Four Seasons Quilt Shoppe - A Little Piece of Paris!

Got a little time on my hands at work, you know. Things are slow during the holidays, so I decided to bring some of my "souvenirs" that I bought in Paris to the office to remember the sites, sounds, and other delights that I enjoyed while on vacation last March. Had completely forgotten about these cast aluminum letters that I bought at a flea market. The vendor had buckets of old letters, marked by price, and several people were busy "spelling out" words and phrases. I wasn't very imaginative, but I did think that a photo of my name, reduced and printed to fit on a quilt hang tag, might be cool. Or . . . enlarged and mounted on a sign to hang in my vendor booths. So many possibilities . . .

But the funniest thing, which has nothing to do with Paris, are the Scrabble tiles that I bought in Concord, NH, at a great little shop called "Nesting on Main". Little silver bowls of Scrabble tiles, just begging to be worked into a word, were scattered throughout the little store . . . so I spelled out a few options, paid for my tiles, and came home to Atlanta. Left the little tiles in the bag too long, I guess, 'cause when I took them out, I couldn't remember what I had spelled. Ugh! Then it was really like playing Scrabble, only with a purpose. Tonight, I sat down and reworked the letters until I finally "found" the words - handmade quilts, sew, and fabric.

Words, letters, and numbers have become oh-so-popular in quilting fabric right now. Sweetwater, a fabric designer for Moda, introduced a collection of fabrics this Fall entitled "Authentic", using letters and numbers, and this Spring, they will again use this simple theme in a new collection - "Make Life . . . ". I can't wait to cut into my "Authentic" collection to make a quilt that's simple, yet classic by using a tried-and-true quilt block like the Log Cabin, or Snowball. Because sometime you let the fabric tell the story, and other times, you let the quilt design be the focus. But always, always use great quilting thread like King Tut by Superior Threads. Even the simplest, most basic quilts are made that much more beautiful by the finest quality quilting thread - I wouldn't use anything else for my quilts!