fabric for your lifetime

I just heard about a contest that you might want to check out.  It is sponsored by Quilter's Club of America and Keepsake Quilting.  They are giving a grand prize of "a lifetime supply of fabric" plus additional one-year supplies for the runner-ups.  (Or is that runners-up?)

You still have time to enter your name, but the contest ends next week on 2/28, so don't delay.  And, after reading the fine print, which I seldom do on contests, I learned that you can enter daily!  And, if you enter by clicking this link, I get an extra chance, too.  And I'm pretty sure I will be in a sharing mood with my lifetime supply, since I think I already have a lifetime supply upstairs in my stash!

And how do these contest organizers define a lifetime supply?  Simply put, it is one yard a week for 20 years!  The fabric is selected by the winner from the Keepsake Quilting store, so there is plenty to choose from.  Keepsake operates one of the first and best fabric ordering operations that I know of.  Back before I started working at Bear Patch, and before easy access to the internet, I paid a lot more attention to my little Keepsake catalogs to keep me current on new fabrics and notions.

They crammed a lot of little pictures of fabric samples into their pages.  I used to "bookmark" my favorites, i.e., fold over the corner of the page the old-fashioned way!  Lots of pages folded over!  In August, 2007, I traveled with 3 good friends to New England, and we shopped at the brick-and-mortar Keepsake Quilting store.  What a fun trip that was!

Here's a little bit of randomness:

very cool vintage TV tray tables at my mom's house, preserved from the last century!  Probably 1960's?  I'm not totally sure, but I think that the white ones were a set that was at our house when I was a kid, and I think the black one was from my Grandma's house.  Still in use as temporary plant stands for the potted plants that my mom brings in from her deck to spend the winter by a basement window until it is suitable weather to go back out to the deck.  Which might be the 4th of July this year!  We have way more snow right now than our usual amount, and more is predicted for today.  Big piles (mountains?) in corners of parking lots are waiting for some heat to start them dwindling down.  Even with the past 2 days of temps reaching above freezing, the little bit of melting that occurred was barely a drop in the bucket of what needs to happen.

I have been getting some work done on curtains for the nursery for my new grandson-to-be:

I am sharing this picture because I thought the comparison was very interesting.  These were purchased curtain panels, solid blue.  I have added the white ribbon trim and a lining of light blocking fabric.  The picture on the left is the "before" (trimming pinned on to help decide ribbon width and placement) and on the right you can see the effect of the additional lining.  Makes a huge difference in privacy and darkness, both important for the sleep of the little guy who will reside in that room.  And the sleep of mom and dad, too!  I have 2 panels done, and 4 to go, so I have my goal set to finish them over the weekend.  I hope!