The Joys of Fabric

Quilting - oh how I love thee! I especially love this quilt -

Isn't it adorable? I just bought the fabric to make a quilt that will end up being similar, except I'll be using bright fuschia (not pink, ladies and gentlemen, but FUSCHIA) to replace the green. While I don't really enjoy FUSCHIA as a color, my little sister Chantel adores it and this quilt is going to be her Christmas present this year. So I'm simply going to figuratively close my eyes to the color and pretend it is green while I quilt it all together. Here's a picture of the fabric pre-quilting!



Also, I've been dying to post photos of the quilting process, but I'm a little reluctant to because most of them will end up as Christmas presents this year and most of the people who actually read my blog will be the recipients of my quilting efforts.... I'll post as much as I can without revealing too much! For example - this is a ________ (insert offending color name here) that I've been working on recently.





Initially, I was just using scraps from my Super-Awesome-Garage-Sale-Find to practice a new quilting technique. For about 3 months I did not permit myself to spend lots of money on new quilting fabric which meant my quilting fingers needed an outlet and this quilt is the product of said quilting-finger-itchiness. Now I'm running out of my scraps in this color scheme and I'm at a loss about what to do with it. My options, as I see them, are:

1. Make a really cute baby girl quilt and WAIT (one of my greatest flaws = impatience) until someone I know has a baby girl....
2. Add really REALLY large borders and make it a twin size bed quilt. However, who really wants a pink quilt???! Seriously, it's offensive.
3. Add strips of fabric in between the strips of quilted-ness and make it a strippy type of quilt... Still, my largest problem remains, who wants a pink quilt?! Ugh.

I've been informed recently that there are girls out there who like pink (and even some boys!) and that, perhaps, someone may appreciate a PINK quilt, but I'm still struggling to accept that someone might like this color scheme. However, since I have put so much effort into this offensive quilt (it literally has taken more time than all my other quilts put together!) and I really don't want it sitting around the house polluting my quilting space with it's offensive pink pollutants, I'm determined to give it away to some unlucky person. I'm thinking maybe giving it to Andy's grandmother, Mimi (if members of the Catts family are reading this, do you know if Mimi actually likes that one unmentionable color??).

On another side note related to quilting, you may have noticed a brief comment about my: Super-Awesome-Garage-Sale-Find! When you read this, you must have wondered - "What on earth did Elisha find at a garage sale?! It must have been amazing to receive it's own title as the Super-Awesome-Garage-Sale-Find!" Well, my friends, family, and random blog stumblers, this is the story of my Super-Awesome-Garage-Sale-Find:

Once upon a time, some brilliant genius invented the Happy Valley Garage Sales (HVGS). For those of you who are from some foreign land and are unfamiliar with the wonderosity of the the HVGS, it is a gathering of many home-dwellers in the Happy Valley area who open up their garage doors and sell furnishings and nicknacks from the comfort of their driveway. Simply put, one can spend days wandering this garage sale extravanganza and still find deals that will make any garage-shopper filled with glee. While doing said wandering, I discovered a discreet bin of fabric. I perused the fabric thinking to myself, "My! what beautiful fabric options to choose from!" However, the garage sale lady wanted $5 per tiny sack of fabric and that was simply too expensive for scraps I may or may not use. I nearly left the garage sale saddened by the fact that I didn't have such a great store of scraps in my own home to make scrappy quilts with, but instead, I mustered up my courage, fully prepared for a great disappointment, and asked how much the garage-seller wanted for ALL the scraps. Expecting her to quote a number around $100+, I braced myself for her answer. "$7" she said simply. I was stunned. I'm pretty sure my jaw fell to the ground in a cartoon-like fashion. I nearly offered her $10 to make myself feel like I wasn't cheating such a nice old lady (calling her a saint might be more appropriate), but wisely, my garage-shopping instinct kicked in, and I proudly told her I would take it all. While my insides were jumping up and down, I kept my calm exterior as we packed bag after bag after bag after bag of quilting scraps. While I stumbled back to my mom (my garage-shopping partner in crime) with all my loot, her face widened as she remebered the sign that said "$5" for each tiny bag. I'm pretty sure she thought I had just thrown all my money out the window for hundreds of tiny pieces of fabric. I'm also pretty sure she thought I had lost my mind. Until, somehow in the state of my delirious happiness, I managed to inform her that all this beautious fabric was achieved for the low price of $7.

And that, my friends, is the Super-Awesome-Garage-Sale-Find of the century. ::sigh happily:: The End.