A Cold Winter Coming?

Here's the Mountain Ash outside our house. I have never seen it so full of berries! The branches are actually bent under the weight. Traditional wisdom would say that this is a sign of a long, cold winter coming. What do you think?

Here in the Northeast we had a couple of hot weeks in early July, but late July and August so far have been unusually cool. Personally, I've loved it! But I do have a threshold for how much snow is too much snow, so I have some concerns, too, lol.

At least there is a good meal here for all the migrating robins and other birds, once they start to travel. Anyway, a stitching post is up next!

More Shopping

I have been spreading the wealth all over recently -- a few fat quarters from here, a few fat quarters from there... every shop has its own speciality. Early last week I was in Newmarket at The Quilt Store to fill in the rest of my fabric palette for BFF, which I'll show soon. Then on Friday I went up to Quilter's Cupboard in Uxbridge because I needed some very light traditional-style blues for my Hourglass quilt. Here they are already washed and cut:

I did not want to buy fabric for the Hourglass quilt, but I ran out of lights before I used up all the darks. Plus, the whole thing had so much gold and brown that it was starting to feel syrupy, so I thought the light blue would perk it up. It looks nice with this old dusty pink floral I had:

The vast majority of the fabrics in this quilt are busy, high contrast fabrics, and I am starting to realize that these low contrast lights are going to end up being very important in the final assembly. Here's a variety of lights with the same dusty pink floral:

Isn't it interesting how the two, almost solid, blue fabrics stand out? Even though the middle one on the bottom is almost white:

It will be interesting to see how it all comes out in the end. Despite my best efforts to predict, I think it will still be a surprise! This batch brings the Hourglass Ticker up to 353, so I'm on a roll. :)

A Few Purples

I know there are many quilters who never met a purple fabric they didn't like, but somehow when I am at the store I never come home with anything purple. It is like a blind spot! The final straw was this week, when I was searching my embroidery floss stash for purple thread, and there were only two in the whole box! I want to use some purples in Best Friends Forever, so today I hit the store. My main purpose was just to buy floss, but of course I came home with fabric too:

This is all from Art of Fabric in Pickering, Ontario. Fortunately the owner is a big fan of purple!

I think these will be perfect. Now that they've had their "beauty shot," it's time to throw them in the wash!