Fan girl confessions on a Slow Sunday...

 Hello ---how was your week?  Mine was pretty good...nothing earth shattering happened and I got some odds and ends taken care of. Now this post is a little light on creative content but big on some pondering I've been doing this week. This is my 33rd post for this year... already 5 more than all of last year ... doing it once a week is the best I can do these days... I don't know where the time goes but it sure moves fast in my world... and yet if you looked at my days there is a lot of time spent kinda doing nothing... I spend way too much time online reading articles, looking at pretty pictures and going down rabbit holes... and trust me it take a lot of time and energy to do that...LOL  There is so much going on in the world and I have a  great fear of missing out... so many issues are way more important to me now they when I was younger... so much to do and the older I get I know there is a finite amount of time... so there is some of the pondering I've been doing. 

 And more pondering, that brings me to a confession ... I'm a fan girl... I've been a fan girl for a long time... my first infatuation was with Debbie Mumm... I discovered her just when she came on the scene in the quilting world and was so smitten with all her fabrics and her decor items... along with her many collections of fabrics I acquired decorative plates and little teapots and cream and sugar pitchers and knickknacks... I loved them all and I still do.  But as with all good things eventually she retired from designing and now I hoard little bits and pieces of prints that  have become vintage fabrics. One of my big thrills on IG was a day I showed a quilt done in all her fabrics and she saw it and left me a lovely comment... so nice!!

So when I could no longer get new DM fabrics,  I moved onto Sandy Klop of American Jane.. bright primary colors with a vintage nostalgic vibe... and again I jumped in as she came into the quilting world and I have  healthy stash of her fabrics particularly  Layer Cakes and Fat Quarters.  The introduction of precuts has radically changed the way I buy fabrics these days... and if this had been the situation when I started quilting almost 40 years ago I believe my stash would be much smaller... and the size of my stash is something else I've been pondering. Now it appears that Sandy has also retired from designing fabrics. I've checked back to the beginning of 2024 on the United Notions website for catalogs which you can find here and she doesn't have any collections listed... sigh... I've made some lovely quilts with her fabrics and I have plenty of fabric to make a few more.

And with this realization that another fan girl idol of mine was retiring I turned my attention to Lori Holt... and at the moment she certainly is a hot commodity... she has tons of fabrics and books and knickknacks and accessories but I'm trying to keep my interest strictly to fabrics. I've made several quilts using her patterns but only one using her fabrics...and  since I didn't jump on her bandwagon till recently I don't have as much of her fabrics....yet... LOL... but I'm working on it.

 Here's the quilt I made back in August of 2017...I used 2 layers cakes of her fabrics for this Puss in the Corner quilt... you can read how nostalgic these fabrics made me back on this post. 

And if you've lasted this long you may wonder why all the rambling about fan girl fabrics ... well I've been pondering about how I'm storing these objects of my affection. The Debbie Mumms are all in bins in what was the root cellar of my basement. In my old house I had twice as many shelves as I do now and they were out on display.  I have 3 shelves devoted to American Jane fabrics but the Lori Holt's were just in bins as were my collection of Tilda... yes another fan girl infatuation ... it is a good thing my obsessions are not immoral or illegal... they are however not inexpensive but as Meatloaf crooned 2 outta 3 ain't bad. 

I spent quite a bit of time this week re-folding fabrics and staring at my shelves and my stash and I realized that I don't use the majority of the fabrics that are on the shelves... here's a pic I took back in March of 2021 when I had the new white shelves installed...

There are tons of brights and novelties and a variety of stripes & polka dots and black/white fabrics I was so into when I moved here 10 years ago... but they aren't my style anymore... I haven't made a truly BRIGHT quilt in years and it use to be my go to palette. The fabrics I like are stored away in bins and while these do make a lovely display they are pretty much just decorative... sigh... so I decided that some of the fabrics on the shelves could be relocated to plastic bins to make room for the stuff I do want to play with like the Lori Holt fabric and the Tilda's ... and that's what I did!

And I also got all my Amy Butler and Anna Maria Horner fabrics reunited too. Nowadays I tend to group fabric by designer rather than by color. I still grab yellows and lately greens but the other colors just sit there... and now I'm pondering whether to do a major rearrangment of my stash. Put the brights in bins in the root cellar closet and bring out my Debbie Mumms and maybe my Kaffe Fassetts...  and an maybe my Grunges too... of course I have no way of knowing if this will work unless I actually do it... I've counted stacks and I've counted bins and I might have more fabric in the bins than stacked on the shelves.   I haven't done a purge of my stash since the new bookshelves were installed ... and perhaps it is time for another one.  When I'm in the right mood I can be ruthless in what I get rid of. I'm obviously not a Marie Kondo because while I am organized EVERYTHING I have does bring me joy... until it doesn't...LOL... Stay tuned to see how this turns out... I'm pretty sure I'd like to have my Debbies and my Kaffes out on the shelves but I'm not sure I want to do the work it will take to make it happen.  But the more I think about it the more I know I'd like a new look. An organization and decorating mash up! However , just redoing those 5 shelves took me almost all day... realistically this project will take at least a solid week... probably more... I'm talking myself into this bit by bit...

Okay... thanks for hanging in there as I rambled ... I did get a bit of cross stitch done. I focused on the Summer House Stitche Works Fragments of Time 2022 ....

and the house block completed and the one below is almost  done!  

My goal is to have this done by the end of August and that does seem doable. Unlike last September I'm not going to start 7 samplers for my birthday... but I am going to start another BIG one  to celebrate... and I'm not going to think about the 2 or is it 3 or is it 4 BIG samplers I've already started this year... not gonna do that!! LOL

As for sewing  not much occurred... I tossed one of the blocks I  had done for the American Jane Honeybun quilt... so  still I need 5 more...  

perhaps this will be the week this gets done... I want it off the design wall so I can play with other projects.

And while I was doing all that pondering about rearranging my fabrics I got an urge to make a new Fall quilt... I know I know I have plenty of other stuff to do but I am longing for cooler Fall weather ... I like to watch weather videos on Youtube and several that do long range forecasting are predicting an early Fall ... I'm good with that! So,  I got out a bin of Sandy Gervais Fall prints...she does dynamite Fall prints and yes I'm a fan girl of hers too as evidenced by these quilts I've made with her fabrics...

This one started with a panel from her collection Tranquility... loved the birds and boy I still miss that chonky boy!

And this one will be gracing my bed the beginning of September...

And there was this little quilt... a Schnibbles pattern called 4 Corners...

Another Schnibble called Speck...

And this one called Jelly Roll Whirl... the colors are a bit bleached out here... it had a nice warm golden tone  in real life...I used Elfin Grunge as the background.

And this mini quilt...the back ground is deep purple even though it looks brown here. 

And a table runner...

And another table runner..

And this scrappy Churn Dash that is a completed quilt but this is the only pic I could find of in on the blog...

I want to do something easy but I want it to have a bit of style and not be a pattern I've already  made. I looked through my library of books (and it also needs to be tidied up and some stuff shipped off to Half Price Books) and came across this pattern called Marbled Cheesecake... and I do like cheesecake!

It is in the book Jelly Filled by Vanessa Goertzen. 

And I found some very pretty Grunge in my stash... as I recall this color is called Curry... nice orange-y splotches and I made ONE block!!

Oh this is right up my alley... simple piecing...no intersections to match in the block... sews up quickly... interesting design and I've never made a quilt like this before... it checks ALL the boxes... I'm feeling cooler already...LOL

So next week is momentous in that Elliott starts kindergarten... he went to a back to school night with his Mom  and Dad to meet the teacher and see the classroom. I asked what he liked about the school and he told me they get TWO recesses and at the  back to school night he got Oreos and a pencil...but the pencil wasn't sharpened...  a precaution I'm sure that was necessary... LOL    Plan is for him to take the bus to and from  school. The district has the policy that kindergarten kids are picked up at their driveway and dropped off there too.. door to door service. I've watched the bus drop off the kids and sometimes it means stopping at 2 or 3 houses in a row which is great for the kids.  Fingers crossed that he adapts to the new routine... he's going to be the kind of kid that teachers remember... and not because they were the quietest or the most easy going... he will leave his mark... of that I am certain.

Well next week is still up in the air... I have dinner plans on Monday and oh did I mention my car is in the shop. Was suppose to be a simple repair of a cracked oil pan... but like these things usually go, it got more complicated. I dropped it off on Thursday... hope I get it back on Monday... fingers crossed.  They gave me a lovely  free loaner but I want my car back.  I'll have Elliott for a bit of time on Tuesday...we need to adjust our previous Tuesday routine to a new one. He eats lunch at school but still wants to go to McDonalds. He told me school is "early lunch" and McDonalds is "late lunch"... not sure how much he'll eat but there is always cookies or an ice cream. 

And at the moment (and every decision is subject to change) I do think I'll try moving more fabric around.  I definitely will need to label the boxes even though you can see through the bins, as I'm pretty sure I'm not going to remember exactly what I put in them.  I know if I get into this project I won't want to stop... I'm a binge worker... I want to build Rome in a day and once I get going I don't like to stop till the job is complete but while my mind says "you can do it Carol" my body says "what in the h3ll are you doing?  you're not young anymore... heck you are even 60 .... slow down!!"  The spirit is willing but the body is weak and getting weaker...LOL

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts and Quilting is more fun than Housework...  and I'll leave you with a  pic of some dahlias from my yard... I have no clue what variety these are but they sure are pretty!

happy stitching-

carol fun