. It was only logical. What else is there?

Let’s take things in order, shall we? Saturday morning Julia had to be at a meeting at the library for an hour so I had a time to check out a few books. Here is the reading list for the next little while.

I am already half way through The Distinguished Guest, by Sue Miller. It is an excellent book. Sometimes Sue Miller’s books are a little dark for me but I am really enjoying this one. The two Kaffe Fassett books are solely to drool over. I have finished drooling over his Quilts in the Sun book and yet to begin salivating over Country Garden Quilts. The book by Lee Cleland, Quilting Makes the Quilt, is amazing. The quilting shown in this book is far beyond my skill level but the process she used in creating this (older) book is amazing. In order to show how much the quilting defines the quilt, Cleland, an Australian quilter, decided she would make five sets of twelve traditional quilts, each exactly the same. So, twelve quilts – five of each of them! Sixty quilts in a two year period. It exhausts me to even write about it. She took each of the quilts and quilted them, one different from the next. It is really helpful in seeing how the different choices of quilting motifs would set off the piecing and secondary patterns on each quilt. She is brilliant. While this book is a great one to thumb through, it is beyond me at this point. She does include the patterns for each of the twelve quilts in the book. The two cookbooks are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The French Laundry Cookbook, by Thomas Keller, is just for grins. I don’t cook like that and as a result, we don’t eat like that. But it makes a person hungry to thumb through it! However the Light & Healthy Cookbook (from America’s Test Kitchen) is how I cook and eat. Last night I made the Turkey, Lime and Tequila Chili and it was excellent. Finally, I grabbed the biography of Mary Cassatt because she is one of my favorite impressionist artists. I have seen a number of her paintings at different exhibits and there is a tiny print of one that hangs in my sewing space, making me happy each time I see it. I’m looking forward to reading more about her.

Ok, moving forward. Playing with fabric took some of my time yesterday. I recently ordered some Michael Miller solids to use in the Michael Miller Challenge, sponsored by Modern Quilt Guild. I have a few ideas brewing but luckily this project isn’t due until November so I have some time. At least I have the fabrics ready to go.

I ordered the solids from Hawthorne Threads and while I was on their site, I also ordered a scrap bag. I love these. It is an inexpensive way to add a few pieces to the scrap bin (because I really, really don’t have enough scrap.) Most of the pieces I received are wonderful. Here is a sampling of them (a few have already been cut into so aren’t included here.)

See that pretty piece of Amy Butler’s, second from the left? To the right of that is one of Jeni Baker’s prints. They are all lovely and will be used here and there.

I did receive one piece that I know I will not use. I haven’t ever watched Downton Abbey so I have no affinity for this fabric.

Does it speak to any of you? It has a little Christmas holly on it. The piece measures out at 16″ wide, so just under 1/2 yard. If anyone thinks they would like to use it, leave me a comment and I will happily send it to you. If more than one person asks for it, I will just choose a name randomly. Hope someone can use this so it doesn’t just live sadly on my shelf. Claim it as yours!

Finally, I did accomplish some sewing. Check out these orange Dutchman’s Puzzle blocks. They will be the orange row for September on my Classic Stitches BOM project. These blocks are so bright – they will add a good splash of color to the quilt. Hoping to finish these up this week.

That is my weekend in a nutshell. A lot of nutshells actually. This post just got longer and longer! 🙂 Hoping for the air to clear and feeling eternally grateful for the nearly 10,000 firefighters that are battling active fires in California right now.

Linking to Molli Sparkles’ Sunday Stash which is hosted by Alyce at Blossom Heart Quilts this week and to Freemotion by the River.

Odds and Ends

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The weekend is just about here. Julia is going to her first high school football game tonight and we are not a football family. It is rare that you’ll hear any talk of sports in our house. But I am fairly certain that 14 year olds don’t go to football games for the sport – it’s all about the friends. She will have a great time and I will wonder how she got to be this age so quickly.

It was a busy week here in Grass Valley, CA (doesn’t that sound just like Garrison Keillor? I love him.) I decided I was tired of looking through filthy windows so I hired a couple of window cleaners to come and clean them. We have lots of windows (40 to be exact, I paid per window so I now know this number.) Turns out that having windows cleaned involves lots of prep on the part of the window owner. They asked me to clear any items near the windows so they could have access. Yikes. My sewing table, ironing station and cutting station are under a window. I am sure you can imagine. But after I got the house put back together, it was well worth it. Shiny clean windows. Just in time for fall colors… the maple trees near these windows turn a great shade of yellow-gold and now we will enjoy the changes that much more. (Well, that’s if fall ever comes, it is a balmy 98 degrees outside today.

Time in the sewing room was not plentiful this week. I did finish up one quick project though. Remember the block-hop that I posted about last week? When I was playing with the design for that block, I did a mock up first. I used some holiday fabric that I had (mainly because it was right next to the cutting area and saved me the long walk to the closet across the room where my stash is stored.) The block was pretty though and I wanted to use it for something.

I added two borders, one 2″ wide and the other is 3″ wide. With these borders I ended up with a pillow cover that is about 21″ square.

I used an envelope backing and stitched a seam 1″ in from the perimeter to make a flange. Straight line quilting with a fairly narrow gauge was done on an angle, dividing the pillow into four quadrants.

I used a Mettler variegated thread with shades of gold, silver and cream which I love with these fabrics.

When I quilt a pillow, I sandwich the quilted portion with plain muslin and pieced batting scraps. The quilting looks kinda cool on the muslin side.

It makes me want to try some sort of whole cloth project to really emphasize the quilting. Another addition to the list….

It will be fun to pull this out in a few months when the time comes to decorate for the holidays. Hoping everyone has a great weekend. Seems like it is hot across the country right now. Maybe this is the last blast of heat before wonderful autumn starts.

Linking to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict as well as Freemotion Mavericks (even tho this is quilted with a walking foot, not my darning foot.) All links to these link parties are available at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

TBT Except It’s Saturday

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I have been reading posts that are linked up to a party hosted by Jen at Quarter Inch From the Edge this week and really enjoying them. (I also enjoy the name of Jen’s blog, isn’t it perfect?). She has been hosting a monthly link up where bloggers are sharing projects from earlier days and I love seeing how far everyone has come with their skill and creativity. Really interesting to read the posts and check out the pictures. Most of my earlier projects have been posted about already but I did think it would be fun to share the Tablerunner Craze of 2012.

The fall of 2012 was when the quilting bug really bit. I had recently finished a queen size simple patchwork quilt for my mother-in-law. I posted that story here. When I was finishing up that quilt, I had no clue how to FMQ so I stitched in the ditch along every block. Once that was finished, I really wanted to try some free motion quilting so I took a class at my LQS to learn the basics. Table runners seemed like the perfect opportunity to practice this newfound love. Glad for the excuse to shop, I shopped for holiday fabric so I could make table runners for my family as Christmas gifts. If you have been a reader for any length of time, you probably know I have a huge family. I made eight table runners in about a month’s time. One for each of my five sisters, one for my mom and my mother-in-law, and one for myself.

This was long before I started blogging and I am happy I thought to take a quick picture of some of them before giving them away. Definitely last minute pictures. I remember I was about to wrap them and get them in the mail and I tossed them over the back of the couch and took a picture with my phone. (Hence the superb quality of the pictures!) Here are three of the runners.

I did a basic, squiggly meander over the entire runner. Mitred bindings were not yet in my wheelhouse so the corners were just folded over and stitched (machine stitched to the front and hand stitched to the back? Maybe, maybe not….)

Here are three more.

These runners are on the small side. They are probably 13″ wide and maybe 30″ long? They were pretty though and I enjoy looking back at them. They were definitely my first foray into free motion quilting. Actually, it kind of amazes me that this was almost exactly four years ago. The time continues to buzz by.

We are spending the long weekend up at our Downieville house. It is gorgeous up here with crisp, cool air. If you live in California, you are probably hearing about this tremendous El Nino that is supposed to happen this year. Ray is cleaning all of the drainage paths and gutters this weekend. If it comes to be, then we could get some substantial storms this year. I am grateful that he is so good about preparing for this sort of thing. Our Downieville house is is a flood zone being so close to the river so we do need to be careful. At any rate, maybe this year will put an end to four years of drought. Here’s hoping!

Linking to Quarter Inch From the Edge (for the very first time!)

Basic and Practical

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Here is a post about one of the least exciting things I have made thus far. Today I made a little mat to place under my dog’s water dish. I hate the puddles that happen when she drinks (and more often than that, when I kick the dish as I walk by it – like every. single. day.) It wasn’t that I didn’t try to control the issue. Look at this gorgeous set up I had going on.

Classy, right? (Please avert your eyes from the dirty floor. Thank you.)

My true goal was to learn to quilt a basic “orange peel” motif. It is one that I had not yet tried and seemed like a good one to add to my limited repetoire. I didn’t look for a tutorial and didn’t sketch any first. It just seemed so easy. Silly, silly me. Drawing first has huge benefits as will become clear in a sec.

First I found a pile of 3 and 1/2″ squares that were left over from various projects. I added a few extra squares cut from puppy themed novelty fabric that was in my stash. I made a patchwork of five squares across and four down. I found a scrap of french terry to back it with so it would have the absorbency to handle my constant kicking and splashing of the water. (One would think moving the bowl to another location would be much simpler!) I sewed the two pieces, right sides together, leaving a small opening to turn it right side out. After stitching the opening shut, I pressed it and pinned it. Then I just dove in with the quilting process.

The problem was I didn’t really think about how to travel along with the orange peels. Mostly I was listening to music and not focusing on the exciting task at hand. I began by moving around the inside of each square. This doesn’t work and I was almost immediately stuck in the corner. Ahh… of course. The pattern is supposed to be stitched along the length of each row of squares and then again along the opposite edges of the squares (e.g. along the vertical rows and then the horizontal rows – or vice versa.) Very basic and had I sketched for just a few minutes first, this would have been apparent right away. No big loss though. This was easily remedied and I finished up by stitching along the edges. Once I figured it out my curves looked (somewhat) better.

The quilting on this is mediocre at best. Fortunately I have a rather undiscerning dog when it comes to quality of the FMQ on her water mat. It does look better from the back (because there isn’t the point of reference of the squares to look at next to my stitching.) Quilting along the perimeter was really tough because there was no edge to hold on to (since I had just made this “envelope style”.)

I really love how the orange peel motif looks (when done well!) and plan to practice it further. It would be very easy to quilt a larger project with this pattern. I would want to have a better handle on it first though. This little mat certainly improves the look of the water station in the kitchen though! Very classy. I am sure the dog is grateful.

Have you been enjoying the Fabri-Quilt New Bloggers Block Hop so far this week? I have seen some amazing creativity out there. The hop continues through Thursday. The Tuesday group can be found over at Meadow Mist Designs with Cheryl leading the crew.

Linking to Freemotion Mavericks and Freemotion by the River.

Fabri-Quilt New Block Bloghop

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As part of the New Bloggers Bloghop that I have been participating in this summer, we are each to design a quilt block using selected fabrics given to us by Fabri-Quilt. We each received fat-eighths of these luscious pieces.

Our task was to come up with a fun block that finished out at 12 & 1/2″. We were also to develop a tutorial in case anyone would like to make the block. Today is the first day of the hop and there is a great list of quilters that will blog about their block today. The hop continues for another three days (through Thursday) which means loads of block ideas. This week is a huge opportunity to pin upwards of 60 tutorials for fresh, new quilt blocks. Think of the sampler that could be made from this hop! I am so looking forward to seeing what my hive mates came up with. After making our blocks, we sent them to Stephanie at LateNightQuilter. One of the leaders of the New Blogger Bloghop, Stephanie is organizing the construction of several charity quilts from our blocks. These quilts will be gorgeous and will go to a few lucky recipients.

On to my block! I posted earlier that I had been playing with several ideas for a block. I made a modified plus block but didn’t like it in the 12 1/2″ size. It was too “chunky” looking to me. Then I played with a herringbone block. It was ok but not great. Finally, when I was working on my blocks for my row quilt, I took a stack of HST’s and kept laying them out in different patterns. This is the one I liked most. There are unlimited ways that HST’s can be assembled which is what makes them so much fun to work with.

Creating this block is so simple. Here you go!

Cutting List:

(4) 3 & 1/2″ squares of background fabric
(4) 4 & 3/8″ squares of background fabric
(6) 4 & 3/8″ squares of middle fabric
(2) 4 & 3/8″ squares of the center fabric

Process:

Start by creating the HST’s. Just in case you are new to quilting, HST is the acronym for a half-square triangle. There are many ways to create a half-square triangle. My favorite way is this:

Place one piece each of the background fabric and the feature fabric right sides together. Place your 1/4″ seam marker, on the diagonal, corner to corner, and trace a line along each edge.

This quarter inch seam marker is 1/2″ wide and give you two lines to trace, which you will then use to stitch a seam. (If you don’t have one of these handy little tools, they are very inexpensive. Here is a link.)

Once you have both seams stitched, slice it in half, right down the center of those seams.

This gives you two HST’s. Press them open. (Pressing open or to the side is a matter of personal preference. I usually press open.)

The block will need to be squared up (trimmed to size). Using a square ruler, trim the block to a finish of 3 & 1/2″.

Repeat this process with each of the half square triangles, giving you 12 HST’s that measure 3 & 1/2″ each. Look at the colors in that stack of trimmings, so pretty!

At this point you can lay your squares out in rows of four.

Assemble the rows and stitch each of the squares together.

Then stitch the rows together.

Ta Da!! Isn’t this the cutest? Double Diamonds!

Think of all of the inspiration to be had with all of these new ideas over the next few days. Be sure to pop in and take a peek. Pin as many as you like for future reference. I plan to! I have a board on Pinterest for quilt block inspiration. Feel free to follow it if you like. Today my blog hop partners are the following:

Host – Yvonne @Quilting Jetgirl
Kelly @Quilting it Out
Martha @Once a Wingnut
Irene @Patchwork and Pastry
Cassandra @The (not so) Dramatic Life
Andrea @The Sewing Fools
Silvia @A Stranger View
Wanda @Wanda’s Life Sampler
Sandra @Musings of a Menopausal Melon
Vicki @Orchid Owl Quilts
Jess @Quilty Habit
Diana @Red Delicious Life
Chelsea @Patch the Giraffe
Margo @Shadow Lane Quilts
Renee @Quilts of a Feather

In addition to all of these tutorial posts, there will be several giveways this week for a set of 1/2 yard cuts of the fabrics we used. To enter the giveaway, go visit Quilting Jetgirl. While the colors in this set are lovely, they are very bold and saturated. Were you to win this set, I strongly advise that you prewash with like colors (e.g not red and white together!) and dry them. That way any possible color bleeding or fabric shrinkage will happen before you cut and sew!

A Vintage Finish

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Looks like I made it, and with a few days to spare! My ALYOF goal for August was to quilt and bind my vintage double nine patch quilt. Yahoo for setting goals.

I had asked readers to suggest ideas for quilting the vintage quilt and was happy to receive tons of suggestions. Thanks so much for the ideas. I decided to quilt a basic cross-hatch over the main nine-patch blocks. Then I wanted to do something different with each of the three borders. My original thought was to do different cable patterns so I bought a couple of cable stencils.

Alas, it wasn’t entirely successful. I started by doing a basic, single cable on the middle (narrowest) border. I had great help with tracing the stencil. Ian was home for the weekend and kindly traced for me.

Try as I might, I couldn’t relax and just stitch. I wanted to use my walking foot, maybe that was the mistake? The stitching isn’t fluid and I am less than pleased with it. Hoping that a run through the wash (in my NEW washing machine) will make the jitters a bit less obvious.

Because of the issues with the single cable, I lost interest in doing a more complex cable pattern so I put the stencils away in the deepest recesses of my desk drawer. I don’t plan on looking at them for quite some time. Instead, I played with some motifs that Lori Kennedy has posted over at The Inbox Jaunt. I chose her Modern Leaf pattern (which I posted about earlier this week.) Because I am susceptible to this sort of nonsense, I wondered if I should use a motif with the word “Modern” in it when I was really trying to go for a vintage look. Jeez… I need to get over myself already. It worked out fine and was very fun to quilt. Because I did the quilting with cream colored Mettler thread, it is hard to see in the pictures. But I am much happier with it than the single cable. (I love the fabric with those little pins. Really cute.)

For the final, outside border I did basic straight-line quilting which I just eyeballed using the side of the walking foot. Simple and clean. I backed it with a blue print and as you can see, I used one of the cream background fabrics as the binding.

One small concern that came to mind is that I have a six inch gap between stitching lines on the cross-hatch. The batting said I could space the quilting with as much as an eight inch gap. However this is likely the widest I have gone and it seems sketchy to me. Any input on that? I could still add lines to the body of the quilt if need be. If I split the difference between the existing lines, I would have a three inch gap. Thanks for any ideas you might have.

Overall, I am happy with the finish. This is a more traditional quilt than I normally make but I enjoyed it. My next project is more modern and uses Kaffe Fassett yardage and jelly roll. I am chomping at the bit to get started on it so stay tuned.

Linking to my favorites: Let’s Bee Social, Finish it up Friday, and Sew Bittersweet Designs. Take a peek at these sites – there is a lot of great work out there!

Anticipation

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I am sitting here waiting for the delivery of my new washing machine.If you could have heard the noise made during the final spin cycle, you would have no trouble imagining my anticipation for this wonderful event. It sounded like jets were leaving the runway. The floor shook as the machine rumbled. The sound grew louder with each load of wash. I called to see about having this fixed, assuming that they could just replace the bad bearing or whatever was failing. But the service technician asked how old the washing machine was (ten years old) and told me that it wasn’t worth fixing it. The average lifespan of a washer is about ten years these days. Planned obsolescence – don’t even get me started. Remembering back, I am fairly certain my mom had one washer for the duration of my childhood.

While shopping for a new machine, I asked the salesperson if there was a washer that would hold up for longer than the estimated ten years. He said, sure – this one over here will last 15 or so. Of course it was expensive enough that I could just buy another one in ten years and still spend the same amount. Irritating. So, I am just waiting for the delivery guys to show up and heave that beast up the two flights of stairs on my deck and install it. I have a pile of laundry waiting right here with me. Exciting times, right?

Over the weekend (since I wasn’t doing laundry) I practiced my FMQ. I wanted a larger fabric sandwich to practice on as I was doing a leafy border motif and wanted to figure out how to turn the corner. For me, it is really a challenge to plan the motif and be at the right point in the design to make that turn. I cannot visualize things like that in my head, yet I prefer to quilt without tracing a design. When I stitch over a tracing of a design, my stitches wobble. Don’t ask me why. If I had to make a supposition, it would be that my mind becomes focused on that dang traced line. Without the line, my stitches flow much better. This corner isn’t great. I don’t like that harsh right angle on the vine. But the leaves worked out ok.

I do like the motif. I found this Modern Leaf tutorial via Lori Kennedy’s incredible website, The Inbox Jaunt. I have mentioned her before, but really, if you are working on your FMQ skills, I cannot recommend her enough. Her site offers tons of tutorials and many, many different motifs. It is definitely worth taking a peek at all she has to offer.

Lori is a huge proponent of doodling and drawing the motif before actually stitching it. I did several pages of practice drawings. (Drawing is not my forte, not in the slightest.) However, the practice of making those hand motions using pencil and paper definitely transfers to an increased muscle memory of that pattern. It helps!

When I was putting the fabric sandwich together, I didn’t want to waste a large scrap of batting. I have a whole drawer full of many straggly lengths (often from trimming the edges off of a project after quilting it). I have taken to stitching these pieces together (frankenbatting style). Have you tried this? I have never had any issue with it. Mainly I do it for smaller projects, but I have read posts from many quilters who have done it to gain larger sizes as well.

I use a fairly wide zig zag stitch with only a hint of overlap of the two lengths of batting. To avoid a lump along that line of stitching, it is best to just hold the two lengths as close together as possible without much of an overlap. This is a great way to use up those piles of batting scraps.

Today I plan to finish up the quilting on the vintage double nine patch. I have one border left and I will use this leaf motif. My binding strips are ready to go. Looks like I will have a finish this week!!

How about you? Working on anything fun this week?? Ever pieced your batting scraps? Do tell. 🙂

Linking to Freemotion by the River, Sew Cute Tuesday, Freemotion Mavericks, and Confessions of a Fabric Addict (who by the way is having a giveaway to celebrate her 1,000,000 VIEW!! That is worthy of celebrating!! The giveaway is open until Thursday of this week.)

Playing with Fabric this Week

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We are almost to the weekend! Lots of sewing this week but not a lot of pictures to share. I had three custom orders on Etsy which are always fun. I like when a customer just wants a certain color or size. It is easy to make what they want and they get just the right thing.

I did squeeze in a bit of selfish sewing time though. The red fabric that I posted about earlier this week was calling to me in the worst way. After a bit of thinking, I decided to make a tablecloth with it. The colors are perfect for my dining room. See what you think.

The print on this piece is so bold and has great detail so I really hesitated cutting it up. Using it as a tablecloth is the perfect way to show off this fabric. However, the fabric was only 46″ wide which wasn’t nearly wide enough. Because there is a gorgeous green and gold border on the fabric, and because I had six yards of fabric, I decided to double up on the border to gain the width.

First I cut the length of fabric in half. Following that, I cut the border off of both sides of one of the lengths. I included about five inches of the red when I cut the border. It took no time to sew each of those borders to the length of the fabric, giving me the length you see above. Then I only had to hem under all of the edges.

The only issue I had was that in my excitement to make the tablecloth, I didn’t prewash the fabric. I know, I know… silly mistake. Once it was all done, I threw it in the wash. Luckily, I didn’t put it in the dryer. Even on a cold water cycle, it shrunk a fair amount. If I had washed it first, I would have left a larger border on each side. It fits the table reasonably but it would be perfect were there two more inches hanging on either side. Ah, what can you do? It still looks lovely.

Best part of this is that I still have three yards of the center of the fabric, right? This huge piece that I sliced the borders from is sitting in the sewing room, begging me to make something with it! Life is good. 🙂

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts, Let’s Bee Social, and TGIFF. Links to all of these are located at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

The Kindness of Others

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This week I had one of those moments that reminds you that there are so many nice people in the world. Here you go.

You might remember that last December I did a custom order for a woman from New York. (Story posted here.) This was my first custom order and it was really fun to work with this particular customer. She was so friendly within the confines of our email conversations about her order. For the first time, I used a wax print, Ankara fabric to make her Chemex cozy. We chatted a bit and I told her how much I liked this gorgeous fabric. She told me she buys wax prints at an open market in New York.

Time passed. (Lots of time, seven months!) Last month, she emailed me and said she would be going to the marketplace soon and would I like her to pick up some fabric for me. It is really a good price there. I had looked on-line to buy some and wasn’t thrilled with the pricing. I have to be fairly careful with what I spend on fabric for my Etsy shop or my already meager profits become even less. All about the profit margin, right. 😉 I jumped at her offer.

When she got to the shop, she texted me pictures of about seven or eight pieces she thought I might like. Jamie explained I would have to buy them in three yard pieces as they are pre-cut to this length. It was a tough choice but I settled on two. It was amazingly easy to be texting with this virtual friend and picking fabrics out based on a few quick iPhone photos.

As I wrote her a check and popped it in the mail it came to me that some might consider this a bit of a risk. I didn’t have any hesitation about sending the money. I knew the fabric would show up. It appeared that she didn’t have any hesitation purchasing the fabric for me and she even mailed it prior to receiving any sort of payment from me.

I received the fabric a few days ago. It is so gorgeous. Made by Vlisco, these wax prints are manufactured both in Holland and in Ghana. The company was founded in 1846 and has served a vast African market over the years. Their process reportedly consists of twenty-seven steps to achieve these prints and is a highly guarded secret. Because many textile companies attempt to create counterfeit Vlisco fabric, they are quite bold with printing their name along the selvedge and putting these (nearly impossible to remove) adhesive labels on the fabric.

If you look closely at the label, you might notice that this piece was actually six yards, not three. Both pieces are huge, six yards each. Jamie was mistaken when she told me she was sending three yards of each. At $20 per piece, this was a steal.

This blue and purple piece has more of an African look to the pattern. It is really bold. I chose it because I want to utilize the curve of those spirals when I cut the curve of the Chemex covers. But now that I have six yards of it, I need to think of another project to use some of it! The fabric is 48″ wide. Lots of fabric here.

This red piece is my favorite. I love the birds. Do they look like a peacock? I think so but I’m not sure. It has a green border running the length of the piece. It is just gorgeous. I have several ideas for projects to use this piece for so I need to make some decisions.

What most impressed me was that this was just an act of kindness. She had no compelling reason to do this, other than to be a nice person. Yep, there are so many really kind people out there and she is certainly one of them.

Linking to this week’s Sunday Stash.