Quilty Pleasures Wednesday-An Interesting Toile and Last Look at the Christmas Tree Skirt

It's a cool, gloomy day at the Nickel and Dime Ranch, but we were outside this morning setting a couple fence posts in concrete. The fence around the Growing Dome is finally getting started.

But today is Quilty Pleasures Wednesday, so I wanted to show you some fabric I bought--twice. Do you do this? You just loved it and had to buy it? And when you get it home you find the exact same fabric in one of your stash places? I do it with books, too, but not as often.

I love this toile because it is sneaky. On the bolt, a shopper could just pass it by and say, "Oh, boring toile again," (unless they love toile).

But at second glance you see these nifty little vignettes:

I have this fabric in mind for a very dear person's quilt. But I have to think about other fabrics to go with it. Because it's toile and so traditional, I am thinking about a traditional block style. If you have any ideas regarding colors or block pattern, let me know because I have Bubkis.  For folks interested in who makes this fabric, here you go:

And one more look at the Christmas tree skirt I made as a sample for a class to be held at Thread Bear in Las Vegas, NM. I quilted it in the ditch, but don't tell anyone that after I was all finished quilting it, I realized that the little lever on the walking foot wasn't hooked onto that screw dealie that holds in the needle. So it really wasn't walking!

Color on these last two photos is odd because I used the camera phone. Here's a look at the binding. I procrastinated like mad because I didn't know what to use. A scrappy binding wouldn't have looked good since it was already segmented on the edges, so I went with this brownish fabric with red, green, and tan stripes. While I sewed on the binding I watched a BBC telly show on hulu.com called Misfits. Loved it, but I'm warning you it's not for the proper person  unused to gross teenaged-boy humor and there's lots of shagging and wanking. (Sorry....just using their terms.)

That's it for Quilty Pleasures Wednesday. I'm excited because in a couple weeks I will be learning from Gwen Marston at her Beaver Island Quilt Retreat. Now that will be cool.