A Midnight Caper of International Proportion

During the Peace by Piece Quilters Charity Bee earlier this month a volunteer (Jane) shared an idea with the other volunteers.  If they could raise the money she had a way to purchase quilt shop quality fabric for our charity quilts for about $3 per yard.  Now, that's a statement that will get the undivided attention of a room full of quilters!  Turns out that over the last few years Jane has purchased literally hundreds of yards of fabric at this price.  It's the going rate for fabric in Korea.  Korea!  So how does that work for those of us living in Arizona... USA???   Well, turns out Jane's daughter has lived in Korea with her family for several years and they were getting ready to make a visit to the good ol' USA.  AND they were willing to purchase and bring some of that $3 per yard fabric with them.  By the end of the bee it was amazing how much money the volunteers had handed over for fabric, $186.

Now Jane really enjoys fabric shopping and she had developed a Korea Fabric Shopping System with her daughter and it goes something like this...

The fabric shoppers (that would be Jane's daughter with her husband and sons) arrive at the 'Fabric Market' (as Jane has affectionately dubbed it).  Dongdaemun is a four story facility dedicated to sewers of all kinds.  There are fabric shops for every need from 100% cotton to all kinds of garment and decorator fabrics. There are shops that just carry threads, buttons, zippers or any other need that should arise.

If the family drives a car to the Fabric Market you would have to use a the Car Elevator to get in the parking garage.  You drive your car in an elevator and up it goes to a floor where parking spots are available.  You get out of the parking garage the same way when your shopping trip is over.  Our family, however, chose to take public transportation.

The subway will get them there in no time.

So the daughter finds the fabrics she thinks we'll like.  Son-in-law takes a picture of it with his cell phone and send it to Jane.  Jane texts back with a YAY or NAY.  If it's a YAY piece of fabric she also let's him know how much she wants.

Just to clarify this shopping adventure took place at about midnight USA time.  Korea is around 16 hours ahead of us.  It took us about two hours to pick 50 t0 60 yards of YAY fabric!

While daughter is finding all the cute fabric and son-in-law is taking pictures and texting, the staff of the Happy Quilter fabric shop are cutting our YAY fabrics.  Check out the rolls and piles of fabric behind them!

The first shopping trip netted 120 yards of fabric.  The cost... was 420,000 Won (translated that's $370).  I did say first trip didn't I?  The second trip netted about 60 yards ( about $180).  Most of that yardage from these two shopping trips will be coming to Peace by Piece Quilters.  Jane couldn't resist owning some of it so that will live in her stash.

This is the HAPPY staff of the Happy Quilter shop.  They loved all the money our shopping team left with them.  Check it out... Happy Quilter Mom still has the calculator in her hand.  It doesn't look like they could get another roll of fabric in their store but I bet they could get a few of those stacks a little higher.

So this is where the job of the sons (and a friend) comes in to play.  They get to help carry some of those 120 yards of fabric through the subway to get back home.

They are going to have to hold onto those bags really tight.  All that fabric has a long trip and a BIG job ahead of it.

 

 



They will see lots of vendors in the subway selling their wares but the boys will stay focused on those precious bags of fabric.

Danny is still hanging unto his bag while waiting for the subway train.

And big brother DJ is worn out from all that shopping and carrying his bag.

The family has finally made it onto the subway for the trip back home but there is not a seat to be found.  They will be home with their cargo soon.  But that wasn't the end of their adventure.  Mom, DJ and Danny have personally delivered those 180 yards of fabric to Jane's house here in the USA.

The final player in this Midnight Caper is Jane's husband, Sam.  Jane shared with him the difference in the amount of money those Peace by Piece Quilters volunteers donated ($186) and the amount of money all those yards of fabric cost ($556).  Being the awesome man he is, he offered to pay the difference.  That's a lot a dollars!

I'll let you know when all the YAY fabric makes it to the Peace by Piece Quilters closet.



 

Fabric Covered Box

This is my latest creation.  Some gals I sew with saw some fabric covered boxes at an art show and decided we needed to make some for ourselves.  We started with 8 inches round by 4 inches deep boxes made from some sort of cardboard material.  They are inexpensive and sold at most craft type stores.  The boxes my friends saw had a Crazy Quilt block design on the top and they liked it so well decided to make theirs using the same pattern.  I'm not a Crazy Quilt kinda gal so I made my top design using a foundation pieced pineapple block.  I padded the top with 5 layers of batting.  I used fabric scraps from my stash (wooooohoooo.  Love using scraps!)

Here's a view inside the box.  I like the inside of things (especially purses) to be a light color.  My eyes find things much easier on a light surface.  BUT since I was using scraps I did not have any pieces of the lightest fabric to cover the bottom of the box so.... that's why I pieced a 4-patch for the center, then surrounded it with the silver to make it big enough to cover the bottom.  Improvising, isn't that how we sometimes end up with our best designs.

I had never covered a box with fabric before so didn't have a clue where to start.  The worst part about this project is the lid doesn't fit!  It was a tight fit BEFORE I covered it which is the reason I chose this slippery thin fabric.  This was a FUN project but don't see myself ever doing another one.

Remembering

Hope your weekend allows you time to visit your mind and heart to think upon the ultimate sacrifices made by those in service to our country.  Just one day out of the year to honor our loved ones, our ancestors, our friends who died in conflicts and wars -- not to honor war, but those that died in those conflicts and wars.  Remember those that have given the ultimate sacrifice for this country and your way of life. 

Who Is That Woman Behind Those Foster Grants?

Remember that Foster Grant sunglass commercial from, oh I don't know, 4 DECADES AGO?  Guess the line Who Is That Woman Behind Those Foster Grants? really shows my age but then I doubt any YOUNG people are reading my blog.  So it's OKAY cuz ALL my readers can relate to it.  :o)
This is a snapshot of my world today.  When I saw it, it cracked me up so I grabbed my camera so I could share it with you.  This dedicated quilter forgot to put her reading glasses in the sewing kit but wasn't about to let that stop her from quilting.  So she grabbed her bifocal sunglasses and started stitchin'.

Hand Embroidery Workshop

Yesterday I attended a meeting of the Phoenix Modern Quilt Guild.  They are a relatively new guild having formed in 2010.  But it seems this year it is growing in leaps and bounds, there were 5 new people at this months meeting.  This was the second meeting for me.  The meeting was held at Scrapbooks ETC in Mesa and there were enough attendees to fill their large classroom.  The meeting mostly consisted of a hand embroidery workshop.  Our instructor, Danny Heyen, shared lots of embroidery stitches with us.  The picture above is a sample of the Lazy Daisy stitch with a couple of French Knots in the center of the flower.  Back in the day... like 40 years ago, I did a lot of hand embroidery but haven't done much since.  It was a nice refresher course and I'm inspired to find ways to embellish some of my work with floss and needle.

Powerball Winner?

Yesterday as my hubby was coming home from work he stopped and bought three quick picks for the POWERBALL.  This is not NORMAL behavior for him, playing POWERBALL.  He does all his gambling in Vegas.  But with the jackpot SO high I guess he couldn't resist. 

He also stopped and picked up take out for dinner (I know... he's a keeper).  So we eat our dinner which included fortune cookies, those are FUN little things.  When I opened my fortune cookie and saw this I really was left speachless!

I'll let ya know if these two little pieces of paper change my life.  :o)

Well, the POWERBALL ticket was NOT a winner, guess I'll have to find something else to Be a Winner at.  Someone in Florida won the Jackpot of $590,000,000 (that's a LOT of $'s).  There were two $1,000,000 winners in Arizona and according to the news guy one of those tickets was purchased only seven miles from my house.  Unfortunately those seven miles are in the opposite direction of where my hubby was traveling from... BUT if he had known where that winning ticket was going to be sold I know he would have driven out of his way to purchase it.  :o)

Pat's Scraps

This table runner just landed in the DONE pile.  :o)  

You know, every quilt has a story and this one is no exception.

Once upon a time... a quilter was looking for a way to be entertained by getting out of the house AND hanging out with other quilters.  So she signed up to participate in a monthly gathering of quilters called Scraps R Us.  This gathering always happened at a local quilt shop called, 3 Dudes Quilting.  The quilter thought this was a perfect group to join because they would show her ways to use up some of her stash allowing her to then go SHOPPING for NEW fabric.  Makes sense, right?  She went to her first gathering with these quilters and was given a quilt block pattern and told to make 80 six inch blocks using the pattern and her scraps.  She was supposed to sew the 80 blocks together into a quilt top and bring the top to the next months gathering for Show N' Tell.  Now, this six inch block used 10 pieces of fabric all cut 2x3.5"  As quilter started to work on her assignment she soon realized that was a lot of cutting and sewing but really didn't use much fabric from her stash, thus slowing down her ability to go SHOPPING!  So she devised a plan to use MORE fabric in less time by making the pieces BIGGER.  But she really didn’t trust her math skills so needed to test her theory by making a test block. That nice Scraps R Us teacher was in the process of moving into a smaller home and had given the quilter a bucket of scraps she no longer wanted and those scraps would be perfect for a test block!  As quilter rummaged through that bucket for a few good pieces of fabric she also ran across a couple of courthouse steps block… hmmm.  Then quilter noticed, 'there’s more fabric in the tub those blocks were made from… hmmm.  They would go with the test block I’m gunna make… hmmm.  I’ll just sew them together with my test block in the middle and make a small table topper… hmmm.  This is kinda small with only 3 blocks but if I made two more test blocks and sewed them on the ends it would be long enough for the dining room table… hmmm.  This looks pretty long and skinny maybe it would look better on the table if it had a border… hmmm.  There is a bunch of little strips of this fabric in that bucket teacher gave me I could just make a piano keys border with those… hmmm. This border doesn’t fit the center strip of blocks and there isn’t enough fabric left to make it bigger. Darn…  All this work and I can’t finish it…hmmm.  Unless…  I go SHOPPING!  I would only need to buy one fat quarter.' 

Quilter didn't use up ANY of her fabric but still found a way to go SHOPPING for fabric.  AND she now has a red, white and blue tablerunner that will work perfectly for the upcoming Memorial Day holiday.