Sing It Fatboy

Every good quilty story starts with a trip to the fabric store, right?

The Fatboy sang to me this day, begging for a ride on a sunny fall day. How could I resist? Country road, sunny mild-ish day, blue sky, and a rumour that Cotton & Steel skull fabric was in stock at Avonport Discount Fabrics. 

The C&S skull fabric was there...oh yes, indeed...but there was also this oh-so-incredible collection of skull laden Halloween bolts that demanded my attention. The quilty world needs more skulls. And if you should find yourself wrapped in black leather looking all bad-ass in the middle of a fabric store then skulls are exactly what you should buy. 

So, as I'm piling up 8 bolts of the Halloween collection on my cart I hear a woman come in the front door and demand of the clerk, "Who owns that big motorcycle?"  Of course my first thought was, "Oh Jeezus, please tell me you didn't hit it!?" followed by a chuckle when I realize that the ole gal was just shocked to see it there.  Soon, I'm piling my bolts on the cutting table and she comes over for a closer inspection. She didn't show me her badge or any identification but I suspect she was an undercover agent of the Quilt Police. With furrowed brow she looked at my fabric pull, gave me a head-to-toe once over and the interrogation went as follows:

  What are you doing with all that?

  You're a quilter?

  How old are you?

  How many quilts have you made?

  Do you hand quilt?

  Do you belong to a guild?

  Do you know so & so?

    What about so & so?

    You must know so & so! 

  Don't you own a car?

  How in the world are you going to transport fabric on a motorcycle? 

  Where do you live? 

  Would you like me to take your fabric back to Sackville for you?

  Do you have many scraps?

  What do you do with your scraps? 

  Would you like to give your scraps to my guild?

You can imagine I'm dying inside answering her questions with certain but limited information...just enough to satisfy her but not enough to blow her mind. Don't tell the Police anything...that's what Poppa always said. 

It never gets old this reaction to a biker chic in a quilt shoppe. 

My favourite place to ride? 

A countryside fabric store...clearly.

Anyway...this is the quilt that happened:

A sinister Giant Vintage Star (a la Jeni Baker in blogland @ In Color Order) with Kona Stone in the background all quilted up with "Haunted Web" edge to edge from Apricot Moon using purple variegated Coates thread up top and orange variegated Aurifil on the back. 

It needs to be noted that The Robot loved that Aurifil thread...virtually no lint to clog his belly button. The purple Coates? Holy linty hell. Even worse than the typical linty hell of the solid colour Coates. I recently won a dozen spools of Aurifil thread (1st place!!!)  from the MMQG through that Paint Chip Challenge and so I'm looking forward to quilting with it! Even though it's 50wt cotton like all my other threads it's finer...which translates to more thread on a bobbin which translates to fewer bobbin changes for The Robot which translates to a much happier lil ole me.

After I got this quilt all bound I noticed a teeny weeny tear in the backing fabric...I was somewhat gutted but not defeated. I must have snagged a pin in the mountain of quilt off to the left side of the machine as I  was stitching down the binding. What odds? I just hand appliqued a bitty skull to patch it up. If only I could've found an itsy bitsy spider...

I should've waited to snap photos of this finish til this week...the leaves here right now are stunning. Last week? Not so much. Adrienne over at Chezzetcook Modern Quilts waited and got amazing shots of Mr. Chillingsworth in a old graveyard somewhere on the back road between Windsor and Avonport. I toyed with bringing this quilt along that sunny day but alas, her Mister had to go it alone. We were on a fabric & cheese bun run in the Jeep, because:

NO, SERGEANT-MAJOR SO & SO, I DO NOT OWN A CAR.