Pretty New Fabrics!

I am, as a rule, very selective when it comes to buying fabric. I already have bales of fabric, so I try to only buy fabric that I have a specific use for, rather than just adding to my stash.

However,

(and there's always a "however," isn't there!) recently I have found some very very nice fabrics that were begging to go home with me. First of all I have some gorgeous hand-dyed fabrics that I bought from a friend and fellow classmate at a class I took in San Francisco last month. They are so lush and colorful!

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When I was at another friend's house a week or so ago, she showed me this piece of fabric. She had a huge amount of it, but didn't know what she was going to use it for, so she asked me if I'd like some. (Duh!!) I think it's cool fabric, because it is shaded from one end to the other, so it is multi-colored. Can you believe that one piece of fabric has all these colors in it!?

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My local quilt shop, The Loft, was having a big sale, so of course I had to go check that out. I found this green print, which you can see from the close-up photo below is made up of blades of grass.

(Maybe good for a landscape or scenic quilt?)

The Loft also had this beautiful fabric, a border print. It is a companion fabric to the print I chose for my Guild President quilt blocks. So I bought a couple of yards, thinking I might use it as sashing or border or both when I put all my blocks together.

Another fabric is new to my LQS. This is fabric designed by my friend, Harmony, who is also local. Harmony designs organic cottons, and boy, are they beautiful! Below you can see her light blue print called Silent Stumps, and also her light blue sateen.

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When I was at a quilt show a

couple weeks ago, I found the following two fabrics. Can you believe how realistic these grapes look! Aren't they beautiful!?!

And, while this one doesn't look very exciting, it is really more colorful than the photo shows, and I liked all the different striations throughout the fabric. Another good one for landscapes, I'm thinking.

I think this is enough fabric to keep me going for a while! I'd better go get busy. Bye for now.

Tumbling Blocks

I finally finished sewing all the rows of my tumbling blocks quilt top together! It now measures 82" by 90." It consists of 426 hexagonal shapes, sewn together from 1,278 diamond shapes. Whew!!

Now comes another fun part! With the quilt top up-side down, I need to iron all the seems on the back sides. Especially to get all those intersections to lie flat.

With so many short seams to iron, I'm using my Clover craft iron. Because a regular iron would be just too clumsy to maneuver these small seams.

Oh. My. Goodness. This. Is. Tedious.

After I iron a section with the craft iron, I go over it again with the regular iron, because I feel that the bigger iron will give a better overall press.

I've discovered that this is work which can easily produce a very stiff neck, if done for too long at a time! So I try to iron a bit, then take a break and do something else for a bit, then back to ironing for a while, then another break. Whose idea was it to make this quilt so big, anyway!?!?!?

Here is the fabric I bought for the backing fabric. It's extra-wide fabric (110"), so I won't have to deal with a seam anywhere in the back. Yes, I'm sure that will make this whole project much easier!!!

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