The Bay Area Quilt Craft & Sewing Festival was at the San Mateo County Event Center this weekend. I really like this show because it is large enough to be inspiring and have a wide array of vendors; many vendors are familiar faces by now. You can see the extent of the show from the flyer below.
However, the show is not so large that I get lost in the aisles or overwhelmed by the creations of other artisans. An artisan is a whole different arena to me than a quilter. I revel in the beauty and comfort of quilts and enjoy them as wall hangings but some creations at some of the larger shows, Pacific International for example, are so elaborate I get overwhelmed. This Bay Area show often has a display of quilts made from the same pattern by quilters, young and old, in different color combinations. Very often they are traditional quilts and I like seeing these down home variations. And I really enjoy the shopping. And I love that my husband comes along and enjoys me enjoying myself. He wears his special shirt with this embroidered above the chest pocket.
One of the vendors at the show gave him a very important title.
She said he was a CEO... stands for "Carries Everything Out".
Here are my purchases that he carried out to the car.
These are two of twelve pages to be made into a cloth book. It is about things you can do inside on a rainy day. The cartooning is really cute though in my opinion they could have been a bit brighter to stand out more. I bought it on an end-of-bolt clearance and the ends are pinked a bit too close – on some the page numbers were trimmed off! It is challenging, but not impossible, to figure out what order the pages go in and I may need to take a larger seam allowance but I think I can make it work.
The poem is precious. Here are the words. Part of me typing out the verses was to help me figure out the page number order.
RAINY DAY GAMES
What to do, what to do,
when the sun can't peek through?
When the sky is all gray & it's raining all day,
what do we do when it's to wet to play?
Can you name some games we can play inside?
The first one could be "I'll seek & you hide".
We could play simple games like tic-tac-toe,
with just pencil and paper and X's and O's.
We could play board games like checkers or chess;
Mom would like these 'cause they don't make a mess.
We could play card games – there are so many kinds,
It might take some time just to make up out minds.
We could play a memory game – match 1 to 1, 2 to 2.
Turn over the cards – where was red, where was blue?
We could play marbles or we could play jacks,
Or we could read books – kick back and relax.
We could make music with old pots for drums –
we could all sing along or maybe just hum.
We could even build forts with pillows and sheets,
where we could start over with go-hide-and-seek.
When the sun comes out, maybe later today,
We'll all run outside with our friends to play.
Another panel I bought was to make a book of
nursery rhymes. The rhymes are Humpty Dumpty, The Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe, Hickory Dickory Dock, Hey Diddle Diddle, and Jack and Jill.
Here are the front and back covers. This should be fun to sew up.
I did not realize it till I started to blog about my purchases that I was in a small project, get-it-done-quick-for-instant-gratification mood. Other fabrics I bought were also panels, two of which I thought would also make cute, although atypical baby cloth books. This first one would help in learning the vegetables. It only would have six pages but I am hoping I can use some veggie fabric I have to stretch the book. I bought this panel and the following grill time panel from the Laurel Leaf.
The larger panels could make interesting front and back inner and outer covers. I need to figure out a way to get the printed word on the front.
The next panel has some cute images for a summer time barbeque. I thought I would make it into a cloth book, also. I discovered upon looking at it more closely once I got it home that, although there were eight images, only four are unique. I have to rethink this one. This would be too short a book. It would make adorable potholders though and I could practice my FMQ around those daisies and bugs and zig-zags!
And here is yet another panel I purchased. Neither I nor my husband are coffee drinkers but how could I pass up something with my signature polka dots and the name of my husband so prominently emblazoned on the fabric? I bought this at the Twisted Scissors Quilt Shoppe from Sparks Nevada. I am somewhat confused though. The selvage says the line is Tidings of Great Joy but when I poke around Quilted Treasures website it looks like the name of the fabric line is
Daily Grind.
The vendor had made up some place mats that were really cute. She used a wonky tilt technique and had a pocket for the napkin. She encouraged me to go ahead and take a picture of them. She did not have a pattern and insisted how else would I remember? I thought this was very nice of her since, at most of these shows, photography, videos. and even sketches are forbidden. Here are the somewhat blurry cell phone snapshots but I think you get the idea.
I wish now I had bought some of the coordinating fabrics – it had some lovely shaded polka dots – but I didn't pick up on that fact at the show. I did raid her bargain bin, though. Here is a yard of a stripe that I think will make a killer binding on a nautical themed or primary colored quilt...
... and a pretty green Christmas print with metallic gold highlights. I just have a 1/2 yard but I might fussy cuts the trees and incorporate them that way in a Christmas wall hanging or table runner.
There was a vendor at the show call Second Chance Fabrics. The concept was kind of interesting... sort of like a used book store. She was selling fabrics from other folks' stashes. It had never been used, just traded in for other fabrics. I think this is a great idea. Since it came from people's stashes there was a wide variety and year span. Fabrics were not so old as to lose desirability but recent enough that there was a decent chance of getting a discontinued fabric that you happened to like. I picked up this Santa flannel.
Even though presented near the end of this post, the first vendor I bought from at the show was A Quilter's Dream. This is the person who designed the pattern for my Color Play of the Day quilt. I bought two more of her patterns,
Square Root of Nine and
Box of Stars. Sorry the pattern on the right is hard to see due to the glare in the photo, but you can get a better view of them at the links for their names in the previous sentence. I also bought two half yard pieces of orange and pink batiks that caught my fancy. I love her triangular folding technique, too.
From the vendor The Rabbit Hole Quilt Shop, I bought these three one yard pieces. Guess I like swirls, orange, and Christmas... and obviously also fabric shopping.
Finally, I also purchased two twin size and one lap size bamboo batting from Winline Textiles. I really like how 100% bamboo drapes and it only needs to be quilted 8" apart, though I do stitch it closer. Also, with no polyester content you do not sweat underneath the quilt. Shrinkage is advertised as 3%-5% but I think it does not scrunch up as much as cotton and I prefer the not quite so antique look. Their website has a good comparison of
batting types.
Well that sums up my purchases. Hope you enjoyed shopping vicariously with me. At least YOU did not spend any money! :•)
