Trip to the Quilt Shop, Some Fabric & How I Figured My Stash Quilts

Went to the quilt shop (Village Mercantile) in Boonville, IN. I try to go once a month to pick up and deliver quilts so this was kinda my monthly trip. Betty is having "open sewing" til Christmas for people to come in and sew for the tornado victims so I spent the day sewing and I took along 5 completed quilts to donate. And . . I bought a new walking foot. It was $115! Can you believe it? I sure wish I'd bought two back in the mid-80's when I bought the first one. Bet I paid about $50 or less for it then but if I'd bought two, I'd probably have lost the second one by now anyway. The quilt shop has a little tea room upstairs so I ate lunch there. The food is always fantastic and the dessert is yummy. I brought home some kind of chocolate turtle cheesecake for Chad and some kind of biscotti something torte for me . . we'll have dessert later. I bought some fabric! I am making a quilt for Chaplain Lewis' wife. I came across his blog about this time last year and have loved reading his stories. In a couple of his posts, he mentions his wife and from reading about her, I know she is a very special lady and I want to make her a quilt. I wrote to him and explained my plan to make her a quilt and asked about her favorite color. It's sage green. No problem... I can put some lavender and pink with sage green and make a very pretty quilt. Then he writes me back and said something like "I really don't want to sound unappreciative but . . she's not much of a pink/purple type lady." Hmm, this could be difficult. She seems to like more of the country/rustic type colors. In my entire stash, there's a lot of pink and purple and . . and . . goodness, just a lot of pink and purple mostly. So, I had to buy fabric today. Betty helped . . these are NOT my colors. I don't even know what I'm going to make so I bought 4 yards of each of the four fabrics. If I have to put something from my stash with this, I have a problem! Now, Debra asked how I figured I could make 180 stash quilts. Back when I got the goofy idea to put all my fabric on a spreadsheet, I got to about 2,000 yards and stopped recording. So, conservatively measuring, I came up with 2,700 yards of fabric and that doesn't not count fat quarter towers and bundles, nor does it count fabric that was already baggged for specific projects nor does it count fabric on bolts. There are at least 10 bolts of extra wide backing fabric and probably another 20 bolts of regular cotton fabric. I figured an average quilt top will take about 15 yards. Some will take more, some will take less. 2,700 yards divided by 15 yards per quilt = 180 tops. I have made 4 tops so far and nope, not a dent . . not even a little dimple in the stash. But, gotta start somewhere, right? Judy