Beth Ferrier’s Blog

My sister Stephanie is sewing for charity. She’s raising money for breast cancer research, making adorable fabric drink coasters. Check out her Etsy shop, here.

Last fall I realized that I almost never chose fabric from my main fat quarter shelf any more. Into a box they went, over four hundred fat quarters. I pawned them off on two of my sisters, Stephanie and Pam and my mom. It was so fun watching them go through the box, trying to be polite on the first pass, finally devouring the lot.

Working only with the fat quarters, Steph was sewing and selling single coasters. I thought she might be able to collect bigger donations if she could put together sets of coasters.  (Sorry, the business/marketing part of my brain kicked in, sometimes I can’t help it.)

So, off went two big boxes, bolt ends left over from kits, batting samples, more fat quarters. Steph thinks I’m being generous, but I’m not, really. She’s doing me a huge favor by taking the stuff off my hands! What good is having a stash if it’s just taking up space? There are so many charities that can put our stash mistakes to good use. Even if we don’t have the time or the interest to sew for charity we can still be helpful by making donations.

For more information on Stephanie’s project (or to make a donation, which would be lovely), go to One of Eight or Steph’s personal page.

Thank you all for your thoughtful comments on the loose sheets/booklet issue. Looks like the booklet wins hands down, so we’re going to give it a try. My goal has always been to write directions that are more than simple recipes. Being pathologically curious, I am always interested in the why and how of everything. It’s always a bit of a struggle for me to edit the pattern down to the right number of pages for the project. I just want to tell everything I know (and thankfully that’s more than what can be contained in one pattern).

Our winner is Elizabeth Sample! To determine the winner I decided to use my age. The fabric line is named for my mom and it was just about 51 years ago that she became my mom. It was obviously meant to be, my given name is Elizabeth. My mom thinks I should be using my grown-up name on my books. I only heard it when I was in trouble.

The La-ti-dah Do Re Mi pattern is ready to go. We’re even offering kits, using my fabric line. They can be ordered from my web page. Click here.

It promises to be a beautiful day. Just as soon as I finish this post I’m going to go play in the dirt. The landscaping around the pond is nearly done. I’ll post pictures this week.

Thanks again for all the comments on the pattern format. It’s nice to know that I’m not talking to myself. (I already know what I’m going to say.)

Have I mentioned recently how much I love quilts? They make me happy. Every step in the process, they give me joy.

Quilts make me happy when they are just a pile of fabric, waiting to be born.

They make me happy when they are a stack of blocks, waiting to be joined.

Lots and lots of applique, edges to be turned, flowers to stitch together, vines to grow, oh, how that makes me happy too.

Okay, so basting doesn’t make me happy, except when it’s done, and then I love it.

Quilting, stitch by stitch, feels as creative to me as developing the original design. Choosing the quilting patterns and seeing how they play out is exciting to me.

Washing the quilt, hanging  it out on the line to dry, knowing that it will have that smell that only comes when dried in the sunshine, that makes me happy too. If I ever win a million jillion dollars I will have people who make sure I have a quilt and crisp sheets, fresh from the clothesline, on my bed every night.

This quilt has been on my bed for several years. I made it from my collection of fabrics from the Smithsonian, some of the very first reproduction fabrics to be made available to quilters. It makes me happy to remember collecting the fabrics (mostly fat quarters, of course), how I thought they were too precious to cut and how glad I am that I finally did.

The block of the month project for this year is finally begun! After considering several different color schemes (and talking myself out of actually sewing more than one!), I finally settled on a plan.

But, of course, the plan involved a trip to the local quilt shop. How can it be that I have dozens of yards of fabric (that’s my story and I’m sticking with it), but not the right fabric for this quilt?

It would have to be because I’m a big fan of fat quarters. The problem with buying yardage is figuring how to use it. I mean, say I buy two yards of a terrific print. Some where along the way I decide that I need to whack a quarter yard off of that for an accent in a quilt. Or, more likely, the fabric turns out to have the perfect motif for the center of a flower and I make swiss cheese out of a third of a yard of it. That’s all well and good until I discover the most perfect project for those two yards. In other words, yardage is a burden.

If I only buy a fat quarter I can’t get too emotionally involved. A fat quarter is not enough fabric to build an entire quilt around. It’s entirely likely that I will use it up before the project is completed. So, I’ll use another fat quarter of a fabric that’s sort of like the one I used up, but not exactly like it. And that’s what makes for a very exciting quilt.

But then again, when it’s time for yardage then I’m stuck with a trip to the local quilt shop. Oh, the sacrifices we make for our quilts! I bought the yardage that I need for the new quilt, and enough extra so that when I’m done I’ll have another fat quarter for my collection.