Our Mother and Daughter outing

Yesterday was spent in the pursuit of finding fabric to make curtains and a bed-skirt for Hannah's room. We went to every store that sold fabric in the entire Rapid City area- talk about an adventure! I've got to make a scrapbook layout with great quotations from the day such as "Mom, are you serious? THAT fabric for MY room?" (the look that went with this one was priceless it was as if I were trying to feed her Limburger cheese- the really smelly stuff because she was pinching her nose while saying that to me) or the "Mom you're not only insane you're blind" and my favorite "Mom, you obviously need some coffee". While it was fun it was also a little frustrating to find that all of the stores were having a sale it was a Clearance Sale and they order no more that 1 bolt of any one kind of fabric. You might find a bit of fabric left on a bolt but it wasn't enough to make a valance or a bed skirt ruffle out of. Hannah was set on toile fabric which added a degree of difficulty to our search, not to mention that it had to be either green or blue toile. We saw Red and Black toile everywhere and even some Brown toile, but the colors blue and green were nowhere to be found. Okay so we did find a toile printed fabric at one quilt shop but I would of had to piece the fabric together in 1 yard increments to make it work because of the direction of the print. This was my fall back plan, but I really didn't want to have to do that- too much work). Just when Hannah was about to give up I told her that I was taking her to Lowe's- another classic comment " Oh Mom! You do realize that Lowe's doesn't sell fabric, right?". Oh was my girl about to eat her words! I drag her back to the area that has the Waverly display and there they are, the blue and green toile items we need for the project -Hannah thinks I'm nuts at this point, until I show her what we can do with the valances :-) I love these brocade valances this was plan "B" To turn these long valances into a bed skirt, all I would have to do to it was to sew them to a base piece of fabric woohoo!
She decided against the brocade, but I just may keep these for another part of my house.

Here you see the Toile we've been searching high and low for and it's at (of all places) Lowe's! The green valance you see here will be easily converted into the ruffle part of a bed skirt and the blue valance will be used just as that- a valance for the window. Are you ready to hear (or read in this case) how much this cost me? Be prepared to be amazed! These were on clearance for the low low price of $4.99 each! So to make the bed skirt is going to cost me $20! All of the major sewing is already done! I just have to make some adjustments to the top of the valance and put in a few box pleats and I'm there baby! Talk about ending the day on a perfect note! And yes, every one of these Waverly© valances you see here on my blog I bought for $4.99 each at my local Lowe's :-)

Now I may end up making a simple straight lined striped or checked valance to go under the blue toile valance to give it more depth. Now on to designing some throw pillows, the pillow sham and to wash-press and cut the fabric for the quilt top.