Today I went to my first quilt show. I didn’t have a quilt entered; I’ve never even made a quilt that would come close to qualifying for the show, not even if I were allowed into the youth category. I just wandered around drooling and thinking, “Really? Fabric and thread? Humans can do that with fabric and thread?”
I’ll post pictures soon, but I’ve got to do some editing on the oodles of pictures that I took. Plus, many of the quilts came with touching or fun or interesting stories (or a combo of all three), so I want to spend some time looking at the show book for more quilt info. I want to be passing some stories along with the pictures and seeing if I can find some of the quilters on the interwebs to give them the mass kudos they should earn for their creations.
I added some supplies to my stash because Joann Fabrics is having its 70 year celebration, and even though I have a wish list that’s going to need to be taken to my local quilt shop for fulfillment, Joann was having some crazy good sales that were too good to pass up.
Those pictures are easier to post, so here we go.
Well, I’m all in. I’ve got to make a go of my quilting Etsy shop because that behemoth roll leaning against the fireplace is 25 yards of cotton batting. For less than $3.50 a yard, I figured it was a worthy investment, especially since it’s 90 inches wide, and most of my quilts finish at less than 45 inches, so I should be able to get two quilts per width of batting. Plus, as a bonus, it’s manufactured in the USA. Um…no big deal. I’ve just got to churn out 35 – 45 quilts to use this up, right?
I’ve been wanting to play with flannel in a quilt, so today’s sale prices were too much for me to resist. Anything that hearkens to typewriter keys makes me a little weak in the knees, so I’m loving this print that I found. Gray, teal and lime is a color scheme that makes me drool a bit too. I’m going to have to hide this stuff to make sure I finish off my quilt along quilts before I cut into it.
And, here’s a close up of the other fabric. I’ve heard that flannel has a nasty reputation for stretching and being a bit difficult, so I picked a simple pattern (at least, it looks simple). The pattern I chose calls for 13 fat eighths of fabric to go with the main fabric of the quilt, so I picked an array of blues and greens with a little sprinkling of gray. I made the decision to grab the turtle fabric when I realized that fat eighths meant that I was still going to have half of all those fabrics left. Probably if they were quilting cotton, I would have just filtered the leftovers into my stash, but since I don’t have flannel floating around, I figured I’d might as well enact a plan for using up all the flannel that I was buying.
Those are probably quilter’s famous last words.
At any rate, I hope I like working with flannel because I’ve got enough on my hands to make two quilts now. If anyone has any good tips for working with flannel, I’m all ears. I’m particularly curious to hear what you use for batting. Do you use cotton (because I’ve got plenty)? Or, do you prefer something else, maybe even a third piece of flannel…
<a 
One English Teacher 
I have never tried flannel so am interested to see how you go. I know Kristy at http://www.quietplay.blogspot.com has made quite a few quilts recently with flannel on the back. I asked her and she said she doesn’t use batting with it.
Thanks for doing some flannel research for me!
Oh my!! You’ve taken advantage of Joann’s deals like I have!!
I came home with a big roll, just like yours, in the backseat of my car and my boyfriend was shockingly surprised at the jumbo roll of batting that I bought!
But hey, as a quilter, you will always use batting, so why not buy in bulk and save a bundle?! 🙂
It’s about shopping smart to save some money, and then spend that money you saved on MORE fabric! 😛
Have fun with trying flannel. I’ve actually started working on a baby blanket using flannel as the backing and so far, it hasn’t given me any trouble 🙂
more stretchy than cotton fabric, but not drastically.
Keep me posted on how you do! 🙂
Yeah, I like your thinking about how to spend the batting savings 🙂 I’m glad to hear that your flannel adventures are going ok so far. That gives me hope that I might not be stumbling into a big old mess.
Great minds think alike 🙂
And I hope I don’t jinx you or anything , but flannel is not hard to work with! 🙂
Can’t wait to see your finished piece!
Love that ‘type’ print! Very jealous of everyone’s bargains from Joann’s, wish we had it in the UK! 🙂
Thanks, Karen. Sorry that we’re all showing off our bargains over here. I feel your pain. There is a grocery store line called Trader Joe’s in the US, and I don’t have one anywhere nearby. It makes me jealous every time I see that someone got to shop there.
Yes i am not familiar with flannel but they make very snuggly warm quilts.
I’m hoping for warm and snuggly. I guess I’ll see when they are finished, but I’m hoping that if I leave out the batting, it will make the finished quilt small enough to fold into a diaper bag for an easily transportable play or snuggle quilt.
I’ve never pieced with flannel, but I use it for backing sometimes with cotton batting. It never seemed any more difficult than other fabric as a backing. I guess if you want a light, summer-y quilt, then probably no batting would be fine.
Either way, your flannel choices are beautiful, good luck!
Thanks, Libby. I was wondering about the combo of cotton fabric for piecing and flannel for the back on future projects, so I’m glad to hear from someone who’s had success with that combo. And, it’s helpful to know that the cotton batting and flannel backing didn’t cause any problems. I’ve tossed around the idea of doing one of the quilts with batting and one without, so I have a comparison point for the future.