San Mateo Festival Purchases

Saturday I went with my husband to Bay Area Quilt, Craft, and Sewing Festival held at the San Mateo County Event Center. This is an annual outing for my husband and me and traditionally I report to my daughter via my blog about what I bought. My goals this time were to be practical and not too frivolous in any purchases, to avoid buying kits, and mainly to enjoy the drive and the day with my husband. I met all my goals.

These plaids and stripes are intended for use as bindings. I bought one yard of each. The plaids have so many colors I think they will be versatile enough to serve as bindings on a selection of quilts. The stripes however surprised me when I got home and opened them to fold in my habitual way. The stripes run at right angles to the selvage not parallel to it! Normally I cut my bindings across the width of the fabric and this makes stripes radiate outward from the quilt top. I am guessing I can cut these along the length of the fabric and get the same effect. I know fabric is less stretchy along the grain than across the grain but I hope this does not affect binding.

Since apparently I am into stripes for binding, I bought these navy/white and black/white options. (I do pause momentarily to wonder where all these quilts are coming from that I am going to bind.) Not to worry. Stripes are flexible enough I can use them elsewhere as blender pieces. They will also go well with florals or other novelty prints. The navy one on the right is diagonally striped so I do think I will try to reserve it for binding without having to fussy cut bias binding to get the same effect. I got ½ yard of that and a full yard of the black/white pinstripe.

This knitting sheep fabric was my one concession to moderate frivolity. The coral and lime and aqua color scheme caught my eye first. Then when I saw they were sheep knitting, I caved and bought one yard. I might just whip up a drawstring bag to store the yarn of whatever my current knitting project is.

I collect fabric license plates from stores I frequent, whether I go there personally or see them at a show. I do not sew them into a quilt. I line them up marching along the wall at the ceiling line of my sewing room. One per store though, and that is it. I do not buy a plate yearly per store though I recently earned that the plates for a shop can change each year. This one tickled me since it is so true for me with needles and thread of late. I do buy from the Rabbit Hole Quilt Shop when they are present at a show I attend.

I got this silicone iron rest plate to see if my Rowenta iron will leak less when resuming pressing after a brief pause. Out of habit through the years I orient my iron upright when it is not in my hands in use. It shuts itself off as the safety feature now require it to do, so when I rotate it to resume ironing, the condensed steam leaks out. Perhaps if I rest it in the flat rather than upright position it will leak less when it is set for steam. This modified habit will be hard to establish for me. I hope the leakage is a position issue of my Rowenta and not a problem with the iron. It does not leak while I am using it – only after it resumes after a safety imposed shut-off.

Although I could easily make these pillows without a pattern, I liked the idea of them each being made with 2½" charm pack squares.  I do not buy those itty bitty charm packs but I do have quite a bit of partial strips from  2½" wide jelly rolls that I would like to dice into squares and use up. I also have some 5" charm packs that I could quarter and use. Each pillow is 16" square so four or six (or more) of them could work up quickly into a cute scrap quilt. Maybe perhaps I could make each 16" block in a different colorway ?

The final purchase was at my husband's urging. Our son has a bunny rabbit and tends to poke unwanted objects and his fingers between the wires of its cage. This blue vinyl mesh may discourage this behavior while still giving the bunny adequate ventilation. The roll of mesh came with a free tote bag pattern so why not give it a try?

The show did not have as many vendors as usual and was more sparsely attended than the norm. But its low key tone and my goals were in sync. The weather cooperated by being a beautiful sunny day. My husband and I had  pleasant afternoon.