Lot's to Share

 This is a strange image I know. It's the back that I've made to put on the quilt project (which I need to keep secret until December). That's when my Calendar Girls group reveals their block exchange projects from June. So, in the middle of this back is a "tea towel" calendar dated 2011. If you haven't heard of the website Spoonflower you need to check it out. It's a place where you can create your own fabric! Just design by scanning an image, coloring, drawing, anything you want, then upload it to their website. You can then order quilters' cotton, linen, knit, even bamboo fabric to make whatever you want! Each week, Spoonflower has a contest with a theme. Several dozen designers submit their images and you can even vote on your favorites each week. Every November, one of the contests is to desgn a calendar tea towel. I've collected calendar tea towels from everywhere we've traveled and I usually order at least half a dozen of the designs submitted to Spoonflower to use on the backs of my quilts. Talk about a great quilt label! The year is already on there and I circle the date when I finish the quilt. Cute, huh?!

The stripes at the bottom of the quilt back are all the different fabrics I 'auditioned' for the front sashing of the quilt and that I ended up not liking. There were so many of them I thought I'd sew them together to add to the back. Waste not, want not!

This weekend was PIQF--Pacific International Quilt Festival--in Santa Clara, CA. It's a wonderful show with probably 100 vendors (my favorite part!) My friend, Jody, came with me and we had the best time! We saw this product at a vendor's booth and Jody said she'd bought them years ago and LOVED how they worked so I bought the set--one purse-sized, one regular sized and one with a telescoping handle to use on drapes and design walls! "The Sticky" is a permanent lint roller. Instead of sticky paper you have to tear off or replace (which I have such a hard tine with!), there's a silicon stickiness that pulls off lint, THREADS, pet hair, beads, even coins off any surface and then---you just rinse it all off in warm water! Then start rolling again. It's an amazing little tool.

I use batting for my design wall which is pretty fuzzy so it picked up a lot more fuzz than threads but it worked pretty well. But on pet hair--OMG--it's amazing!! I can de-hair our sofa and chairs so fast and efficiently! You might want to look for them and try it for yourself.

Another thing you must try: checking out all the other Design Wall Monday post on Judy's blog!