Unplanned Fabric Shopping

What a wonderful opportunity! I took a negative and turned it into a positive yesterday after school. Because of the accident which totalled Erin's car, she was to get her new car from Smitty's this morning. This meant that she could turn in her loaner car to Enterprise after work yesterday, thus earning her extra $$ from the insurance company. This required, though, a willing parent to drive up to Columbus to get her. So the bad ( Erin's car being wrecked) resulted in a good! Because I just left from school at around 3pm, I would be getting to Columbus way earlier than I needed to, so I decided to drive out East Broad Street to Quilt Beginnings. I didn't even decide to do this until I was several miles up Route 104.

Totally spur of the moment!

I was excited to do this as I equate Quilt Beginnings as a shop that specializes in very bright fabrics as opposed to the darker reproduction fabrics that I normally buy. Since I have been in a Kaffe Fassett mood lately, I knew they would have some of his that I'd been unable to find on my other fabric outings.

And I was not disappointed! They had the loveliest array of larger prints - those bold flowery, viney and leafy prints in amazing colors. Scrumptious. Absolutely scrumptious! The cost was a bit on the high side, but I just pretended not to care. I bought 1/2 yards of about 10 or 12 different fabrics. What a delightful treat. I also bought a new cutting mat and an 18-6 (or thereabouts) cutting ruler. My grand total was not as high as I expected, so even though I really probably didn't need to shop for any of this stuff right now, I was pleased to have had the opportunity to shop to my heart's content. Very, very satisfying.

Ta-da!

A blog about one of my favorite things. Quilting. Yesterday Erin showed me some things on the internet about blogging. It looked very interesting, and I can add links to those on this one, so I am going to see how I do with this. It ought to be fun. Since I teach English in my real life, I think I can find plenty to write about. I do a pretty fair amount of that at school every day!

So, recent news for me is my very growing interest in quilts and fabrics by Kaffe Fassett. It all began with an ad in the quilting magazines lately of a gorgeous quilt pictured in front of some landmark in Malta. I paid only marginal attention to it at first, but gradually I began to study it and grow more and more enamored by it. I actually woke one Saturday a month or so ago from dreaming about it!

No stores in my immediate area sell Kaffe Fassett's fabrics, so I did a bit of shopping online and bought about 18 or 20 fat quarters. They arrived very quickly and oh! my gosh! How gorgeous they are! At the same time, I bought 2 of his books - Victoria Museum Quilts and Kaleidescope of Quilts. They certainly are different from the kinds of quilts I am known for liking - traditional.

Then just yesterday I took a little field trip to Waynesville's Fabric Shack. I took Grandma, who likes that store a lot. After I helped her find the fabric she wanted, I made my way to the KF fabrics and bought 1/2 yard cuts of about 8. Then I zipped over to the bins where they keep their fat quarters and found about 6 or so that go with fabrics that I have been collecting.

Happy, happy times! Time with Grandma and time in a quilt shop add up to a really great day. A bonus was that Erin wanted to go along. I really had a great time with her. She's become such a wonderful person. I enjoyed her company.