Quilty Weekend Continues

When you wake up in the morning with that fresh attitude and know that this would be a great day to get a whole bunch of stuff done it's easy to be off like lightning and that's exactly what happened today. After a leisurely cup of tea and oatmeal with dad while watching Sunday Morning I was off and running.
The drive up to Maine was gorgeous. The foliage is coming out nicely there, though it's not at peak yet. That won't be for another few weeks.

Fabric Dept

What I was told about Mardens is that it can be a little intimidating at first. This is an outrageous understatement.  The fabric department was about the same size of selection that you could find at a smaller Joann's and not nearly as organized. Marden's is similar to the Christmas Tree shops. You walk in and you never know what you're going to find. The fabric department works on the same idea. There aren't any real complete collections that you will find. It's all sort of mashed together and I feel lucky that it was all at least sorted by color though I'm not sure they have a clear concept of the differences between red and orange. :-p

The prices were just as they said it would be on their website. Dirt Cheap! They are so cheap that it may be worth it to me to wait until I have a few projects in the cue and then take the 45 trip north to get all my supplies. Sure, it's the chocolate box of fabric stores but I find that sort of fun. I took and hour and fifteen mintues to find fabric for my mother's quilt and while agonizing over color and pattern scale I kept seeing things that had me going "ooo...that's super pretty!". So, for this trip here is what I walked away with: 

1 Jelly Roll

1 Fat Quarter Roll

Wicker Basket

2 Candles

2 Decorative Ball Things

Fabric for my planning boards

and 

about 18 yards of fabric for my mother's quilt

GRAND TOTAL

$118

I'm fairly certain I couldn't have gotten the fabric for my mother's quilt for $118 bucks if I went somewhere else. 

But the Quilty Weekend didn't stop with just that shopping trip, no sir. A quick stop at Lowes on my way home and I finally had my planning board Styrofoam. They came out great and are just wide enough between the two of them to let me plan out a twin sized quit top without boarders. So it was on to cutting out Andrea's quilt top blocks and I thought it would be nice to pin them up to see how they look. The pattern is called "Don't Fence Me In" and can be found in Eleanor Burns' book "Still Stripping"....and as my father and cousin have pointed out, that is a highly misleading title and has led to some serious disappointment. Even still, it has some great tips and ideas for patterns.