Design Wall and Stash Update

For Design Wall Monday over at Patchwork Times, I'm doing that thing I do when I really have made virtually NO progress on any quilt for 2 weeks... I'm letting my Mother-in-law's quilts take center stage.  I pinned a few of them for her last week.

This one is just charming.  It looks like that Granny Square pattern that was wildly popular, but not quite.

And this one is incredible.  It has Drunkard's Path units and 4-patches, and I know my photo is not so great, but she managed to get a really great color progression, without ever having a design wall or large bed to lay it out.  In fact, she says she doesn't even remember much about working on it.  I aspire someday to have enough quilting time so that my quilts all run together in my mind.  I am definitely not there yet.  Still working on that same  Country Stars project that's been up all summer.

The reason I've been neglecting all sewing projects is currently the plum tree.  See this post for a roundup of recipes to make with plums when your plum tree is killing itself with over-productivity.

Daniel checking the sugar and alcohol content of his plum wine.

He also revived the long-neglected sourdough starter and mixed up a batch of bread dough.  Fermentation abounds in our kitchen.

My Saturday's canning: plum-orange jam and plum chutney, along with a gallon bag of dehydrated plums (2 dehydrator loads so far).  I'll be making more jam and maybe a plum cake today.

Stash Report:

Bless me, quilt ladies, for I have definitely fallen off the "stash no fabric" wagon this week.  And I was doing so well, too!  Here's the story of how it happened: There was an estate sale that Steve and I swung by early Friday morning on our way to Treat Vancouver to order cupcakes for Quarta's birthday party: but people were lined up waiting and they weren't opening the doors for a few more minutes, so I said, "Let's just skip this one... they never have anything I like at estate sales around here, like quilting fabric."  So we did.  Then Michelle came on Saturday morning to get some plums, and she said, "There's an estate sale you should really check out... they have lots of quilting fabric!"  And of course it was the same one.  So I forgot about it again until I was driving the kids to the library Saturday afternoon and then stopped.  Quilting fabric still filled the shelves of the sewing room, and was $2 a yard.  I picked out reds first, because I've used a lot of reds in the last few years, and then some neutrals and a navy.  It all came to 20.5 yards.

I really like that red paisley.  I could have bought an awful lot more fabric if I didn't have natural Scottishness working for me, and the knowledge that the kids would not wait forever.  Then a guy was sitting behind me where I was looking over my fabric and he asked, "how much do you think that bin of scraps is worth?"  I assumed he was the husband of one of the other shoppers at first and I hedged with, "It depends on what you wanted to do with it and what kind of quilts you like to make, and how many scraps you already had."  Or something like that.  Then he said, "No, how much is it worth to YOU? Including the bin?" and I realized he wanted me to name my price for the whole big bin.  I said $5 and he put a strip of masking tape over the bin with $5 on it, and the lady working the sale carried it down for me and it ended up in my car.

There are an awful lot of scraps in there... many strips of solid colors, some novelty fabrics, about 4 or 5 half-cut quilt projects, some of them half-pieced.  Some prepared bindings, some leftover bits of binding, some dressmaking scraps and poly-cotton broadcloth, some scraps of batting.  But most of it is scrap-quilt quality and I will have fun sorting through it, eventually.  I gave some of the partly-pieced projects to Quarta to finish.

Enough 9-patches for at least a lap-quilt.  Quarta likes the purples and jewel-tones more than I do, so it will be fun for her.

But the upshot is that I am now in negative numbers for my stash report, and I will need to finish some projects to get out of this hole.  I'm not even going to count the scrap bin, just the actual yardage I purchased.  Fortunately I am soon to finish a top and use some backing I purchased, so maybe I will get back into the black next week.

But it was an epic estate sale!

Fabric:

Fabric used this week: 0 yards

Fabric used year to date: 41 yards
Added this week: 21 yards
Added year to date: 49 yards
Net used for 2013: -8 yards

Knitting yarn:

Yarn used this week: 0 yards
Yarn used year to date: 6550 yards.
Yarn added this week: 0 yards (I did ply my silk but haven't measured it yet)
Yarn added year to date: 5800 yards
Net used for 2013: 750 yards