12 Days, 13 States, 4,400 Miles

I haven't been around to blog, I was out of town! DH, DDIL, and I went to Fort Benning, GA for DS the Younger's graduation from 91M school. I got to give him his Army quilt after graduation, and DH snapped of pic of us.

I was thrilled to get a photo in front of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which is what DS is trained to work on. My little boy is definitely a grown man now, look at how much he towers over me!

While we were in Georgia, I got to visit my best friend for a couple days. She and her husband came up to DS the Younger's graduation, then we went down to their house for a couple days. It all brought back a lot of memories. You see, I met my best friend when we were both Army wives, living on post in Texas. Both our husbands were active duty Army, and although we moved on from that assignment, and never were stationed in the same place again, we remained best friends.

On the way home, we picked up some souvenirs, but not the normal type! No t-shirts or keychains here. I'll show you DH's souvenir first.

DH found a scooter with a sidecar for sale in Indiana. He's got family in Indiana, so he had one of his cousins go check it out. It looked good, so we wired the money, had him buy it, and then he offered to meet us in Nashville with the scooter. We rented a U-Haul trailer, and hauled it home.

The unplanned detour to Nashville left us in an interesting place. We weren't that far from Paducah, Kentucky, which I'd like to go to someday. We also weren't far from Batesville, Arkansas, where Marshall Dry Goods is located. I have ordered quite a bit of fabric from Marshall Dry Goods over the years, and I'm happy with the quality of it. In fact, the Army quilt I made for DS the Younger has some fabrics from Marshall Dry Goods, and the backing of it is all from there.

DH and I discussed it, and I was very honest. Paducah would be a longer stop, because I'd want to go to the quilt museum and hit a few shops. It would be cheaper though, because I'm not likely to buy a lot at high prices. Marshall Dry Goods would be a faster stop, but a lot more expensive, because I am quite familiar with their stuff, and knew I'd buy a couple bundles of fabric. He decided to go with Marshall Dry Goods.

Here is what you see when you walk into Marshall Dry Goods. This is the retail side of things, you can buy fabrics by the yard, and although most fabrics are $2.95 a yard, they have sale tables at $1 a yard, and have some name brand stuff at $6.95 a yard. Good prices, right?

I was there for fabric bundles, which are on the wholesale side.

On this side of the store they sell fabrics by the bundle or bolt. I've gone through both bundles and bolts of their fabric in the past. Their bundles have five-six yard lengths of multiple fabrics in the same line. A lot of their bundles end up about 100 yards or so. So what did I buy???

I bought two bundles of solids, and one bundle of tone-on-tones. That is 300 yards of fabric, for a grand total of $441 after taxes. Some souvenir, huh? I go though a minimum of 100 yards of fabric a year, usually much more than that. I have used over 300 yards of fabric in one year. Yes, it's a lot of fabric, but I use a lot, and at those prices, I couldn't really go wrong. I tried to be as practical as possible, and buy what I knew would make my current stash of fabrics more usable. The solids were on sale for $1 a yard in the bundles, and I use a lot of solid color fabrics for backgrounds. The tone on tones were $1.95 a yard. Taxes added just over $40, and I think I got an amazing deal! I was tempted to buy a bundle of pindot fabrics, but I didn't want to splurge that much at once. Maybe after I get some of these sewn up into quilts, I'll order some of the pindot fabrics online.

I got some news while on our trip, and now I've got two more wedding quilts and another baby quilt to go on my deadline quilt list. Maybe it's a good thing we opted for Marshall Dry Goods instead of Paducah on the way home ;-)