We all like to see what gems our friends pick up at the quilt shows so I thought I'd share my purchases. I'll start with the free stuff since we all like the freebies!
HandiQuilter gives out bags every year. They are a good size and I have several, but I can always use another one! This year another company was giving out these nice water bottles. The bottom screws off so you can put fruit in there and have fruit-infused water. I thought that was pretty cool!
And I always get some fabric, but I don't usually go crazy there.
I just got some more of the fabric strips from Cherrywood. I love Cherrywood fabric and it's fun to have these little strips to play with! I also always go to SewBatik because I love the owners and their fabric. This year I picked up a selection of blue 1/2 yard cuts. There were some dark blue low-contrast quilts in the quilt exhibits that I found fascinating so I'll probably try that myself sometime.
I also picked up some general stuff from Bohin:
I got a bunch of embroidery needles in different sizes because I use them a lot for both embroidery and for burying my threads when I quilt. Bohin makes great needles so I stocked up! I also decided to get some pins. Some of you will cringe, but I'm still using pins that I bought in the 80's when I was still in college. I love those pins, but at some point you have to move on. Hopefully, I'll love these just as well (although I'll probably keep using my old pins, too). The pink ceramic pencil was just an impulse buy because I already have pink ceramic pencils at home, but I don't have one where the pencil itself is pink so I know what color of lead it holds. I don't need it, but what the heck!
I also bought some fun toys for my sewing machine:
Bernina accessories are pretty expensive (but worth it because they are high quality) so it was great to see the Bernina booth selling everything at 25% off. I got a couple of big bags of bobbins because I like to switch thread colors a lot and often store filled bobbins with the spools of thread. So it was nice to see these larger bags of bobbins that cost a little less than the ones that they have at my local Bernina shop, and then to get the25% off the top of that was a bonus. I also got the thread couching inserts for the Bernina 72 foot. I had just heard about these a couple of weeks before the show and really wanted to get some to try out. There are 3 different inserts for different sizes of yarn. I also have the Bernina free-motion couching foot, but that foot has a single size hole. When free-motion couching, you have the best results if the yarn you use just barely fits in the hole in the foot. Any extra space is a place where the needle can miss the yarn leaving a loose spot. Having the 3 hole sizes should be a big help. Of course, what would really be nice would be for Bernina to modify the free-motion couching foot so that you can use inserts with different diameters because that foot is designed really well for the sit-down machines, but they don't have that so I have to make do with what they do offer. Finally, while at the show, I found out that Bernina also had a new yellow bobbin case with a higher tension, useful when free-motion quilting. This bobbin case is the same as the regular black bobbin case, so I could just adjust the tension on my original case. But it's a bit of a pain to adjust the tension in the bobbin case so it's nice to have one already set at the higher tension and easily differentiated from the regular bobbin by the color. I'm very happy with these purchases!
I also went a little crazy at a couple of booths that specialize in purses and bags:
I don't know when I'll have time to make all of these bags, but I also get joy just looking at the patterns! But I love to make bags so hopefully you'll be seeing a couple of these in the next year. And at one of the booths they had some cool printed cork that I had to splurge on:
They had some cool bags made wholy or in part with the patterned cork and I can't wait to try it out for myself!
On the international front, I found this wooden stamp that I thought was pretty cool:
I'm not sure what I'll do with this, but it should be fun to play with. And it will look good on a knick-knack shelf. And I found these pieces at an African booth:
I thought my niece, who studies African dance, would like the bigger piece. I bought the smaller piece because these are kind of thick. The lady said that some people have finished them with quilting, but I wanted a little piece to test on so I don't ruin the big piece if quilting leaves holes in the finish on the piece. If my playing around with the small piece doesn't ruin it, then I'll probably make a knitting project bag out of that one.
That's my entire haul. I'm pretty pleased with everything and look forward to some playing after the holidays!
Nancy
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