Quilt Show 2010

New to the Stash

Today I went to the local annual quilt fair and I want to say first that this year I had a GREAT time! Long time readers might remember that last year I had several negative experiences of people not wanting to talk to me. This year I happily avoided the stalls who didn't want to know me last year and after a happy hour looking at the stalls only ended up spending at one stall.

Once again I want to do a general gripe about prices. I saw one stall with fat 1/8ths for $10.95 each... What the? Please tell me none of you actually pay this price!? That works out to over $80/m and I'm pretty sure printed cotton is not made from spun gold! The other pricey fabric I saw was japanese imports that were $32/m... sure they were nice and I was tempted, but ebay is there for a reason! Honestly quilt stores, you have to get more competative!

The fabric that I did purchase was all from my favourite stall which I think was Patchwork with Gailb from Victoria. I imagine her store is a little like Tricia's Discount Fabrics here in South Australia - every fat 1/4 was $3.50 so I spent $50 there! That is how you turn over product. You make it affordable!

What price will you pay for fabric?

My price range is $12-16/m for printed quilters cotton. Under this is a bargain (I've got some for $2/m sometimes), but up to $20/m is acceptable if it is something special. Up to $8/m for flat colours as I can often get a reasonable range for as little as $4-5/m regularly. For fat 1/4s I calculate what I pay based on the price per metre. So that means I will generally only pay up to $4 per fat 1/4 as per my rule with printed quilters cotton.

Now on to my wonderful chats. Yes! People talked to me this year! My first win was talking to a lady who made an amazing quilt with extremely fine applique and hand quilted it as well. She had used batik which is thinner than quilters cotton and she gave me a small piece of batik fabric to take home (I didn't buy any because I need to research my prices as all the batik fat 1/4s were $8 or over that I saw)

A batik weave is tighter - more threads per square inch which means it doesn't fray as readily and you can clip it up to 1/16 from your seam when doing needle turn applique. It is also thinner than quilters cotton so it is not as bulky and can move around tighter corners easier.

She also said DONT IRON your applique! ...but my book on applique says press! Next time I won't be ironing during or post applique and see how it turns out!

My other highlight from the day was discussing a quilt with a couple of ladies while pointing out the flaws and that it didn't matter because all of us would still be more than happy to have such a beautiful quilt in our homes. Then we were talking about whether the quilting was human or computer directed and I recommended they check out the work of Leah Day because it could also be done on a domestic machine!! I hope they follow up my recommendation and check out her website.

All in all, a great 3 hours spent at the quilt fair this year!!