Wow – I had one fun if exhausting day!
I had arranged to go with Emily who has been reading my blog for a while, we’ve met a couple of times and conveniently she lives not too far from me. She now blogs too right here. Emily was happy to drive and was going to pick me up on her way, she couldn’t sleep so texted to say she was already on her way to meet me so we were on our way before 7:30!
I didn’t really have a shopping list in my head, but there were a couple of things I wanted to look at and had an instruction from Tobit too. First stop was a new ruler, boring and practical but as the one I have has been snapped for a long time and with a 1/2 price offer it was silly not to. First fabric stop was the Eternal Maker stand, they sell an amazing range of Japanese fabrics and I could have spent a large fortune there but didn’t! Tobit has got plans to commission me for some items and had asked that I get these fabrics:
I took my handkerchief quilt top with me so that I could choose some backing fabric for it. So we headed to see Mandy at Simply Solids who had handily also brought along the wadding that I had recently ordered. I took out my quilt top and Mandy pulled out a couple of bolts of Kaffe Fassett Shot Cottons and we immediately went for one of them – I think it’s grape! It’s quite hard to tell from the colours on the webpage, I am so glad I took the quilt with me and that I didn’t just pick a fabric online. It was great to meet Mandy – we’d exchanged a few emails before the show but it’s really nice to meet in the flesh!
We came across a stall selling fabric (funny that), well this was by the roll, lots and lots of it. A couple of rolls caught my eye £4 per metre! Looked to me very like Boden fabrics and indeed they were, then the lovely assistant pointed out some Boden flannels at the same price, so I bought some of each!
These will be great for something for the girls – probably for next summer at this rate.
These are so wonderfully soft, I’m thinking of Big Butt Baby pants right now but then I’m also hoping to have him out of nappies before too long so might just hold off until next year!
After a stop for lunch we carried on browsing with a bit of a mission for orange fabric for Emily, however we got slightly distracted as we passed the Simply Solids stand and Emily picked up a bundle of fat quarters marked at £3. I then noticed a sign ‘£2 per metre’ on a selection of bolts of fabric. This is what I came away with:
That is 7 different pieces of fabric each a metre – you can do the maths yourself. An absolute bargain. The range is Swoon by Melissa Averinos and the more I look at it the more I love it. What am I going to do with it? No idea yet, well I have lots of ideas but who knows…the girls love it!
By this point I think we were all shopped out but still to see were a lot of quilts!
I considered taking the camera but decided that it would be something else to carry along with all my purchases! In some ways I regretted that decision as the quilts displayed were absolutely stunning. But actually I’m not sure that photographs would really do justice to the detail of the quilts. However Karen at Lisnaweary Quilts has some great pictures that she took up on her blog so go and look at those for a taste of what was on display.
I came away inspired, motivated, excited but not intimidated – well maybe a bit! The quilts were stunning, but all made by humans and so not perfectly perfect. From a distance absolutely amazing, close-up completely stunning but little imperfections were comforting to see, that while we might aim for perfection it doesn’t ruin the overall effect if a point or two don’t match up or there is a thread that was just trimmed rather than sewn in.
All in all an amazing day and not just because Tobit was left at home looking after our 3 delightful children and managed to make it through no problem at all! Thanks very much to Emily for driving, it was a long day but worth it. Dates for next year 16th – 19th August.
Coming soon: headscarves…
Wow what a great deal on those fabrics, they are gorgeous. I love dark brown and plae blue together, it looks great. Intreigued to see what you make with them.
Glad you had a good time, I’m looking forward to next year being as I missed this one due to illness. Gives me more time to save up spending money!
Wow, that was a great deal, and looks like a fun day. There’s a quilt fair coming to Edinburgh in September, so i think I’m going to pop over and see what I can find (hopefully some bargains like yours ;o) )