SALE!!! SALE!!! SALE!!!

One of my local quilt shops, Craft Depot, has a sale on for the month of November.  It isn't my favourite quilt shops by a long way - that honour goes to Country Pickins at the Corner.  Usually I only go to Craft Depot when I can't get something at CP but a couple of times a year they have a sale that I can't resist coz they discount a whole heap of fabrics down to $5 a meter.  You rarely get patchwork fabric in Oz at that price.  Their normal fabric that sells at that price is seriously ugly or flawed.  The next cheapest fabric they have is usually $10 a meter so when it is $5 a meter I have to snap some up.  It wont be great fabric but it will be perfect for backings, soldier's laundry bags and bits and pieces for the Irish Charity Bazaar.  Last year I bought a whole bunch of fabric for $5 a meter that I used to make bags and bits and pieces for this year's bazaar.

Today I went looking for backings mostly and this is what I came home with.  I couldn't resist the puppies and decided that they would make a great kid's quilt  backing.  The rest are pretty versatile.

 I loved the red diamond fabric, the spots on white are the right colours to go with the blocks I am making for CP's block of the month so maybe a backing or part thereof.  The dark brown with hot pink spot and the pink and brown swirls just really appealed and I can think of a bunch of uses for the strip.

 More versatile backings

 And these are fabrics designed exclusively for JO-ANN Fabrics - then how did they end up here!  Anyhow they are nice colours and cute so maybe a quilt, maybe backings, maybe some bags for Ireland.

 I bought 2m of everything that had 2m on the bolt.  I am planning to return and focus specifically on buying some laundry bag fabrics as I want something on hand.  If I hear of a soldier in Afghanistan without a laundry bag I want to be able to make him one.  $5 a meter you can't go wrong so if I can get some more then that will save me a lot of money when making things for the charity bazaar!

Oh, and why don't I like Craft Depot - because they are really stingy and don't seem to value their custiomers at all.  Here I was buy 2 meters off 18 out of 19 bolts.  And they knew I was buying most of it for charity quilts.  When it came to the red and white stripe there was less than 2m and I watched the girl s-t-r-e-t-c-h the fabric out to make it 1.75 - why not just call it 1.7 and save some dignity!  Then the dark coloured stripe had 2.1m on the roll and I was asked if I wanted it all - I could have been a pain and said no just 2m but do you know what they would have done!  They would have cut that last 10cm off!  How ridiculous!  Like someone is going to buy 10cm!  Sadly Craft Depot is known for being NOT generous and it certaily doesn't encourage customer loyalty!

I can't remember if I showed you the quilt we are sending to the female soldier in Afghanistan so here it is.  This one I started earlier in the year as part of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  Each month I made a few flower blocks in the colour of the month and then when we had the yellow month I put the top together.  I had it sitting there with the backing for months - no rush to quilt it as I had no specific plans for it but I looked at it the other day and thought - why not send it to Afghanistan.  hope she likes it.

 Finally we did a bit of construction tonight.  After dinner, my handsome hubby, aided by Guitar Hero (pictured) and Fly Boy assembled all 40 of the flat boxes we will use this week to post to Afghanistan.  They assembled and I taped and Guitar Hero stacked them out of the way.  they are actually stacked on a hexagonal table in six stacks around the table with the bigger stack in the middle - all Guitar Hero's work and you have no idea how hard I had to work to get him to agree to a photo and then to smile!!

I did get some sewing in today.  First I joined strips but by Andrea into binding  and then I bound the two soldier's quilts that I have here.  Cynthia dropped in the three that she had done and Andra gave me hers the other day so there are 8 here now.  If the weather is nice and sunny tomorrow I have asked handsome hubby to help me take them all outside to try and get a good photo.  There is probably no point taking photos of all the quilts individually as they are all very similar but photos of a few will give you the idea!

Till next time....happy stitching!