More fabric?

I have not been keeping up with this blog, clearly, just as I haven't been keeping up with my quilting. I'm working this week on the pieced back to a quilt for Starman's niece, Lucy. I've finished the top, but I got it in my head to make a top using a technique I saw on TV called "tubular quilting." There's a book by Rita Hutchens that shows how you sew strips together into a tube, then cut the tube into strips, sew those strips together into a tube, cut that tube up, and sew those bits together. It's ingenious, but still ambitious for the back of a quilt. The good news is that it will make a large piece of fabric for the back that won't have to be perfectly straight vis a vis the top.

I owe you pictures, and you will get them, I promise.

I did have fun today shopping. Just as I live a zillion miles away from my quilt guilt, I live a long way away from the nearest quilt shops. I wanted the sort of threat that's good for piecing -- it's thinner (finer would be a better way to describe it, I guess) so the seams aren't bulky and that makes for a better, more consistent quarter-inch seam. Anyhoo, I have some in a medium grey, but I know I'll run out soon. I thought, Oh, goody, an excuse to shop! Come to find out, neither shop I visited has the sort of thread I was talking about. (One shop had finer thread, but it was polyester. It make be a superstition, but I do adhere to the principle that the thread should be the same fibre as the cloth, namely cotton.) But they both had sale fabrics -- more of the key fabric I'm using for the backing, and some great backing fabrics at one shop, and lots of pretty pinks, florals & green leafy fabrics at the other.

I came home very happy with my purchases, even if I didn't actually get the one thing I wanted! And that's pretty much the story of fabric shopping for me...