It's time for a good old-fashioned Aussie road trip!
Sing along with me now!
With lots of sun, please!
A view or two and some skies of blue,
Sheep run out the back!
A quilt shop out the front!
And a dirt road somewhere!
A couple of weeks ago I went on a road trip to Leura with some friends, then down to Melbourne and the Armageddon media convention, and then down to Ballarat to visit some friends.
While I was there, I (naturally) visited fabric shops. It was a week full of purchases.
Starting with Friday!
Jenn from PennyPoppleton.com and I headed off to Material Obsession in Balmain, where we bought...things. Fabric-y things!
Like some Reece Scanell two-tone cotton!
No, I didn't buy all of that! Just five FQs.
And some backing on sale:
Then, a friend who works at a craft-y magazine in Sydney acquired for us a charm pack and a FQ set of Maywood's Return to Romance line in flannel! Jenn was kind enough to let me take the entire FQ set!
Friday afternoon, I headed up to the town of Leura, up in the Blue Mountains to stay with a bunch of friends at a self-contained guesthouse for a weekend of fun and writing. Well, fun, anyway. Not too much writing actually happened in the end!
While up there, I discovered Leura Quilt Shop...and ended up picking up a 12" ruler, and a lovely Japanese-style fabric panel: Golden Carp!
It will nicely match with the RK Imperial Collection #6 that I accidentally acquired while looking for more fabric for Mum's Impstar.
Then it was down to Melbourne to gift the Kaleidoscope quilt!
Unfortunately, I forgot to get a pic of the finished quilt - or the actress with her quilt. Damn stupid of me! :(
After Melbourne, I went to Ballarat to stay with a friend who moved down there a couple of years ago with her husband. Now they have two kids that are made of adorable (even when they're wailing and thumping). Of course, I can say that: they're not my kids!
But while I was down in Ballarat, how could I possibly pass up the chance to visit the Ballarat Quilt Shop?
The lady who runs Ballarat Quilt Shop turned out to be a Buffy fan! So while I browsed through fabric and notions on sale, my friend and the shop owner talked Buffy. :)
I love it when fannish geekery comes together!
And then what does Craft Depot have to do but have a sale! 20% off everything in-store! Resistance is futile! Your bank balance will be assimilated!
So on Monday, I bought a lot of Plume:
Some of that is the Reece Scanell two-tone cottons: they're pricey, but oh so nice-y! I usually get one or two each time I visit a shop that has them. And there will be quilt-age from them. But they looked so nice against the Plume fabric.
Also: Art Nouveau flowers:
Then, I purchased a pretty brown batik to join together the French Lace batiks I've been dithering over for the last couple of months: the colours and batiks are lovely, but I needed something to join the blocks together:
And now that we have it, Modern Basics quilt, here we come!
Finally, I bought a random azure batik fabric because I love batiks and there is no such thing as 'too much' batik - especilly in azure!
But wait, there's more!
And then on Thursday I went over to visit Killara Village Quilts, because they had Alexander Henry's 'Wonderland' print, which I've been seeking for a while!
Plus, some stash building.
So, that's my fabric purchases of the last couple of weeks and I think this is beginning to get out of hand.
As a result, I've set myself a budget for the end of the year. A set amount that I can spend on fabric and then NO MORE. There's got to be limits. And I need to focus on making quilts, not adding to the stash.
So there may be a Fabric Friday post or two later this year, but hopefully not too many!
I reckon that we can still do "Fabric Friday" but with our stash! And just put it together in interesting combinations! :D
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