From Maine, With Fabric

I won’t bore you with photos of my vacation to Maine.  Like all the beautiful lighthouses we visited.

Or this cool one you have to walk out across the breakwater to get to.

Beachcombing on a rocky beach.  Can you spot my daughter in this photo?  My sister took this and I think it’s really cool Bea blends into the rocks.

Beachcombing on a sandy beach.

Exploring old forts.  We visited an old graveyard too, but I left my phone in the car that time.

Playing at the Children’s Museum in Portland.

Learning to bake bread.

Lots and lots of holding baby chickens that hatched the morning after we arrived.

Attempting to go for a hike in the snow. (Not very successful, and we all fell at least once.)

And feeding and collecting eggs from these ladies every afternoon.  My sister has chickens, turkeys, ducks, and goats.  The kids loved helping her with all the chores.

Now for the fabric part of the post!!!!!!

My sister knows how much I love sewing, so she took us to a discount store (think Ollie’s or Big Lots) that has a huge fabric section in the back.

All the bolts are arranged by color, then there are aisles of stripes, dots, and novelty fabric.  Most of it is older designer fabric, but some is from this past year.  I saw quite a bit Denyse Schmidt, Tula Pink, Erin McMorris, and Valori Wells.  I have to be honest, when we first went in and walked through the front of the store, I was doubtful.  But as we made our way to the back, the heavens parted and I saw paradise.

Lucky for me, all my daughters love fabric and sewing, so they were more than happy to help me fill up my cart.  All the fabric is $5 a yard or less, so it was easy to say “YES!” 

Here’s what we left with (not including 3 other pillowcase kits that Bea already sewed into pillowcases).

One thing my stash is  missing is prints without flowers.  It is a little tough to find fabrics for the “manly” quilts I’ve been making lately.  So these came home with us.  Not a flower or flourish in any of these!

A set of 1/2 yard cuts from a Maywood collection of birds and blooms that Ronnie had  to have.

Some fabrics I just liked.

Remnants that are all 20% off at the register!

Some additional low volume prints.

And some random fabrics—Perfectly Perched, a bird print, stripes for binding for my Tone It Down quilt, and a humungous animal panel that I want to make a quilt from for myself even though it’s kid fabric.

And some fabric my daughters had to have.  A pack of 10 fat quarters, some random cuts of fabric they liked, and two packs of 4 half yard cuts.

Classing it up at the checkout.

One day was quite rainy, so Bea sat down and sewed three pillowcases that day, so those kits were not pictured.

All in all, it was an amazing trip with the kids.  Sure, it was stressful at times in the airport (like when I misread the departure time for our return flight and we barely made it on the plane in time).  But I’d do it again, and not just for the chance to buy some discount fabric;)

I said I’d pick a winner from my giveaway today, so without further ado…

Yay, #8, which happens to be my favorite number.  So the winner is Saira P.  I’ll email you shortly!