found it!

I had hoped to be showing photos of my finished November UFO tonight, but I got sidetracked...

My mom has a quilting friend who I guess I could also call my quilting friend, but my mom knows her better and has known her longer, so we'll call her my mom's friend for now.

This friend had another quilting friend who, just a short while ago was diagnosed with terminal lukemia, so she sat down with my mom's friend and worked out a plan to liquidate her quilty stuff.  Sadly this was necessary because her hubby wouldn't do it.  The friend passed away just three weeks after her diagnosis and my mom's friend enlisted the help of her quilty friends to prepare for the sale.

My mom got called to help.  The friend has the space to do such a sale, but needed help sorting, measuring, pricing and organizing.  Can you imagine what your quilty stuff would look like if you had only 3 weeks to prepare to get rid of it ALL?  And I mean ALL...cabinets, storage, fabric, UFOs, everything!  (Never mind fighting a terminal disease.)

So today the sale started and I went to help the final organization and got to shop a bit before the sale opened.  I was good, I only bought one UFO:

Not exactly my usual color choices (and they're a little off here because I couldn't wait for daylight to get photos, so I tried my kitchen, the brightest light in the house and I think it messed up my flash!), but so pretty. 

But no pattern!

So on my drive home (an hour), I got to thinking: What are the fabrics?  There should be info on the selvedge, right?  Maybe they're all from the same line...that might give me a clue where to start.  I got home and looked at a few: Thimbleberries "Apron Strings."  But no date.  At least not on the few I looked at.

I love the internet.  I found the fabric line, but no clues about the quilt pattern.  Hmmm...maybe it's a Thimbleberries pattern by another name?  If all the fabrics are Thimbleberries, couldn't it be possible she also used a Thimbleberries pattern?  My search landed me on eBay with a seller that had graciously put up photos of some of the projects in a Thimbleberries book...we have a winner!

The book is "At Home with Thimbleberries Quilts" by Lynette Jensen and you can see a photo of what these will become here.  (It's the fourth photo in the lineup - that is, until the book sells!)  I still don't know the name, but I at least know how the quilt goes together!

Some of those fabrics don't seem to be used in the blocks, so I'm going to have to pull them all out of the bag and do some figuring, but I'm excited.  This whole pile was $15!  Such a steal, though I'm saddened by the fact that someone had to lose a battle with cancer for me to come by it.  I hope she's looking down at all of us quilters who visited the sale today, smiling because she knows we'll keep her UFOs (and everything else) from the trash bin.  And we'll love every second of the task!

The sale was wonderful.  It was a little crazy and there were armloads (literally) of fabric going out the door with most shoppers, but everyone was friendly, polite, patient and kind.  I got to work the chekcout and I honestly thought there might be some nastiness, but this just proved again what wonderful people quilters are.  And it makes me happy to know that I get to include myself in that group.

One more photo of the beautiful block that sucked me in.  :)

I can't wait to get started making more of these, but I think I'm going to wait until I have the book, so I can be sure I'm doing it right.  (I'm confident I could do it without the book, but if I can borrow it, why not wait...it's not as though I don't have a few other projects needing finishing first...)

I didn't get much quilting done this past week.  So much going on thanks to the holiday (which was great, thank you!), but I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things soon.  It may take a bit longer than it should, thanks to another schedule change for the hubby, but he's happy with the change, so I'll be happy too.

I hope those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving had a wonderful holiday weekend filled with good food, great friends and, if you dared it, successful shopping!

I'll be back soon with my (fingers crossed) finished November UFO.  It's SO close!

Happy quilting,

Katie