Spool, stash, show

A couple of weeks ago, I finally made it to Chattanooga's own modern quilt shop, Spool. Spool is home of the BadAss Quilter's Society. Unfortunately, the shop was going out of business and is completely closed now. Most of the merchandise was on deep discount and almost all of the fixtures were for sale.



While "deep discount" at a retail, bricks and mortar quilt shop is still 2-3 times more per yard than I prefer to pay, I still did a little shopping. There are certain types of fabric that are hard to find among the stash-stored, unsewn, clean fabrics that I usually find on eBay. One is modern, low volume pieces. Spool had a nice selection in their fat quarters so I bought six. I'm also always looking for bright stripes for bindings. This one is actually from a Christmas line, but it will work well with many of my Project Linus novelties. And the basket, sized perfectly for fat quarters, was only a dollar.



Speaking of those eBay fabrics, a couple more goodies made their way to me via the USPS. I've been looking for chicken fabric for a while, and this panel amused me. Each chicken has a name. I'll combine them with these fabrics for a fun quilt. And I couldn't resist the fancy kitties on furniture.



This bright stripe and lime green fruit fabric will both be very useful at some point. I'm always running out of greens, and the fruits make a polka dotty pattern with lots of movement. Wouldn't that be a fun background? I didn't realize when I bought it that the fruit fabric is actually a seersucker, so that will be interesting to work with.



I'm continuing to chug along on quilting Transformation. In my last post, I showed lots of blue tape marking my straight lines. That was working well on all the vertical lines in the grid. When I started stitching the horizontal ones, though, I noticed the tape was actually pulling the fabric into pleats at each crossing. Argh! After ripping and poking at the tape to try to loosen things up, it occurred to me to try my new Hera tool. What a difference! The tool made nice, clean, straight marks that didn't interfere with the stitching at all. I'm a convert!



And finally, here's a photo of Ocean Portal and Berbere on display in the background at the little art show in California. I think the ceramic pieces on the table are really neat. There were several ceramicists, painters, and photographers. I was so tickled to be invited. The organizers asked me to write up a biography and to make sure I included information about Project Linus to help get the word out about this great charity.