True Love

My husband has been into Freecycle lately.  He's been dumping some of our old junk and keeping an eye on it for bargains.  A few weeks ago he scored a non-working ride-on toddler train for free.  He had it working in under 2 hours.

Yesterday, he scored a box of free "quilting fabric."  Apparently, a lady had gone to an estate sale, bought the box, took what she wanted, and was dumping the rest via Freecycle.  I was skeptical, because a lot of things are labeled "quilting fabric" when they're most definitely not.  But, hey, the price was right.  And worst case scenario, we'd have to make a trip to Goodwill to drop off the fabric.

Well, he brought back a copy paper box full of honest to goodness quilting cottons.  I started going through it and realized there was a lot of good stuff in there!  Some yardage and A LOT of fat quarters.  In fact, there were two washing machine loads worth of fabric.  I didn't even keep it all.  I got rid of a lot of the 80's-esque floral prints in coral, blue, and brown.

Here's my haul (sorry for the poor pictures.  I was rushing to take pictures before the baby woke up):

There were 5 Kaffe Fasset shot cotton fat quarters:

And 8 batik fat quarters:

And 17 homespun fat quarters plus a yardage cut:

And 27 miscellaneous fat quarters:

Then there were these 11 textured fat quarters.  They're obviously from the same line and look like they have a spray paint texture on them. 

Then there was all the yardage...  These cuts ranged from 1/4 of a yd. up to about 1 1/2 yds.  A huge variety.

  

And that's how I came to love my husband's Freecycle habit.

Non-quilt stuff

I've been busy lately, but not with a lot of quilting things. Here are some of the other things I've got going on.
A new (to me) bike! She's a 1984 (I think) Schwinn World Tourist. The fenders are a bit banged up, but it was manufactured by Giant which has a stellar reputation. It rides like a dream and has a nifty gear set that lets you shift while coasting. Love it! It takes a place among all my other vintage things. It's newer than my Viking sewing machine (circa the early 70s) and my Dodge van (1982). Sometimes older is better.
Next up: a new cat condo for the cat. We dumpster dived this from some neighbors who were just tossing it. Nothing wrong with it (no smells and just a bit of dirt), and the cat loves it. We've trained her to stand on top of it when she wants to be brushed or petted. She also sometimes sleeps on the first floor and snores very loudly.

I don't have any pictures of all the apple butter I've put up lately. I've got probably 10+ pints of Apple-Cinnamon, Apple-Peach, Apple-Cranberry and just plain Apple Butter. I think I'm done with apples for this year.

Quilting Resolutions

I was supposed to make New Year's resolutions. That is the thing to do these days, isn't it? I've seen lots of stash busting resolutions on the blogs I read, and while I agree wholeheartedly with the goal, I don't think I have it in me to count the yards of fabric I have and keep a running total. So below are my goals for this year. Or "starting this year" I should say. It seems to me that the whole point of a resolution is to turn it into a habit or persistent state of being. Like "stop biting my fingernails." You don't plan to do it for a year and then stop. Or "lose 20 lbs." You certainly don't plan to keep it off just for a year. So with that in mind, this year I want to start:

1. Actively set aside guilt free time to work on my sewing and quilts.
2. Document what I do. This includes labels for each quilt (I'm really bad about this), photos of each quilt, and this blog.
3. Be creative. Try new things. Experiment with color combinations and techniques I'm scared of.
4. Finish UFOs. Off the top of my head, I can think of many that need to be completed: 25 patch pinwheels, red-black-gold, Happy Houses baby quilt, and come over to my house BOM.

Everything else is gravy.