I decided to stop (at least for a while) my monthly subscription to SquintBox. It’s been wonderful, but I feel that I have all I need at the moment. I’m not working on anything, have no place to put the little minis except in storage, so…that’s it for a while.
As I was looking at quilters’ blogs the other day, I came across a modern quilter who was writing about a modern fabric subscription box called Culcita. I was very intrigued. You can set it up in any number of ways and I chose the bimonthly subscription. Why? I could use some modern fabrics in my stash, I don’t have a quilt store nearby, and I thought this would be the perfect way to gather some fabrics I wouldn’t see otherwise. So, every other month, I’ll get a little box from Culcita.
Like this one:
It arrived in my mailbox yesterday (2 day priority mail!)
12 fat quarters; this month from Art Gallery Fabrics’ Take Shape line.
Lovely. Beautifully presented and such fun to open.
Included was a lovely handwritten welcome note, and a card highlighting this month’s fabric line.
Also included was a quilt pattern and two labels. Oh, and a fortune cookie with the fortune reading:
Eat, Sleep, Sew. Any questions?
This isn’t a sponsored post or anything like that. I’m just writing about it because it’s such a neat idea. Subscription boxes are the new thing, for books, minis, makeup, food, you name it. I’m not one who signs up for these things as a rule, but this particular subscription has a very fair price and I figure I can handle it every other month.
Okay. Now I have to run some errands before it starts snowing. Again. Only a couple of inches, but come on! Enough already. We’re both in prep mode, gathering together what we need to pack. In Don’s case, it’s obviously more complicated. I’m only gone for 6 days.
Happy Saturday.
That fabric subscription is a neat idea. It will be fun to find a surprise in the mail every so often! Happy packing and Happy Weekend to you both.
Thank you, Shanna!
I love the fabrics. I’m not a quilter myself but have a love of fabric from my Mom who has a huge stash! What a fun idea! Careful today and stay warm. Enough with the snow!!
I love fabric! Although I just gave a lot of it away but it was older fabric that I bought when I first started quilting back in San Diego.
I read about that subscription plan. I’ll have to look again but not sure I want to amass fabric regularly like that. I am very very fortunate to have at least half a dozen fabric or quilt shops within a 20-30 minute drive so I’m a bit spoiled for choice. BTW, thanks for writing about Quiltfolk. I’m now a subscriber. Hope preparations go smoothly.
When we lived in San Diego we had Rosie’s, the best quilt shop ever. That’s where I took lessons and that’s where I shopped. You can bet I’ll visit there when I’m out visiting Don!
I would think it would be fun to receive packages in the mail on a regular basis…who wouldn’t like that? The fabrics are so pretty. At the very least, if you didn’t use them for quilts, you could use them for all sorts of things. Napkins come to mind. Here’s hoping you get all your errands done before more snowflakes fly! Unbelievable…enough already! ;)
Exactly. Or pillow covers. It’s just started to snow. Yuck.
So they are large enough for pillow covers? Super! ;)
On modestly sized pillows. xo
What an awesome box of goodies. Will you be making a quilt with the fabric, or something else? Haven’t talked in so long, call me when you’re free.
Not sure what I’ll be doing with it. It will move into my stash for sure! Yes, we are long overdue!! I’m in NYC for the week next week, but after I get back home, I’ll call.
Sounds nice, and the fabric is cool. Happy sewing!
Thank you, Regula!
Fingers crossed for a very little snow for you. The fabric box sounds like a good way to motivate you to start back quilting. I was always terrible I think it is the precision cutting that got me. Although when first married ( 1973) I did begin a velvet crazy quilt almost finished, maybe this year. After all I am on my second husband, hahaha. Have a restful weekend together.
That’s what I’m thinking – motivation. Finish that crazy quilt, Mary!
Oh, no! Not MORE…… glad it is only a few inches. Still….. ugh.
Such pretty fabric! That will be a fun surprise pack to open every other month! Such lovely packaging, too.
Hope your prep keeps moving forward. Say….. how were the biscuits the other day??
I didn’t make them! We kept putting it off. So, either tonight or tomorrow. I’m thinking tonight, so we can have some of the extras tomorrow and then I’ll send a couple with Don on Monday.
Hi Claudia,
These are striking fabrics and this is cool!
Girl, surprise surprise…you are planning on being very busy. I like it and it does do something
to put a bit (well…a tiny bit) of balm on the waiting for your husband to come home..hard, isn’t it?
We have not met in person but I do think of you as some virtual friend somewhere in our American world.
And at this time in the Nation, to knit a group of nice people together in some abstract way on the net sounds good to me. Makes me feel better!
I am off to the flea market for the vinyl. I want to find an old “Little Feat album with “Willin” on it. I played some Donovan all morning and my all time fav from Joanie Mitchell “Cactus Tree” wow and wow! It is on the soundtrack to the movie “A walk on the Moon” what a treat to watch a movie about 1969 and being young and dangerously foolish. I was; oh I was.
Have a great weekend~~
Katheryn
Well, very busy for the next week. Then…nada. But I’m going to work on my quilt, and paint the kitchen and then it will be time to work in the garden.
Love, love Joni Mitchell.
I think these subscription boxes are fun treats and we all deserve a treat once in awhile. I only came upon Squint Box because of you and I don’t know how one finds out about all the other subscription boxes except maybe sometimes by happenstance. I used to get a few paper catalogs for some.
I wish I knew how to quilt but I don’t think I have nimble-enough fingers now. When I was a girl, I’d love to go the fabric store with Mom and go through the pattern drawers for my dresses…McCall’s, Butterick, Simplicity…and choose fabrics from bolt after bolt of lovely cloth. Tactile; loved the feel of the different fabrics, their colors and textures.
I was recently going through more of Mom’s things (this is taking years) and found a folded piece of fabric from the 1960s; I remember when she made an ankle-length skirt from it, for some fancy dinner or occasion (not something usual for her) although it took me awhile to conjure up that memory. Thing is, she never thought she could sew well and she really could sew just fine, making Barbie clothes for my Barbies (even a satin wedding gown!), dresses for my other dolls; baby dresses I wore (still have ’em), Halloween costumes, curtains (still have her pinch-pleat curtains in the kitchen); lots of skirts and jumpers for junior high and high school. She sewed a lot of stuff! Aprons and potholders with any leftover fabric, too. But although she hooked rugs, crocheted, knitted and did embroidery, never quilting, although she had a deep appreciation for our homemade quilts that had been in the family a long time.
By happenstance for me. I just happened on a blog post about the fabric. I have the same memories with my mom. We’d go to Sears. They had an extensive fabric section and we’d go through those drawers and I’d help pick out the fabric and my dear mom (who learned to sew later in life) would make me a dress. Such wonderful memories. God, I miss her.
It sounds like your mom was quite an accomplished needlewoman, Vicki. My grandma make clothes for my dolls, including Barbie. It astonishes me that anyone could do that – just figure out (without a pattern) how to make a dress for Barbie. It’s not in my wheelhouse as I usually work from some sort of pattern. Oh, our mothers and grandmothers were amazing. xo
Thanks for sharing your memories; I love all these memories! Yes, I still have the Barbie clothes. Mother made the wedding dress and also a casual dress (with short sleeves and a set-in waist). Also a sleeveless top with matching capri pants; Barbie loved her capris, you know. Oh, and the capris and top had a matching swing coat. Would Mom have had a pattern or not, I’m wondering. Tiny, tiny things to sew.
The only problem from lifelong handwork (she made her own school clothes in The Great Depression because, curiously, her mom did NOT know how to sew and, of course, nobody had any money for store-bought clothes), also factoring in all the years she worked with my dad in his home-based business which required a lot of typing…and she also was a daily piano player…is that her small, delicate hands became riddled with deformity and pain due to the effects of Rheumatoid arthritis (the most severe) so all of this came to a crashing end at age 63, including all of her art work which involved oil painting, watercolor painting, doing mosaics, a sort of pseudo-stained glass making she got into; just so creative, all self-taught. (I guess it depends; I was speaking with someone the other day who’s gotten into beading, and she said she actually feels the beading is helping her arthritic hands!)
I live in their home and Mom also planted the entire back hillside HERSELF when she was in her 30s & 40s with the iceplant and other plants which still grow there today. I don’t know how she did everything she did; except that she never sat still for very long and was really active in her better days. Her 50s were really good years; strong as an ox; semi-retired; kids grown and out of the house. I’m so glad she had those years.
We can’t go back like this, can we Claudia, and not miss our moms so much!
No, we can’t. So sad that all that had to stop for your mother. All those skills, suddenly ceasing. Getting older isn’t easy is it?
Years and years ago, very interesting, I subscribed to a meals delivery service. The lady who ran it, I think in New England, maybe even NY, was the mother of the actor who was on Two And A Half Men named Jon Cryer but this was ‘way before he was ever on that show and, at first, I didn’t even know the connection, only that her name was Gretchen. Nothing was ever mentioned about show biz. I found all this out later, but apparently both of Jon Cryer’s parents were singers/actors, but she had also written a play(s).
The only thing at the time I knew of (and, how I found out about it, I can’t remember), was that she’d I think been upset about figuring out how to get good meals to her aging mother from a distance, so she saw a need to have instant/nutritious meals as a mail order service for people like her mom who were homebound…food/meals which could be frozen, then boxed up and shipped with overnight mail, filling her mom’s cupboard/freezer/frig for a week at a time. I went for this as soon as I read about it, because I had the same concern for my own elderly folks as there was a period there where both were stricken simultaneously with serious illness and they weren’t eating right. I had to find some subtle way of stepping in to try to help.
I sampled some of the food ahead of time…generous helpings; I remember a scrumptious shepherd’s pie…and it was really home-cooked (hers was not some big corporation, at least initially, and it started from her heart but I think her business grew to a pretty-big customer base). I can’t remember now why we stopped doing it … it could be that Ms. Cryer herself stopped it (was a fairly ambitious endeavor, I ‘m sure, and I don’t remember other mail-order food businesses in those years … this had to be the early-to-mid ’90s; very entrepreneurial!) … but I think it eventually got too expensive for me, although it sure helped at the time. It was like comfort food for my parents via the UPS truck and was a complete meal with even bread and a dessert, veggies ( man, I loved it and wanted it for myself; instant dinner after a long workday!). Genius, really; Gretchen Cryer was really ahead of the game.
When I learned about her after the fact, I remember being surprised to find out she was famous and that both she and her then-husband had acted in her play called “I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road” which was a little something I’d read about out here on the West Coast, far away from Broadway.
I’m wondering now if you’d heard of her, Claudia?
Oh, yes. I’ve heard of Gretchen Cryer and I remember that play. I can still see her face. I knew she was Jon Cryer’s mother, as well. Neat that she was so ahead of her time!
Cool! I figured you’d recognize the name. Thanks for always taking the time to respond to our comments here on the blog; love the exchanges!
xo
What a great idea to get the fabrics sent to you. Enjoy them and stay warm and hope not too much snow.
Marilyn
Fingers crossed. I think – at most – 3 inches. More likely, less than that. Don’s on his way home now after running lots of errands today.
Those are lovely fabrics! I like the idea of getting packages every once in a while, and since there are no longer any nice fabric stores nearby, I might look into this.
We were supposed to get more snow today, but we got some rain instead, and it was somewhat warmer than expected. So a lot is melting here.
Good luck with your travels and packing! Take care, and safe travels to Don on his long trip.
It’s snowing here right now, Bridget. Yuck!
Did you get fat quarters in your fabric box? When I looked at the website, the only options I saw were 1/4 or 1/2 yard boxes. Maybe I missed something. Hope your snow has ended and it was minimal. Thanks.
They’re 1/4 yard and not fat quarters. That isn’t a big deal to me as I usually don’t cut out large squares.