African Fabric Lady

Yup, we had snow flurries yesterday.  A little early in my opinion, but no one asked me in advance.  However, there I was snuggled into a quilt made of African Indigo Fabrics, on the sofa beside the wood stove, so what did I care?  Actually, lots, because now I really have to get it together and make those booties to keep my feet warm.  Does anyone have a pattern or do I have to make something up?  And what does one do to keep the bottoms of the booties from being too slippery?

Isa2

From younger days I remember seersucker as appearing in one form only–pale stripes of one color or another.  It was worn by people of both genders in the summer months.  For women as dresses and slacks, and for men as sport jackets.  But seersucker has many manifestations these days.

This is one example though this image represents the design but not the pattern which for some reason won’t scan.  It is an all-over pattern.  Another example follows:

Curious aren’t they.  I bet they’d look good mixed in with other fabrics in quilts, and I know they look great in garments.  What do you think?

Isa2

For some number of years I spent some number of weekends each fall on the road participating at quilt shows.  It was fun to meet my customers in person, and to catch up on each other’s news.  It was also a tremendous amount of work, from start to finish.  I miss seeing friends–vendors and quilters alike–and seeing the exhibitions that were more varied than one could imagine, but I don’t miss the effort. I’m pretty happy working at home now.  Occasionally folks come by and hand pick from the inventory, and that’s fun.  Keep it in mind of you and some of your friends are coming down Maine way.

All Best,

Isa2

Greetings,

Plenty of you have encouraged me to offer new Wax Print Fat Quarters, so here they come.  If you don’t see what you are looking for–in other words, if you saw something in the Yard Cuts page for Wax and it isn’t here–just get in touch with me and I’ll cut yours and add the rest to this page….you can click on the picture above to connect to African Fabric Sales.

All Best,
Isa2

This title was also parked in the drafts folder with nothing further written.  Little do I still know–I have no idea what I was going to share with you but it must have been breathless deathless prose of one sort or another.  Sorry we all missed it.

Isa2

The cleaning up of unfinished business in My Drafts Folder continues here……An email arrived in my Inbox last spring  with the Message Header:  My Plight!!!!  The contents are reproduced in full below absent the writer’s full name.

“Hello,

I’m writing this with tears in my eyes,my family and i came down here to Edinburgh,Scotland United Kingdom for a short vacation and got mugged at gun point last night at the park close to the hotel where we lodged.All cash,credit cards and cell phone got stolen,so i only have access to emails.we’ve been to the Police here but they’re not responding to the matter effectively and the problem now is that we have less time to leave here but we’re having problems settling the hotel bills.The hotel manager won’t let us leave until we settle the hotel bills,so i need your help in getting back home.Need you to loan me some money for hotel bills(£935.00 GBP).Now am freaked out,don’t know what to do.Please reply and let me know if you can have the money wired to me as a loan through western union money transfer.Please use my name and the address given below to send the money and i promise to pay back as soon as i return.The information you need to send the money:

Name: C—– O—–
Address: B216, Edinburgh Street Caravel Midlothian
City- Edinburgh
Country- United Kingdom
Zip Code- EH3 6NA

you can send me the details of WU including the MTCN control Number.I will surely refund the money when i return.”

This appeal arrived right after we’d experienced a lost wallet incident that involved endless telephone time to cancel credit cards and so on.  Needless to say, we did not respond.

What, you might wonder, does this title have to do with anything, at least 6 weeks since Hurricane Earl blew itself into and out from our minds?  Well, I could only answer that I thought I was going to write something then about how the weather services have us in their grip of fear mongering.  For days beforehand, that storm was all some folks could talk about.

Let me make something clear.  I live in Eastern Maine, where full-force hurricanes are a rare occurrence,  most storms being pushed out to sea somewhere around Cape Cod and not touching back until the Maritimes and thus missing the entire Gulf of Maine, except for residuals.  Furthermore, my town is deep within Frenchman Bay.  We hardly have waves most of the time though we do have storms with lots of wind & rains during Hurricane Season, but when you see folks going out of their way to restock bottled water and flashlight batteries, you just have to wonder.

Anyway, Hurricane Earl did pass us by just before Cousin David passed away and we were able to have a family memorial service down by the shore on one of those achingly beautiful days in early autumn, and maybe that was why the title was written but nothing else.  He was larger than life–as someone said, a man with the heart of a child and the hands of a giant–and we will miss him.

As I mentioned previously, I’ve been sorting through the accumulated boxes of this and that in the Fabric Storeroom, and most recently, have arranged by color the beautiful damask.  Particularly the 1-yard cuts remaining from my days selling at quilt shows and conferences.  It’s gorgeous fabric, damask and suitable for mixing in with other fabrics in sewing and quilting projects.

Look closely at the photos at the web store and in most cases you will be able to see the seemingly infinite variety of designs woven into the cloth.  There are florals and geometrics, though I don’t suppose it makes that much difference in most projects, especially with the 1-yard cuts.

Next I’ll add more fat quarters and finally the remaining yardage.

See what you think…..

Isa2

A friend writes to refer me to some fabric dyeing videos on YouTube, commenting that this she is arm chair traveling this year.  Enjoy–there are lots of fun ones here.

Greetings All,

Our splendid summer continues.  We are finally getting a well needed soaking rain–we’ve been not as dry as Africa, but the water table has dropped enough that the cellar no longer floods when it does rain.  How do we count our blessings?  Well, we just had a new totally automatic sump pump installed so except for the occasional monitoring, ought not to have to worry about the flooding anyway.

We are undertaking an internal move of our fabric storeroom area and oh my goodness, treasures are coming to light.  Fabrics of all sorts that have been tucked away in opaque plastic bags.  Mudcloth and other hand-woven tribal cloths.  Kuba cloth.

Yards & yards of gorgeous solid colored damask.  Some  will be added into the already existing fat quarter category, some onto a page of its own  one-yard cuts.  The price is terrifically reasonable.

My computer crashed recently and I have lost many email addresses of African Fabric Fans.  If you wish to have your name added to my list for web store specials and other noteworthy news, please email me or respond here (I will not post your name to the public) and I will add you to the group.

All Best,

Isa2