Figgy Pudding

On cool and windy days, we take an "off the beach" walk and we have a couple of routes that we take to get our 50 minutes in. I always stop and admire this bush when we walk by. I know I showed this last year, but a whole hedge of holly in darn impressive. This year, the holly is full of berries.

I should have been out last week when it was snowing, just to get a picture of the holly with snow on it. I missed the opportunity. It hasn't snowed here in 11 years, and heaven knows when it will snow again. When it does, I'll be a little more prepared to run out and take a picture.

The hedge is so tall that I can't even see the house that is behind it. I thought, if I see somebody there, I would ask if I could come and snip some branches for a decoration to enjoy at the condo. But we never saw anyone.

This is a great segway into the pattern that I've chosen to buy fabric online for. I have admired this pattern online and have seen it in a few places.

I decided for my little experiment, to make a Christmasy quilt. I spent what seems like hours looking at patterns in online shops and I found a few that I really liked. The problem I found out is that project requirements are not given when you want to buy a pattern and fabric online.

So once I realized that, I went looking for a free pattern that would have the fabric requirements for me. I found this "Free Pattern" page at Aunt Bea's Fabric store helpful and I came across this free pattern by Moda - designed for their Figgy Pudding line of fabrics. I have seen this fabric featured on the bakeshop website. It has caught my eye before.

I also saw this pattern made recently a light blue background. It happened to be on the wall in the background of a video tutorial by the Missouri Quilt Co. Don't get distracted by the table runner demonstration. Just look at the back wall. :) I love these cool wintery colors of the sample shown on the wall in the video.

Sew, my online fabric search began. I've spent more than a few hours in some online fabric shops. At first I was going to try to pick my own similar colors out and do it like the Missouri Quilt Co., but after a few attempts at working the online carts, color matching etc, I decided that I would just buy the Moda Figgy Pudding fabrics that are shown in the Free Moda pattern that you can find here.

And the search continues and more problems. It's hard to find a quilt shop that has the entire collection or even half the collection of fabrics, so now I'm looking for a shop that at least the 4 or 5 main figgy fabrics, with trees, with swirls and with presents. I'll get the solids as close as I can. That's not easy to find either.

I had a bright thought that I'd try eBay. There is a dealer there that has 4 of the fabrics but she sells them in 1 yard cuts. I need only 1/3 yard cuts. I may work up the nerve to contact her to see if she will sell me small cuts.

So I'm slowly coming to the decision that buying fabric online is not as easy as it seams. If you are looking for a small number of fabrics, it's probably easier. If you are looking for beautiful batiks to build your stash, it's probably easier.

It'll take me a little more time to buy the fabric for this project. I may end up looking for another pattern with fewer fabric choices.

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Tomorrow, a figgy find that is not fabric related. Stay tuned.