My haul from the International Quilt Festival

One of the many engagements I had last week was to attend the Preview Party Wednesday night at the International Quilt Festival in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio - my home town! I went with a group of my quilty lady friends and we had a nice time.

Now before I went I thought about what my stash needs. The little angel on my right shoulder said "your stash needs NOTHING", the little devil on my left shoulder said "BUY IT ALL!" My purchases were more in line with the little guy on my left shoulder -- just saying.

So first I found some more black & white novelty prints and some colorful ones too. I LOVE those googly eyed gold fish!

Novelties

And then there were dots... LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of DOTS... and I was powerless to resist! I did feel that when I made my last Scrappy Trips quilt that I was running out of some of my favorite dotty fabrics so an infusion of new dots was absolutely necessary - wasn't it? (nod your head up and down, up and down - very good!)

Lots of dots!

And I'm blaming this next pile on Stephie. She found this vendor when she was working the show on Tuesday night and WOW did she have some wonderful new and old Kaffe Fassett fabrics. These will come in handy as I work on my new Scrappy Trips quilt and I have a couple more Kaffe quilt ideas percolating.

I LOVE Kaffe fabrics!

In looking over my haul it is clear what I like - bright and bold. And here's a thought that will leave you scratching your head - I actually have entertained the idea of making a "low-volume" quilt. They look so sweet and peaceful. But.... I don't think I'm genetically able to do "low-volume".... I think I'm more the "screaming decibels, make your ears bleed" volume kinda quilter - oh well - we all have dreams! LOL

 As for the show, I would have liked more vendors but then I always want more vendors. This is the third year for this show in Ohio and the gossip said it would be the last year, but the gossip was wrong.  The IQF has already posted dates for 2014 - April 3 -5.  That makes it earlier in the month and puts more time between it and the AQS show in Paducah.  This could definitely be bad for the budget but lots of fun! A good quilt show is so inspiring - new fabrics and gadgets and patterns and great quilts to look at and bumping into old friends and making new friends. Oh how I love a quilt show!

Okay off to sew  - happy stitching!
carol fun

I have the math skills of a 2 year old

Wait- that isn't fair to 2 year old children. They're just discovering numbers. Well I was so proud of myself for getting ALL the pieces of this quilt cut out. This the cover quilt, Dazzling Stars, from the Dec/Jan 2012 issue of Quilt magazine. I'm using my Debbie Mumm fabrics for this one.



With ALL my squares and triangle cut and waiting for me I figured I would push fabric through the sewing machine in a blissful stupor for hours last night. But first I started arranging some of the blocks on my design wall and it took no time at all to realize I am woefully short of several units.



I still need to cut over 50 half square triangle units and more than 60 3" square units. And since I want this to be scrappy it means I need to go back through my stacks of fabric which I neatly fold and returned to their assigned positions in my Debbie Stash. Grrrrr.... now if I had left the fabrics in a heap on the floor I'll bet I wouldn't be short any pieces. The amounts I have left to cut bear no resemblance to what I needed. It isn't like I forgot to cut half or a quarter of what I needed, I'm just short these random amounts. And I counted as I cut and left myself little hash mark notes, so as far as I can tell it isn't that I can't add or subtract, I can't count!!

Oh well to cheer myself up I made a trip to Joanns and found these...



a new Denyse Schmidt line call Daisy Mae. I haven't seen them anywhere on the web or heard anything about this line. There were 16 bolts at my Joanns. I didn't get all of them because a couple didn't talk to me (they talk to you too, don't they?). But I did get 3 yards of that green on the left - love it!

Have a great weekend-
carol fun