Quilting Basics

In my last post I mentioned winning four lots of fabric on ebay, and now the fabrics are here. I am out of corrugated plastic forms, so my new fabric is piled up next to my batting roll.

I divided it up by color, and I am thrilled I got the most greens! I always say I don't have a favorite color, just a least favorite (blue). I like different colors for different things. I probably wear pink, purples, and red the most, but my favorite flowers are yellow, I tend to decorate with greens and browns and I think orange is the happiest color. Yup, I like everything but blue.

At any rate, the lots I won were one lot of solids, one of blenders, and two tone-on-tone lots. Perfect for quilting basics, the plainer stuff you need to make the other stuff work. Now that the scrub stash is integrated with my quilting stash since I am no longer making scrubs to order, I have so many novelty fabrics to use up, and you have to add some basics to use up the novelties. I was almost completely out of blenders, I had only a few solids, and I never did have many tone-on-tones. Now my stash is larger, yes, but much more workable.

I checked ebay for corrugated plastic to make the mini bolts forms out of, and I didn't see the size boards I ordered last time, which were really ideal. I think we will check will a local sign place, and see if they will sell us some blank boards, or maybe something with a misprint on it to use. DH has done quite a bit of business with one of the sign businesses, so I'm hoping I can get some corrugated plastic locally and not have to pay shipping.

Once we get some more mini bolt forms cut, I think half of this will fit on the fabric shelves, and the other half will have to wait until there is room. Since I have all of the backings to piece for the next quilts to be quilted, there should be room pretty quickly.

I got almost all of the shirt fabric put away. The only parts not put away are the sections I want to cut into strips right away and put into my shirt strips stash to add to the variety. I have one tote for shirt parts, and it is now full, so no more buying shirts until I get some room in that tote. I hadn't bought shirts in a long while, and this time I had planned on buying some, so I haven't been regularly going wild ;-)

I quilted a baby quilt yesterday, so now it just needs binding. I started quilting grandbaby #5's quilt today, but I am having a hard time concentrating on it, my headache is bad today. I am trying to quilt a watery kind of design on it, and I'm hoping when it's done it will look cool. The quilt has rubber ducks on it so I thought a water pattern would be good. I am having thread breakage issues, which is driving me a little nuts. The thread is variegated, but it is Aurifil, a brand I rarely have problems with. I changed my needle, and adjusted the tension, and of course I've rethreaded over and over again. only the top thread is breaking. Yesterday I was quilting with some really cheap thread and I didn't have any problems at all. Hmmm. You know, I backed this quilt with fleece, maybe that is the problem. I have only used fleece one other time, but I wasn't free motion quilting on that quilt, I was using a walking foot. Does anyone else have problems with fleece backings?

I have a chair in my bedroom now that the crib is not in there. I brought up a tv table, and the things I need to trim up the bonus HST's. I figure if I spend a little time each evening trimming HST's I will eventually have them all the same size. I really have no idea how many HST's I have. I am using Eleanor Burns Quilt in a Day Triangle Trimmer ruler, so I can trim them up before they are pressed open. I think I will count them as I press them, then put them into a plastic shoebox. One of the ideas I have to use them requires over 5,000 HST's and I know I don't have that many yet. If I put a post-it note on top of the shoe box, and note every 100, I should be able to keep track as I add to the trimmed, pressed collection. I'm sure I'll be needing to make more HST's to have enough for that project. Maybe I should just start a couple projects that will result in lots of bonus HST's!