Day 67 July 19

Walking dogs, piles of scraps

By Al

I woke up feeling kind of sick.  It turned out to be a cold which developed into a bacterial infection of my throat and mouth, but I didn't find that out until Monday. 

I did, however, go dog walking for Animal Care and Control.  It was really hot, but the dogs needed to be walked.  I was able to show a dog to a family that ended up adopting the dog, so that was good.  Most of the dogs are "bully breeds".  Most are pit bull mixes and they are some of the sweetest dogs I have met.  They all have a different personality, but they were all a pleasure to walk.

That pretty much took it out of me, so I didn't do much more.

Sally's Day

The highlight of my day was a charm quilt class at City Quilter.  City Quilter is the only quilt shop on Manhattan.  There are lots of fabric shops- most of them are high end fabrics for clothing.   City Quilter is a good shop.  I especially like their Japanese fabrics and New York fabrics. 
They also have the "standard" quilt shop lines- moda, kauffman, batiks, kona cotton.  Good notions section.  And they seem to get new books before other stores I've been to.  They also have a gallery of art quilts, which changes every 2 months.

The pieces in a charm quilt are all the same shape (e.g. a square, triangle, diamond shape), and each square is a different fabric. Traditionally, a girl collected 999 scraps, and the 1,000th scrap was given to her by the man she would marry.  I assume that she spent the period of her engagment making the quilt!

We were asked to bring a pile of scraps- which was a challenge for me, as I had brought only kits I had put together in MN to  sew  here.  So I had Al bring back a bag of scraps on his trip home.

Sample of a charm quilt.

This quilt, which was on display in the shop, inspired me to take this class.  I previously thought of charm quilts as quite old-fashioned until I saw this sample- which is quite contemporary.

Detail of quilt, alternating light and dark triangles. The triangles are about 1 1/2" on each side.

The pile of scraps people brought to the class.

By the end of the class I had 255 different scraps.What fun!  This will be a l-o-n-g term project.  It  uses English paper piecing- sewing each piece of fabric to a paper backing, and then assembling them by hand.  I am making little houses.  Don't expect a picture of a completed top in the 180 Days blog!
Sally