Monday, April 28, 2008

"....with a little help from my friends"

Friend Ronda just returned from a trip to Massachusetts. While there she visited The New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, Mass. Lowell sounds like a fascinating city, with a rich history of textile manufacturing. Apparently many young women came from far and wide to live in Lowell (in proper boarding homes) and work at the textile factories. They would work 6 days per week and faithfully send money home, to their families. Each year the Quilt Museum has a fund-raiser, selling books and fabrics which have been donated to the museum. Some of the fabric is used for community sews. The remainder is saved up throughout the year and for 8 hours it's available. Each person pays $25 and is given a green shopping bag. You then fill your shopping bag with as much as it will hold. There are new fabrics put out about every 30 minutes and shoppers help each other locating specific colors or style/designs. And so this evening she brough over the suitcase she had to borrow to bring home her newly acquired fabrics. Luckily for me, she generously shared some of her bounty!


Debbie Mumm and a nice cup of tea:

Sophisticated red/brown and flowers:

Another friend was cleaning house and gave me the perfect "goes with" fabric:


And lest you think I do nothing but mooch fabric from my friends, I have done a couple of things. Baby Rosa got her new flannel quilt:


And white chocolate's center is stitched together! Hurrah! Now just to finish up with some borders and figure out what to do on the back. I figured out that it has been about 10 months for this one:
And if you are following along, today was Week 3 for CTA training. Today we covered four topics:
* CPS reporting
* How to develop a lesson plan
* Adult Learning styles
* 25 Handiest (is that a real word?) tools for sewing
Life's good, for sure!

3 comments:

Iris said...

Wonderful fabrics you got !!

Marika said...

How lovely fabrics you received !! And I love te quilt with white and brown blocks.

méri said...

Good friends, indeed!
How lucky!