National Quilt Day Celebration!

Hooray!
Today, a gorgeous Spring day, was National Quilt Day. I celebrated it by meeting Deb, a fellow-quilter and internet friend, in person for the first time to give her a great big hug. We met at Keepsake Quilting's store in Center Harbor, New Hampshire, where a big sale was raging. I betcha there were 50 to 60 shoppers in the store, lined up at the "ten FQ's for $10" table, jockeying for position.
We had lots of fun talking about our recent projects, especially on RRCB. She is still working full-time, so we compared notes as tortoises. Because we had never seen each other, I wore my scarlet tam'O shanter and my Belknap Mill Quilter's Guild name tag, so that she could find me in the crowd.

After we enjoyed a bit of time in a Dunkin' Donuts, we parted ways and I went on to Joann's. Today was the last day to use my 50% off any regular purchase coupon, and I was determined to make it count! I bought 6 yards of black quilter's cotton at $5 a yard and expected to use it on that. But then I spotted a 15 yard Roc-lon bolt of white bleached muslin for $30 and made that my coupon purchase. In retrospect, it didn't matter, now did it? I also found a lovely tawny golden cheddar and got a couple of yards of that.

Some people on Stashbusters' Yahoo group are trying to reduce their stash. I admire their noble efforts. But many quilter's who do not follow the financial markets are blithely unaware that all cotton prices went crazy when Egypt had a revolution. Cotton futures are now up more than 250% over last year. Because there is a significant time-lag factor with cotton, due to harvesting, ginning, spinning, and weaving & printing, the prices have not jumped yet. They may not until Fall. The futures have not been this high since the Civil War era's Northern naval blockades. So I am buying now. I expect that quilt shop quality fabric will sell for $30 to $35 a yard. I hope I am wrong.

 I also purchased 4 bags of tie-ups that Keepsake always uses to tie your bag shut in a festive way when you are done at their checkout line. A bag was $4.99 and the clerks said that the bags each held between 3 and 4 yards of fabric. Won't they be perfect for Scrappy String Quilts?

Last October, I gave a quick demo on making a 10 1/2" scrappy scarlet strings' block at my Belknap Mill Quilter's Guild Show. It was fun to show everybody what I had just learned myself. A lot of folks had never seen String Blocks. I had half a dozen blocks all made up so that people could try making zigzags, Vees, or squares. My favorite was the squares! So here is the result back from Tracy Szanto's studio at http://www.dreamlandmachinequilting.com/home.html. She just used a simple circular meander to help me save money, so it was under $100.00 for this 60X80" flannel backed charity snuggler. It is going to an elderly couple, she's 80 and he is 85, who cannot pay their oil heating bills this year. By the way, to me, the word "Charity" is a good thing. "Faith, Hope, and Charity, but the greatest of these is Charity!" I drove her to the local fuel assistance program and helped her apply.