Auctiva Emporium: charlieakapookie

     The first thing I am going to do is blow ny credibility by saying that, even though I own a fabric store, I AM NOT a quilter. Having said that I will try and restore my credibility by saning that I have been sewing since I was 5!. My grandmother was a French Canadian LADY who believed that if you could not knit, crochet, sew, embroider and quilt by the time you were 6, by God, you were useless and nobody decent would have you!

     So I lerned and have engaged all of those skills at various times in my lifetime but the constant has always been the sewing. Simply put, I love to sew but I am rather impatient so quilting never appesled to me,but I did learn how and I love quilts, I just don't love making them. Actually, I ldon't mind the cutting, thank you Accuquilt, and I love the piecing, it's the finishing I have a problem with. My fondest dream is to find someone with a longarm who hates to sew :).  So now enter Kathy Brown and the Take 5 quilt.

     About 18 months ago we went to an open house at one of our suppliers in Chicago and met Kathy Brown, a quilt and fabric designer and owner of the Teacher's Pet. She has created a line of quilt patterns called "Take 5" and she says, "take 5 minutes, pick 5 fabrics, and in 5 hours you have a beautiful quilt top.

     Well, she LIED!!! It takes a lot longer than 5 minutes to coordinate 5 fabrics!!!  However, she's right about the 5 hour part. One evening the "boss" went to work at 6:30, I put the baby to bed at 7, and at 11:38 I had finished MY FIRST QUILT TOP which I have sent out to be longarmed..

     This is when I entered the most disastrous 6 months of my life. I have always billed myself as the world's biggest "wannabee", and as it turned out, I was right.

     I began cranking out Take 5's left and right and having a ball until one of my customers asked me when I was going to finish them. HUH??? It seems the piecing is only the beginning of the equation; you are supposed to batt, back, quilt and bind what you have pieced before you are qualified to call yourself a quilter. OOPS! OK, that's just a bit too much for me, I will go back to being a wannabee. But, among others, which I will probably get finished someday, I have a real neat Thomas the Train quilt for Spud's big boy bed and a genuine respect for the Take 5 quilt.

   In my humble opinion it is one of the best quilt patterns out there, especially if you are either a beginner or want something real good looking to work up quickly. The quilt is made up of 1 block that has no intersecting seams and can be put together either at ramdom or planned. It can also be expanded,as I did after making my first one. the pattern calls for 20 blocks which gives you a square quilt. I prefer a rectangle so I added an additional row.

     And since I can never leave well enough alone, this one is called "Take 5 on steroids". I used 8 fabrics from a line called Heat Wave and added some sashing creating a quilt top large eough to generously cover a twin bed.

      I have become totally convinced that the Take 5 iis the easiest and most versatlie quilt pattern ever. As you can see, each one looks totally different. And then, there is the Take 5 Gets the Point, which is simply the Take 5 turned on point. The pattern gives you the directions for the triangles to put it on point.

     So, please visit our eBay store, Pookie's Fabric and Craft Place to find the Take 5 pattern, many

  beautiful fabrics and precut kits for the Take 5.