Trip to McKinney

With the exception of unpleasant road construction at the exit I needed to take to get where I was going (There always has been construction in McKinney; there always will be road construction in McKinney), it was a pretty good day. It was hot, but that was okay...a lot of the time I was inside airconditioned shops and I really only noticed the heat once I had acquired a few things and had to carry them around. (Running back to my car to leave them solved that problem).

Most of the money I spent was at the quilt shops. (Pictures will come later; I'll probably add them in here, but I have to take them and upload them). It's interesting how different different quilt shops are in terms of the fabric they have. I didn't see too many repeats from my local place, and not too much overlap between the two shops there.

One thing I had been wanting to do was to get some of the reprint of the "Flea Market Fancy" line. This was a line of prints that Denyse Schmidt designed...oh, they must have come out six or seven years ago. I used some of them in my Tumbler Quilt. Many quilters really liked them, and now they've reprinted them.

So I decided to get some fat quarters and make an all-Flea-Market-Fancy quilt. I even found a pattern, called "Post and Beam," which is a modification of the good old Log Cabin.



I think I like the Flea Market Fancy fabrics because of the colors...they are slightly odd colors, not really "true." I tend to like colors like that, where it takes more than one word to describe them. Also, in a way, they remind me a bit (or at least, some of the prints do) of the 1970s and some of the fabric my mom used to have then. So for me, it may be partly a sense of nostalgia that makes me like these fabrics.

The fabrics in the back there were bought for the "Raindrop" quilt (That's how I think of it, even if the "real" name is "Cloudy Skies"). And I'm going to use the leftover bits, along with a bunch of other turquoise/greenish/bluish-green fabrics to make a "Swimming Pool" quilt, from the Jane Brocket quilt book - this is another simple top, just 5 1/2" squares. But I really LIKE the simple geometric one-patch quilts that show off the fabrics or the colors you are using - so I keep making them.

I also bought a small piece of a genuinely 'vintage' (it seems odd to call stuff close to me in age "vintage," but whatever) fabric at Morningstar Treasures. It's a  Holly Hobby print, by Springs Mills. I'm pretty sure this is the same company that made the Holly Hobby fabric that I had bedroom curtains out of for YEARS when I was a child - that design was different (larger and pink and green rather than yellow), but the feeling was much the same. Not sure what I'll use it for but probably I will put it in a quilt somewhere.

 

I bought a few more patterns....I have the fabric but sometimes need inspiration on how to use it.

The second quilt shop was even busier; by the time I got there the bus tour (there was a North Texas quilt bus tour making the rounds yesterday) had arrived and most of the folks on the bus were eating the lunch that Happiness is Quilting provided. The shop was packed and busy, but everyone was in a good mood and everyone was polite. (And there were a few men quilters, and a decent number of teen quilters, in with the middle-aged-and-older ladies that you expect).

I picked out some stuff but then decided to sit down in a chair and wait to let the bus trip people get all their yardage cut - both so I wouldn't have to wait in line so long but mainly so they could stay on their schedule. I had found a "special issue" of a magazine (a one-off not mailed to subscribers, even though I subscribe to the "parent" magazine) that I thought I wanted and so I was able to look through it and be sure I wanted it while I was waiting.

I did buy some other stuff in other stores...another one of those vacuum-seal canisters (so I can keep my peanut butter Cheerios from getting stale; even if you fold the bag down carefully they tend to get stale in our climate and then they taste bad). And some more of my favorite plum-chipotle grilling sauce.

And I found a copy of the Household Searchlight Cookbook from 1949. This is one that the Sterns refer to in "Square Meals" and the recipes they reprinted were good (the gingerbread recipe I use is from that book). And there are some interesting recipes in it - all from scratch, but mostly pretty simple. There are a couple of soups I want to try, and there are some different types of salads. (And there are a few recipes I'm not so sure about: banana-cranberry pie, anyone?) I love vintage cookbooks anyway. (This photo is the same edition as I have; I paid about half that for mine but it probably wasn't in as good condition as the one pictured there....a few of the pages have stains on them, probably from spills while the owner cooked).

I also bought some rosemary soap by this company.

And I added another cottage teapot to  my collection. I debated about buying it, not so much because of the price (it was $12, which is pretty cheap), but because I'm running out of room to store these...eventually I want to put up a wall shelf somewhere in my dining room to keep these on when I'm not displaying them on my mantel. But in the end, I decided I wanted it, partly because of the unusual "rose trellis" look on the front.



Really, the day included a lot of the simple things I consider great pleasures in life: nice soap, old cookbooks, quilting fabric....