I'm blown away!

No - not by the weather, although the nasty weather we had yesterday was  - well it was just nasty. The rain came down in buckets, winds, lightning and thunder, and just craziness.

Thankfully, I was inside all day teaching so I was totally oblivious to it except when I left the store. Thankfully my car was parked right outside the back door!

The ongoing classes were in the morning. The show and tell from both classes was mind-blowing! Both groups are so creative that I was stunned.

I'll get those pictures up this week. I'm impressed beyond words.

Today we have our UFO meeting and well - I'm going to have to cough up $10. There's no way that I'm going to get my two blocks completed. I've got one almost done and the other one is partially completed. Totally my fault - bad planning. I did have a sewing day a couple of weeks ago and I should have been working on my homework. I had time. Oh well - live and learn and let's move on.

I found this when I was cleaning up something this past week. I've touched so many bags and projects that I've lost track of where I'm finding things. I do remember that someone bought this for me. The big question is who??  Anyway - you know who you are and THANK YOU. It's now added to the license plate collection.

One more row by row license plate

When I was madly cleaning up the kitchen table the other day, there were a few things sitting there that needed repair. One of them was my drying rack. I had broken one of the legs when I brought it in the house. No big deal - I found a splint for it and some nice bright orange duck tape. It's all good now. 

The drying rack is fixed

Then I had this pattern box. The box was in good shape. It's just that the glue holding the corner together came unglued! I didn't want to throw the box away as I needed the box. So I got out the trusty bright orange duck tape and fixed the inside.

Inside of the box is fixed

But that orange duck tape would have looked a bit obvious on the outside, so guess what? I found shiny silver duck tape in my tape drawer and you wouldn't even know that the box was repaired. Now the patterns are back in the box and looking much neater!!

Outside fixed with silver duck tape

 I did manage to find a home for some of those Marti Michell patterns yesterday. Make sure if you want something that you send me an E-MAIL!!!!  If you send me a comment, I don't always know who you are!

Today, I have three more patterns. These are all Marti Michell as well - but this time they are mystery quilts. I don't think I even know what they look like. Again - these patterns require a specific set of Marti Michell templates. Yes - you could still make your own templates from freezer paper if you really want the pattern.

Requires Templates sets A & C

Requires Template Set M

 Here's a link to the set M so you can see what it looks like. It's based on a five by five grid. The templates really, really make cutting fast.

Requires Template Set L

Here's a link to the Set L. It's based on a 7 by 7 grid. Again, cutting for these shapes speed up the process.


I have more stuff, but I'm really not sure how much information is there that isn't already in the template sets. I'm going to check it a bit closer and see. Those ones might just hit the recycling bin.

By the way, those mysteries come in a big white cardboard envelope. If you want the pattern and it needs to be shipped, we can even use that envelope as a shipping envelope. They aren't thick and wouldn't cost much to ship.

Here's an article on textile waste in our landfills. The article is about clothing, but guess what? As quilters, we also produce a HUGE amount of textile waste. I'm shocked at what people throw away. I cut up my batting strips to make rugs and the rest goes into pet mats. I use up small fabric scraps to make scrappy quilts and the smaller scraps go in the pet mats. We need to be more responsible about what we buy and how we use it. I always laugh when I hear people talk about quilting as a hobby is expensive. Well - if we made quilts from scraps, it would essentially be free. Think about it - do you really need that new fabric collection that is going to sit in your stash and NEVER be used??  That's a total waste of money and works out to be very expensive. 

Quilt Market just happened last week in Kansas City. I'm not sure how many fabric companies that would have attended, but let's say that there are about 50 companies in the US. I know - sounds incredible, but there are a lot of fabric companies out there. Let's say that each one introduced 300 new fabrics (that's an average). And let's say that for each fabric, they printed 2,000 yards.

Now let's do the math. 300 (new fabrics per company) X 2,000 (yards printed per fabric) X 50 companies = 30 MILLION.  Yes - the equivalent of about 30 MILLION yards of fabric was just released to the North American quilting public. I'm just talking about the QUILTING industry here.

It gets better - those companies release FOUR times a year. so let's do some more math. 30,000,000 X 4 (releases a year) and guess what? That's 120 MILLION yards of fabric released to the North American market EVERY YEAR!!!!!  Let's say the price of each yard of fabric is $15 (average) - that's $1.8 BILLION.  Yep - that's expensive. But that's why I'm buying WHAT I NEED - not stockpiling.

If you stockpile - then yes  - it becomes expensive. If you buy what you need - it's NOT an expensive hobby at all. No worse than any other hobby!

I think we need to send a message to these fabric companies that they need to SLOW DOWN. Our North American market cannot handle that much new fabric each year. But the moment that a company sees they can make money off of us - they push as much fabric out the door as they can. Many employees of fabric companies are NOT quilters and all they see is the DOLLAR, not the fun, nothing but MONEY.

Now where the heck did that come from???  Oh yes - the article on the textiles in the landfill. We all need to become much more responsible. I'm converted now and I wish someone would have knocked some sense into my head years ago - like TWENTY years ago! I wouldn't be dealing with the issues that I'm dealing with now!

On that note, I'm out of here to do a bit more work on my homework.

Have a great day!!

Ciao!!!