Flour Sack Fun

A large, heavy woven cloth flour sack that exclaimed Ben's Top Patent Enriched appeared a long, long time ago on the Facebook page for The Reclaimed Cottage in Brookfield, NS. You know I had to have it with Not-So-Little PurpleBoots being a "Ben" and all. Without even seeing it I sent my cousin in to grab it one day on her way to work in Truro fearing I would miss out on it if I waited to find the time to go get it myself; Brookfield is a bit of a hike from here. If memory serves, I think I paid 35 bucks for it.

Once at home close inspection revealed a good sized tear in the back, but it was in decent shape otherwise...it had some minimal staining, some ancient crusted flour was still present on the inside but it was definitely a score in the "vintage find department" as far as I was concerned. With no real purpose in mind though, it was laundered and joined the big pile of "stuff-I'll-find-a-use-for-someday" in the closet of doom.

Long before the flour sack came home to roost I had purchased a couple 20" down filled pillow inserts at IKEA on a road trip to Ontario in 2013. These got stuffed in the cupboard that holds (some of) my stash in the sewing room. Pillows never make the top of my priority list despite Sister PurpleBoots constant attempts to encourage me. She LOVES cushions.

Clearly the stars aligned today and these 3 objects of good intent became a midday project.

The flour sack required some imaginative repairs. There were a few holes that I "darned" with a fancy honeycomb stitch on my Pfaff and the long tear got stabilized with a patch on the underside and a couple rounds of stitching, both straight and of the darning variety. Those weak spots aren't going anywhere now! Because I liked the look of the soft tattered fibers surrounding the tear I've left them there...my pillows, my preference.

I cut the big text block out first (19" squares were the sacks limit), which left the small text at the bottom of the bag too short, so I just tacked on some off the back to make it big enough. I inserted the zippers with plackets that hide them...so simple to do but look amazingly complicated, I know. One of the zipper plackets even showcases the original top hem of the bag...I just couldn't bear to cut off that beatiful heavy stitching.

How flippin' adorable are these? I am in love...and guess what? I don't even like throw pillows! (surprise, surprise.)

All this fun for a couple hours work AND I am happy to have reclaimed some space in that tall cupboard. The Stashpocalypse isn't dead. Those 2 pillow forms left quite a dent. Kinda makes up for all that shopping I've done, doesn't it?

Kinda?

Maybe?

The Stashpocal-Wah? Part 2: The Full Disclosure

Ok. Ok.
There's more.

Yesterdays admission wasn't the whole story. Apparently "walkers" are also good at conveniently forgetting the whole truth...the fever clearly attacks the section of the brain that controls memory function.

All that new fabric had to go somewhere. If you remember back in January when the Stashpocalypse came upon us I had toppling towers of fat quarters. Those already precarious towers were in no way able to bear the weight of all the new acquisitions. A strategy would be necessary to contain the carnage.

(Oh. Wait. I'm getting ahead of my self...the sound of the woodpecker relentlessly drilling into the aluminum eaves trough is proving to be rather distracting.
Stupid bird. Stupid ADHD.)

Earlier this week I received a text from my good pal and foraging expert "Timbit" asking me if I knew anyone who might want to buy "this too cool to toss old chopping block table"?

Um...of course I knew someone. Me!! So it came to live in my sewing corner. I am head over heels in love with this 30" × 72", super solid 200lb vintage behemoth but it required a full on shake up of the sewing corner to make it fit. I had absolutely no plans of rearranging things down there but when opportunity strikes a walker walks.

Scratch head. Shuffle. Sort. Stack. Scratch head. Repeat.
(*OmiDog...the dust...cough...who lives here? These people are slobs. And when is the maid coming back?) Suddenly I found myself with a bookcase and a cupboard that had no place to live.

End result?

And it was during the stacking that I found this...

4 more hunks of cloth that had attached themselves to me in Mahone Bay a couple weeks back that were cleverly hiding in the mass grave of textile goodness already forgotten. Good thing that table made its way into this house! Without it I might never have unearthed that fabric and Not-So-Little PurpleBoots would never have gotten those deer pillowcases...which in turn would have meant he'd have had nothing on which to shed the tears he'll cry when he realizes he's doomed to a future of dead end jobs and dumpster diving without a college education.

What can I say?
Walkers gonna walk.

The Stashpocal-Wah?

Hello.

I bring you greetings on Day 113 of The Stashpocalypse...or whatever the hellish fever might be called that has befallen me over the last month.

Friends, I have been bitten; my immunity compromised and weakened, perhaps by grief. I have become a walker. This strange fever lures me from the safety of my cozy sewing nook into the outside world where fabric lies waiting for my touch. The outside calls to me...the fabric begs to assume residence in my cupboards. Resistance has proven futile. Broken are the blinders, the shackles, and the sheer determination that once kept me from the "Badlands".

I am not in control. My credit cards bear the scars, the carnage has mounted to a point where I can no longer hide it from my loved ones. It is possible that Mr. PurpleBoots may flee this marital union and Not-So-Little PurpleBoots may have to eat Kraft Dinner and forego any hope of future post secondary education.

It is in the spirit of honesty, admission, reconciliation and guilt that I share with you the following *very graphic photos* of the textiles that have made their way into my home over the last 3 weeks...

May Dog have mercy upon my walking quilters soul.

Checking In...

Folks, February has arrived. That means I have survived a whole month of The Stashpocalypse; so far so good.

I bravely ventured into a fabric shop on 5 occasions in January:

 1. I popped in to Patch in Halifax to pick up fabric that was being supplied for the class sample. I was focused on the mission at hand and managed to get out with just a small bundle at no cost to me! 

2. A few days later I literally ran in to Patch and practically threw the finished Sampler at Chris...blinders on, parked illegally in a snowbank and late for boxing class. How easy it might have been to skip class and poke around instead...

3. The dreaded behemoth that is Fabricville; definitely not my go-to-cotton-patch...but hey, I've been known to leave behind a little credit card carnage there on occasion. I (brace yourself) took on a commission for a giant t-shirt quilt and needed stabilizer for the jersey shirts. 

4. Fabricville again. More stabilizer. Have I ever mentioned that I HATE t-shirt quilts? But money is money and this stash slayer is broke. 

5. The Robot requested a giant cone of white thread so I popped in to Sew With Vision for a visit. Always nice to catch up with Bonnie and see what they're working on in there...and she's got great prices on Signature quilting thread and offers a discount to guild members.

No poking around, no fabric petting, no Visa charges...just get in and get out. 

Took. Everything. I. Had.
But, mission(s) accomplished. 

Now, just 11 more months to go.

It helps that The Enabler left behind a stack of Tula Pinks Eden in purple. We're going to surprise each other by creating a flimsy for the other with the line. She's got the same stack for me in the pink colourway. She picked up the fabric when It's Sew Time had their open house Christmas sale, so I'll be quilting both of them.

What else is new?

Well, my first Bloggaversary slipped by quietly on the 28th of January. In the words of my favourite author, "It came without ribbons! It came without tags! It came without packages, boxes or bags!" I had totally meant to do something to mark the grand occasion, but turns out I'm often less like the Grinch and more like Pooh...even when I try to remember, I forget. Oh bother. It's hard to believe a whole year of rambling at you fine people has passed. Time flies! 

We had a little sew-in here all weekend...sewed our hearts out, ate our faces off...you know how it goes. Saturday The Robot and I quilted The Enablers kinda-quick-curve-ruler project she calls Curvy Girl. It's beautiful...but do ya think I snapped a photo of it? No.  On Sunday, Adrienne was working on a new class sample for Patch and I busted out some stash fabrics and made one along with her. It's done, just needs binding. Super cute and fun project...it's got some Dr. Seuss fabric in it...I guess that's what got me going on the rhymes.

Star Bright quilt designed by Katie Blakesley at Sew Bike Quilt

I even pieced the back in true scrap-a-palooza style. I had a big chunk of the grey Robert Kaufman sheeting that I had cut off the bottom of the Gravity quilt, so I sewed that up with some other leftovers...and voila! After everyone had left for the day, The Robot & I quilted it up using the "Bubblicious" pattern downloaded by The Enabler some time ago from Intelligent Quilting. See, I even have digital demons to fight in this Stashpocalypse...sigh.

Once my wee star quilt was done I blew the dust off a long forgotten project: Pointy, by Elizabeth Hartman. How could I have neglected this rainbow of Kona and linen for so long? The kit came and served as a bit of retail therapy around the time I hit the deer on the Fatboy...I had even cut it all up and had some of the piecing done! Clearly my fire blazed off in a different direction and I took a different path. Gravity, maybe? Anyway, yesterday I stitched up one arrow and was satisfied enough with it to put the pieces in the Jack Daniels tin. Once that happens, it'll probably get done...or at least carted off to a sew in and worked on.

And that, my friends, is all for now.

One Mans Junk

Once upon a summers night in 2015 the Maritime Modern Quilt Guild held their first yardsale. (You can read all about it here.) The peeps cleaned and gutted their scrap bins, purged their stashes and drug it all out to the meeting place and set up shop. What a fun evening...we hooted, hollered, laughed and emptied our piggy banks into the hands of the sellers. I lugged home 17$ worth of random textile goodness from Adrienne over at Chezzetcook Modern Quilts.

There were fat quarters, half meters, triangles, and scraps of every size and shape imaginable in my bag o'loot.  Oh... and of every print imaginable too. I brought it home but never got around to amalgamating the fresh haul into my stash. And so it sat and sat in the bag.  One day I started playing with it...I sewed up long strips of those already cut triangles without purpose. Another day I started making slabs of scrappy bits without much though of arriving at any particular destination. Without any real plan for the goods I ended up putting that bag away and almost forgot about it. Almost. But a couple days ago, an idea came out of nowhere and blindsided me. A spark suddenly caught and a fire grew.

It grew.

And grew.

And now, it's going off on a little trip to grow some more.

I have always loved the idea of a round robin quilt building project and in the Stashpocalypse spirit of "using only what we have" (as per the manisfesto) fellow stash buster Anja, over at Anja Quilts, has agreed to take a shot at the pile of "junk" and add something to it. I will bring her all the bits and chunks in the pile along with the center medallion (which now measures 32.5" × 42") and set her loose with only one rule:

She can ONLY use the junk in the bag. As now proclaimed in cloth 100% of the fabric in this flimsy has to come out of that original 17$ investment. Nothing can be added to the pile unless it once belonged to Adrienne. (Perhaps it's worth noting that now might be a good time to break into her sewing room to swipe a little more currency in the low volume department? It took every square inch in the bag to piece the background around all those letters, there's not one bit left in that bag and only slivers in my trash can.)

Perhaps you, dear reader, might like a turn playing in the heap of cloth? Let me know. When Anja is done adding her two cents worth the flimsy is going to need to go somewhere with a fresh set of eyes to build on some more patchwork.

Seriously. This is going to be a blast!