You may have read here that I resolved to buy a new sewing machine by the end of February. I’ve been meaning to do it but I always get scared to commit. My mom offered to pay for most of it, so it wasn’t even a money issue.  Well, today I got off my duff and went over to the Bernina store. And now I own an Activa 220! Well, actually they had to order it for me, but in a week or two I will. I’m very excited. I pretty much knew that’s what I wanted (especially when I saw the price tag on the Patchwork Edition, yikes!) — I have sewn on my  mom’s and it has SO much more control than my Singer. Yippee. One resolution down. I’m also going to take their free guide classes and I get to be a member of the Bernina club (ooh, a club!) for a year, which means a free class every month where I can learn something new on my machine. With Bernina, you really are paying for service– and I think it’s so great that they offer the classes, because what good are all of the functions if I don’t know how to use them? Yay!

In other much less expensive splurginess, I wanted to show off some of the fabric I bought before and over the holidays. I almost NEVER buy fabric, because I feel like I already have some slated for projects that were not completed, I get it free for work projects, etc. But, since I have been so obsessed with patchwork lately, I thought a few small amounts in colors I needed to fill out my stash were in order. Doing the patchwork swap was really fun because I realized sometimes you really only need a scrap of something to make a layout work. 

Here are some 1/2 yards I found after looking long and hard at Joann’s. The woman cutting them kept commenting on how “different” they were.

Here are some FQs I purchased in San Antonio. I liked the way this quilt shop had their shelves set up– there was a mini shelf under each fabric bolt shelf with all available FQs of those fabrics. That makes a lot of sense to me.

And here are some amazing flannels, from a different quilt shop in San Antonio. I have never seen flannels like this and I had to hold myself back.

The cool thing about  new fabric is that sometimes it makes your old fabric look better. I was going to make a project with the flannels but I ended up using just a sliver of the yellow- everything else was from my stash.  (I’ll show it off next week). I’m trying to be  more conscious of what colors I have a lot of, and where I can build up a little. It makes for a more complex patchwork, plus it’s always good to have options.