Warning, this post contains some parental bragging.  If this is going to annoy you, I will understand if you decide to skip over this post.  However, my kids are pretty awesome and that is what I plan to brag about.  The decision is yours.  🙂

Saturday was my birthday.  I am even older now than I was last week. I find this mildly irritating but what am I going to do about it?  My youngest son came over Sunday for the night.  He brought me a gift that was from him and his two brothers.  It was so cool. The way I hear it, they were emailing back and forth trying to decide what to get me for my oh-so-special day.  They wanted it to be a quilty gift.  That right there is amazing.  Three guys, ages 24, 27 and 29 and they are thinking along the quilty gift lines.  I raised them right. They finally decided they would just pick out fabric for me.  Again, amazing – three guys fabric shopping for their mama.  Not even on-line shopping.  Real life quilt shops with all the rows and rows of bolts of fabric – that kind of shopping.

This was quite the task because the three of them live in different parts of the country.  One in Chicago, one in Delaware and the youngest is in Central California.  They decided that each of the boys would select six 1/2 yard pieces of yardage thus giving me a custom assortment of their choosing.

My Chicago guy actually found his way to a quilt shop in Chicago – not a quick trip since he lives in Hyde Park which is home to no fabric stores. He traveled to Lincoln Park to a shop called The Needle Shop and picked out a lovely assortment of fabrics. According to Kyle, the lady there was really helpful and he highly recommends this shop. If they can so impress and help a 27 year old guy, they are doing something right. Look at his choices:

This assortment totally looks like Kyle.  Check out the Wee Wander piece on the front, on the far right. I love that piece.  The little girl is only on the print two times on the 1/2 yard so I will choose carefully how I use the piece. Love the little super hero print too.  Love them all actually. He swiftly mailed off his assortment to the youngest brother since he was going to bring the gift to me.

Andrew, the Delaware guy, worked with his youngest brother to pick out his assortment. Youngest brother, Ian, was shopping at Cloth and Quilts in Turlock. The process was described as such.  Andrew told Ian that I needed to add some excitement to my stash.  He wanted to go bold.  And he did.  He would describe something to Ian who would then take pictures of what he thought worked and text them to Andrew.  This went on and on while Andrew deliberated and told Ian what to purchase.  Here is the set Andrew came up with:

Looking at these pieces, it is obvious that they are completely versatile. I will be able to use them in pretty much any design (hee hee hee). Check out the super hero piece. Amazing.  Also love the robots which are from the line “Where the Toys Are” by RJR Fabrics.  That is a really cute line.  The llamas are hard to explain but represent a private joke we have going on about my (and everyone else in the world’s) ridiculous obssession with Pinterest.  I can’t quite picture what I will use that baby in, but you can bet Andrew will be the recipient of it in some fashion or other. He tossed in the tan piece because he felt like he needed to ‘calm his assortment down’. 🙂

Ian had the advantage of knowing what the other two assortments contained.  He made a brilliant move and gave me this rich assortment of the colors of the rainbow.  Here they are, in ROYGBIV order!

These are gorgeous.  The colors are crisp and pure and I love them all. Have to say that even though I am not usually a huge fan of orange, it and the red piece are probably my favorites of this set. He made absolutely the right move.  When you look at all three of the collections together, it is easy to see that these brights will work with many of the pieces his brother chose (well ….. maybe with the exception of those little llamas.) Ian was telling me that the gals working at Cloth and Quilts were politely trying to steer him in the direction of buying some pre-cuts. He said they suggested trying a jelly roll or maybe a ‘nice set of fat quarters’.  I appreciate what she was doing.  It must have looked like complete madness – this young guy pulling bolts down right and left, texting pictures of them.  But really, she didn’t know who she was dealing with.  I am so happy to have my three custom collections rather than some matchy-matchy sets  of fat quarters!

My stash grew significantly this weekend.  Total of NINE yards of new fabric.  Cannot wait to decide what to create first with ths gorgeous assortment of yardage.  The gift is definitely one of the best I have received.  The thought  and planning that went into it touches my heart.  Love my boys!

Linking to Stitch by Stitch, Freemotion by the River, Sew Cute Tuesday and Let’s Bee Social. As f before, all of these lovely blogs have links listed at the top of the page, under Link Ups.