Yardage

I took photos of the new fabric I picked up in Shipshewana...thought I would show it on here. I have at least one blogger friend that will probably enjoy seeing it.
The two above are half yard pieces and the red doesn't show true on this computer...it is more of an orangy red. So if that is what yours shows, it is showing it more true to color. Reds with a hint of orange is hard to find and I always buy a piece if I find one. This one happens to be a Christmas fabric but I did not notice that...and will ignore it when I use it. The orange...well, I use a lot of brights in kids quilts and would love to someday make an orange quilt like THIS one. The only thing is I can never hold on to orange fabrics...
The one above is a Kaffe Fassett fabric...and I LOVE it...I don't love very many of his designs, but then there are the ones that are just fabulous in my opinion. I use a lot of yellows in my quilts, but going to be hard to use this one. I just like to look at it.
The three above were from Little Bit of Lolly's...the others are all from Lolly's fabric. Both are in Shipshewana...the ones above are on sale...the two outside ones I got because I always need lights. And the other is a bright that will look good in a child's quilt. Quilters have a tendency to buy mediums and darks...they are the ones that are irresistible...the ones you just can't stop yourself from buying. But I have been trying to make myself buy a few lights along. That is one reason I use yellows in my quilts...yellow will brighten an otherwise drab quilt.
The two above are batiks....batiks are not printed...they really don't have a right side and a wrong side. They are stamped with a resist and then dyed. The resist blocks the dye from taking in the part that it covers. Sometimes the resist is then removed and it is dyed again...giving us a range of colors. I am building a huge selection of them...I find them hard to cut...
And the two above also came from Little Bit of Lolly's...they are Civil War reproduction fabrics...I have a good collection of those. Roger wants a quilt from them so that is one that is on my list of 'to do' quilts in the future.
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Every time I get in my fabric, I think of my mom...I don't think she was ever in a real quilt store. And she would have thought me foolish to spend the money I do on fabric. I bet there was never a year went by that she didn't make at least 4 or 5 quilts and probably more some years...with at least a couple being quilted by hand. She tied some quilts, and gave a lot of those away as gifts.

She had boxes of scraps...and I remember us hunting for scraps of a fabric...just to have enough to do blocks with. Sometimes it was hard to come up with enough of one fabric to do a block...but it was fun to stir around in the scraps and try. She never even thought about trying to get things on the straight of grain...there was just no way.

And she would cut her pattern from a piece of cardboard...the kind like cereal boxes are made of..of the back of a composition book. And she would just hold it and 3 or 4 layers of her fabric and cut around it with scissors...This is one of her quilts....as I told in that post, I do not know where she got all the red fabric. She made another quilt with that red fabric and it was just one big lone star. My brother Neal has that quilt I think...I know he was always meant to have it. If he does, he should take a photo of it...anyway, just saying that any time I am messing with fabric I think of mom.