Kaleidoscope Progress & Some Retail Therapy

Last weekend I made some progress on the Kaleidoscope Quilt. It came together rather quickly and is off to the long-armer now.

I wasn't scheduled to drop the quilt off to the long-arm quilter until this afternoon but ended up meeting her on Tuesday instead so I didn't get a change to photograph the unquilted completed quilt top . . . but it'll be back soon enough. Here it is on my design wall floor before I pieced the blocks together. It turned out fine for a quick project but if I were making this one for myself, I would have paid more attention to color placement so as to further emphasize the negative space and a more Kaleidoscope-y design.

This week after reading on the discussion boards on Flickr that Denyse Schmidt's new line of fabric for Joann's was out, I decided it was necessary to stalk both the store near my work and the store near my home. On Monday at lunch, nothing by work. On Tuesday night, nothing near my home—but there were 2 shelves cleared which told me they were probably on the Tuesday truck. I planned to go back there last night but I needed an escape from work during lunchtime yesterday so I booked it over to the store by my office again, truly not expecting much because they always get everything in late, and there it was! DS's new Daisy Mae in all her lovely glory!

This time, I did not buy every print. And I purchased those I wasn't totally in love with in moderation. Which was probably smart because there were plenty that I was in love with and might have gone a bit overboard on those . . . 

As it turns out, the quality is not quite as nice as Picnic and Fairgrounds. A few prints have that soft hand but most are stiff and have a semi-loose weave like the substrate on Sugar Creek. I was anticipating that I'd find a ton of slubs, white out on the selvedge, and yellow markings on the first cuts on the bolts and I was pleasantly surprised that those problems didn't seem to be happening with the bolts from this store. The 5 prints at the top of this stack were definitely the stiffest and the orange and black geometric squares in the middle of the stack had a few slubs and was a very, very loose weave. Otherwise, it's generally OK. I certainly wont' use this for a major keepsake quilt and probably won't intermingle it with too many higher quality fabrics . . . but it is definitely a fun, modern line with a retro vibe. Precisely why I love Denyse. 

This week I've also been working on some special little gifts for two very important women in my life . . . more on that soon. For now, I'm bound to secrecy.

Cheers, loves!