Tidbits for Tuesday (and yes I do love alliteration!)

I had a great weekend of shopping at the International Quilt Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is coming back again next year and if you have a chance to go, take it. There were tons of vendors and great quilts in a wonderful venue. Now I know some people got a bit turned around downtown but I believe my fair city is pretty easy to navigate. However, it might be because I've been shopping in downtown Cincinnati since I was 12. Yes it was another era - the dinosaurs still roamed the plains - but it was safe for a group of young girls to take the bus from the Kentucky side of the river to shop at the numerous downtown department stores. Good memories! Anyway do you wanna see some of the stuff I bought? You can click the pictures and biggify them.

I got a rainbow of fat quarters lots of them dotty!

And I know this was a quilt show but I got a lot of cross stitch-y goodness. I've never heard of this designer before- Rovaris - its Italian, like me! Those are little silver charms that you can attach to the piece, but I'm thinking about using them on a bracelet.

Barnwood Buttons by Rosewood Manor. I've been lusting after this one for a while and when I saw the buttons in person I had to have it. I'm planning on using a pale blue linen so it looks more like sky and I may replace the saying with an alphabet.

And what can be said about Quaker Diamonds that hasn't already been said. It is gorgeous! I've never used Valdani floss before but I can't wait to thread up my needle.

After the quilt show I drove back up to Fabric Shack in Waynesville as they were having a tent sale just for the show weekend. There were some great bargains. Older collections of layer cakes for $15 and charm squares for $5. Some yardage for $3/yd. I picked up this Chrysalis line by Sanae, one of my favorite designers for Moda. And I got this month's Schnibble pattern, Summer Day for "another year of Schnibbles". I'm not yet certain I'm using these charms squares for it - still on the fence. Oh did you see that Schnibbles can now be purchased as PDFs? Check here on Carrie's blog.

There is some more fabric to show but I'm waiting to use it for a blog anniversary giveaway next month. Now what I don't have to show is any pictures of the quilts. Several displays were "NO PHOTOS" and you were admonished to stop if caught. However, check out Everybody Loves Clark here. She has some nice pictures of the quilts.

Another random thought - have you used PicMonkey yet? I've never used a photo editing program before and I have to say this one is pretty easy. You can do a little tutorial kinda look but I find that just putzing around works best for me. So my helpful hints are when you want to start with your pictures click on the photo of the sunglasses (although I think anyone of the photos will work). Then look down the list on the left hand side and see where it says "upload". You can bring up your pictures and then play with them. I'm keeping it simple "crop" "exposure" and "color". I was able to brighten up my pictures quite quickly. Then hit "save" and then my software takes me back to my photo file where I "save" it again where the original photo was. Karen at Sew Many Ways... has a good post on PicMonkey.

Wow I sure rambled on today - think of it as a BIG tidbit - LOL!
Happy stitching-
carol fun