Latest project

This is a terrible picture, taken on my office floor, and the colors are a little off, but this is my latest piecing completion. It's a pattern from the Better Homes and Gardens Quilt Sampler, Fall/Winter 2008, and it's 42 inches square. It looks rather different that the magazine quilt, even though it's red/white/blue like theirs, because I used a floral in the outer border. I am pleased to note that this is 100% stash - nothing purchased. It also contains some of my 21 year old blue print!

Oh, and I incorporated a peeper! Since many of my quilts are done by a longarmer using a panto pattern, I had never added one of these small piping trims before. It's right there at the outer edge of the thin inner border. It's so small that you barely see it.

I hope my longarmer can quilt all-over stars, because that will perfectly finish this patriotic-colored wall quilt.

Keepsake Quilting bugs me

You know why Keepsake Quilting bugs me? I love their catalogs - they're a great quilter's wish book - but they don't list the designer and manufacturer of the fabric lines, and may even change the name of the fabric groups in their "medley" collections.

That's just tacky. Give the designers their due. And identify the fabric line by using its' real name, not the one Keepsake makes up.

I want to know who makes the fabric. I prefer some manufacturers' products over others. The weave is tighter, the hand is better, it sews and launders better. You know that even among premium quilters' cottons there are differences. One of the reasons I buy Moda's collections again and again, for example, apart from the beauty of the designers' creations, is that their fabrics are dependable quality and a dream to work with.

Case in point: I was looking through the latest catalog and came upon something they called "Tranquil Garden". Blues and greens and tans - very, very pretty. But they only showed six swatches of fabric and I just knew that the collection contained more than that. I wanted to see all of them. But what was it really called, and who made it? No way to know.

It happened that as I was fab shop hopping today I came across the same goods at Quilt Expressions (btw, kudos to their site - good selection). It's actually "Serenity" and it's by Heather Mulder Peterson for Henry Glass Fabrics.

It's beautiful fabric and I just might buy some. But not from Keepsake Quilting.