Thrifty Thursday and a few tears

Lately some of my sewing time has been devoted to cutting coupons and searching for good deals.  Like everyone else this rough economy has touched a little closer to home then I would have liked.  I could give you a million things that haven't worked out as I had hoped and heap on the woe is me factor but instead I thought I would start sharing some of the little things I've been doing to try and spruce up our family budget.  I apologize now to my international readers because I know not all of the things I am going to share will be true to your part of the world but maybe it will give you an idea or two as well.  So the first tip I am going to share is about coupon forums.  Did you know just like we have this great quilting community there is a community of individuals out there that devote all of their free time to hunting down coupons and matching them to local sales flyers.  What I love about these sites is that while I don't personally have the time to do all of these matchups myself I can quickly pull up the page and see what hot deals are out there.  One of my favorite websites so far is www.hotcouponworld.com they have the matchups all done for you and there is a community wiki that everyone can update with deals that they find.  Go check them out but be warned that you might get sucked in.  I'll give you my feelings on this "extreme" couponing craze some other time because my opinions on that are almost as long as the debate on dumbed down quilting.

Sorry for the bad Iphone picture but I think you get the point.  It's there and it's ugly.

Now for the tears part of this post.  I finished my Freshcut Square Dance quilt and I can't wait to show you the pictures of the finished quilt but there were some tears shed over this one for sure.  As I was sewing down the binding I noticed this ugly little spot on the back of the quilt.  At first I thought I had gotten something on the quilt but upon further inspect I realized that it was a flaw in the fabric.  The fabric itself is not dyed.  It's like a blank spot (that's the best way I can describe it) luckily the fabric is an off white base and the print is as well so I'm hoping once I wash it that it won't be as noticeable.  The frustrating part is that there is a black circle around the spot.  This leads me to believe that someone in quality control caught the problem and marked it but the fabric was still bolted and sold.  It really bums me out because my mom (she bought this fabric for my birthday last year) got the fabric from a quality quilt store and paid full price for the fabric.  See I love Heather Bailey and her fabrics and like so many times I realized I loved the Freshcut line after it became hard to find.  My good friend L actually sent me fabric from Canada for the quilt top and then my mom purchased the backing fabric for me because I loved it so much.  I put a lot of time in to making the quilt and a lot of love is wrapped up in that quilt to thanks to the generosity of my friends and family.  So it makes me really sad to have all of that hard work done and get to the last step and realize there is a problem.  See there's not just one of these ugly spots on the quilt there are four.  It makes me really sad and admittedly after seeing the second spot I shed a few tears by the time I got to the fourth one I was really upset.  What can you do?  I guess it will just have to be this quilts beauty mark.

Anchors Away

How do you pick your fabrics?  That's something that has been running around in my mind all day.  I think most of my quilts to date have been in one of two categories.  They have either been super scrappy or have been made from one line of fabric.  Not a lot of mixing and matching going on in my world but I would like to try to outreach more in that direction.  A while back my mom surprised me with a quilt kit she picked up down in Florida.

I give my mom a lot of credit because most of this kit is made up of Neptune which my mom had no idea I had been secretly lamenting having come into quilting to late to have any of this great fabric.  You know it's one of those lines like Flea Market Fancy, everyone wants it but only a few people actually have any.  At lease it seems that way.  What my mom did know at the time was that I had been constantly chewing her ear off about Freshcuts by Heather Bailey.  I was having a hard time finding it and really wanted to make a quilt from the line because Heather is one of my favorite designers.  My mom recognized one of the prints as Freshcuts and snapped up the kit.  I was thrilled when she gave it to me.  Intimidated to no end by convinced that I wanted to make the quilt picture here.

Now that I'm ready to start thinking about making said quilt I've been wondering why in the world would the add Freshcuts to a primarily Neptune quilt?  The colors are the right shades.  The prints are the right sizes.  But flowers and turtles?  Flowers and anchors?  I think I am going to give credit to the store and say that they got it right in this case because when it's all stacked up it looks great.  But in my quilt I think I am going to try and hunt down a few elusive fat quarters of Neptune.  The pattern actually calls for 2 layer cakes and 9 fat quarters plus yardage for boarders, binding, and backing.  The shop included 9 fat quarters and 21 cuts that measure 12 inches by width of fabric.  I have no idea what I am going to do when it comes time to find boarder and backing fabric but in the mean time I'm looking forward to making this quilt this year.  Even if I am a little scared of it.  I'd love to hear your processes for selecting fabrics.  Let me know, how do you mix and match?  And if you have any leads on Neptune I'd love to hear those too.