Odds and Ends and shopping!

I am getting a new sewing area - no more table in the middle of the living room - we're doing a bit or reorganisation. Yesterday we started with a trip to Ikea. Today our house looks like a bomb has hit it - so NO photos yet! But while we were at Ikea I checked out the fabric and came home with three metres of each of two prints. The fabric with the numbers on it doesn't have a purpose. Yet. But I've got enough to back a lap quilt. The one with birds and green on it is to back my stained quilt, which I pieced at Easter and haven't touched since.

Text print on a really big scale!

We haven't done anything today because I've been down to Harrogate to the Quilt Show. I had a bit of a dilemma about the backing for my Farmer's Wife quilt. The book says you need 9.5yards of fabric - that's well over £100 of regular patchwork fabric which I just cannot justify. Nothing at Ikea had really floated my boat either. I could start with a bed sheet, but I would have wanted a black sheet, which isn't easy to come by at a quality and cost that would be acceptable. Then today I struck gold. Extra wide Batik fabric - there wasn't much choice in colour or pattern, but there was one that was perfect. The same stand also had king size batting! I got the fabric and batting together for £70! Buying the border fabric wasn't quite as straight forward. I hummed and hahed for ages and ages and eventually went for a yellow batik that's a very good match to the plain dye yellow I'm using for the sashing. Next time I have the space to lay the quilt out I'll put this next to it and double check I'm happy :)

I also bought a few fat quarters to add to my stash! And green variegated perle cotton for some hand quilting on the baby quilt for Sebastian.

The purples are purple-y-er in reality

The quilts on display were fantastic. Totally inspiring. Especially a completed rainbow Dear Jane quilt. I'd been on the lookout for my next sampler quilt once the Farmer is finished, and now I'm torn: I spent some time looking at the Civil War Love Letters Quilt book, and some more time looking at the Sylvia's Bridal Sampler book (based on the Elm Creek novels), and then I saw the Dear Jane.... I already have the book but it's quite scary - lots and lots of applique! The Dear Jane at the show was totally hand pieced, and seeing in reality just how small some of the pieces are, maybe this is the way forward. So maybe I could justify this as a hand project and one of the others as a machine project? All I need to do now is decide on colours/fabrics!

Of course all this excitement does mean that my project I wanted to enter in the Festival of Hexagons is miles from being finished. I guess you can't do everything.... I have a quiet evening this evening as I can't start heaving furniture about without Michael and he's out for the evening. SO you never know - maybe I'll sew hexagons at superfast speed!

Oh - and I might have also "accidentally" signed up for another QAL - oops - Spinning Stars by Anna Maria Horner. Originally I said I might do a lap quilt, but I think this one will have to come out of my stash so maybe a baby quilt.

And I "accidentally" bought some papers for paper piecing some Ferris Wheels - I saw this at the start of summer and I LOVE it - I want to make one too!

I am so accident -prone you wouldn't believe it! My husband doesn't!