i am not - *not* allowed to go fabric shopping anymore! at least not for a while. :)



i've been sewing and sewing these blooming lotus nine patches for what...a month now? while i was sewing the last set of nine patches (fabrics #7 & #8), i decided that i just wouldn't be satisfied unless this was a *really* useable quilt. in my mind, useable = queen sized. i just wasn't satisfied with the size it was going to come out, a topper-sized 72"x82". so, with that in mind, i took the el to quiltology last friday. i don't make it a habit to stop there, because i usually can't afford to. :) but, being the only fabric store around here that sells designer quilting fabrics, i had no choice. and i'm glad i went.

my quilt starts out with a light blue center that goes into peaches & pinks, then greens, then greys. i really didn't know what i was going to do with it. i thought that maybe denyse schmidt's hope valley greys would work, but, you just don't know until you bring in samples to the shop & match them up, you know? so after looking at about a dozen or so fabrics or so, these ones ended up being the best to continue the grey & getting darker:



and they also ended up being my original idea of denyse schmidt's hope valley. who would've thought?

of course, i had to go there on a friday, which means it's fat quarter friday. all fat quarters are $2.50. i was able to restrain myself and only pick up a few (although i most definitely could have purchased more!):


i especially love the one on the bottom left-hand corner. it's a reprint of an old liberty of london print. (how long will it be before i purchase that fat quarter bundle?!? no! i need to restrain myself.)

and this:


art gallery's naturella.

so these were just a very small portion of my fabric binge over the weekend. i followed this up with a trip to joann's to use my 50% off coupons, then a second trip to another joann's on saturday morning (where i purchased the nicest "children of the world" print (i still need to take photos), and then, today, just now, i bought a relatively large assortment of fabrics from hawthorne threads, which included fat quarter bundles of all three colorways of joel dewberry's modern meadow line. (can't wait to take photos of all of this!) do you see why i have to stop now?

but i have one last fabric purchase to make: amy butler's lotus lacework in grey. this was my #8 fabric in my blooming lotus quilt, and, since i'm making it bigger, i need to purchase more fabric. i cannot find this anywhere, as it's discontinued. i e-mailed sellers on etsy to see if they had any, i even e-mailed people who had made things with it to see if they had any extra that i could purhcase. after all these e-mails, only one person said they had some that they would be willing to sell, and, i think they've now backed out of it because they didn't respond to my follow-up e-mail reply or my follow-up to my follow-up. sigh. at least have the courtesy to say, 'hey, i've changed my mind, i'm not interested in selling it anymore' rather than just ignoring me! at least then i could just be really upset rather than upset & mad! but...there was one more lead that i received from amy butler's fabric sales team (yes, i even e-mailed them too!)... they had referred me to quilthome.com, stating that they had purchased a lot of overstock of amy's old lines. so i called them up, and, lo and behold - they didn't have actual yardage of this lacework in grey, but, they had remnants, strips of fabrics, ranging from like 7-13" wide. *perrrrrfect*, considering that the strips i need to cut are only 4 1/4" wide. i'm going to buy a bunch of these remnants since they are from different dye lots, and may be really off from each other & from the fabric i already have, so, hopefully everything will work out! i've chosen the "remnants" that i would like and am calling to place my order tomorrow morning, first thing! the lady that answered the phone when i called was so nice & helpful. i love quilt home too! :) (now i know why they have those little 'i love quilt home' badges on their website!)

one last thing before i go:



my fresh & funky july quilt block. (one of them, at least.)

the theme of these july blocks are "people & places", so, we were encouraged to add our own little personal touches (ie. make a block of your house). mine is kinda high rise-ish (i tried!), and then i put two cats in the windows that represent my two cats (even though they don't really look like them). and then, what i think is my most clever personalization of the block: the amy butler lotus lacework in grey (i know! this was before i decided that i was going to make my quilt bigger!) sidewalk & concrete, because we don't have much green space here in the south loop. but doesn't it just coordinate beautifully with the rest of the block? love it!

i have another personalization idea for my "person" block...but will reveal that when i sew it up & post it! :)

well, with that, i'm off. heading out to the suburbs tomorrow to have a late father's day lunch with my dad (since i had to work on sunday) - gotta rest up to make the trek out there! :)