Done!

I got the pieced border finished on this old UFO yesterday and the top is officially done!  I've pulled some fabrics from my stash to make a pieced backing so that is next on the quilting to do list.  It felt good to finally get some sewing time this weekend.  We also got the rest of the garden planted, a good long bike ride in once the rain finally stopped, and watched several movies from back in "our day" with the kids, which they enjoyed.  All in all, it was a great weekend at our house!

Scrappy Afghan Progress

We have spent the last 3 weekends traveling so I needed to have a good traveling project to work on in the car.  I only had one small quilt to bind and I wasn't in binding mode anyway, so I chose to bring the scrappy afghan I am crocheting.  Two of the trips were 5 hours each way so I was able to make quite a bit of progress when I didn't have a cat in my lap.  Sassy traveled with us for the first two trips so I didn't get as much done on those.

Here is my progress so far and a close-up of the variety of colors I am using.  Because of all of the color changes I have lots of yarn ends to weave in, which I don't care for at all, but it's worth it to get this awesome rainbow of color.  I am using my cotton yarn stash, much of which is no longer available since Peaches 'n Creme sold out to the Sugar 'n Cream guys, so having all of those discontinued colors in one afghan is pretty cool in my opinion.

As an extra bonus, I stumbled across a cute little quilt shop in Jamestown, ND this past weekend purely by accident as we were leaving the buffalo museum of all places.  We had 30 minutes until closing so perfect for a quick browse through the shop and to pick up a few small pieces to add to my stash. 

Tons of New Items at My Very Own Quilt Shop!

We have been very busy this month adding new products to the My Very Own Quilt Shop website.  Lots and lots of gorgeous new Anthology and Mirah batiks have been added and we are not done yet!  Click below to see all of the new batiks we've added:

http://www.myveryownquiltshop.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=68&limit=100

And here is a peek at just a few of them:

One Border Down, Two to Go!

I am finally getting the borders on this quilt.  And only a mere two plus years after the center of the quilt was complete.  Not bad I suppose considering everything that has happened during that time frame.  Anyway, I've got the first inner border pieced and attached as you can see below.  The main border is a scrappy piano key border and I have much of that pieced and am in the assembly process in order to start attaching it.  Fingers crossed that things match up fairly well.  Hopefully I will have progress pics for that phase in the next day or two.  In the meantime, here is where I am at:

The bottom is not actually wavy...just laid out a bit funny or bad angle on the pic.  Not sure which.

Scott's Stocking

Whew, after a whirlwind trip to Phoenix to sell a house full of furniture and pack up, donate, or toss whatever else was left, I need a vacation from the vacation!  Consequently, I've been a bit lazy since we got back on Thursday night.  I spent much of yesterday catching up on TV shows that had been DVR'd the last few weeks and while doing so, I got a lot of stitching done on Scott's stocking.  I started this piece on our trip to Phoenix in December and did work on it a little bit during this last trip, but not much. It's probably 80% done in this pic:

The pattern is Reed's Stocking by Shepherd's Bush and I am stitching it on 18 ct Natural Linen using Caron Impressions threads (50/50 silk/wool blend).  These threads are expensive but so amazing to stitch with and SO soft!  I plan to stitch a stocking for myself as well using the same linen and threads.

I've also been working on some shop stuff putting together new fat quarter packs and adjusting the pics for new fabric to load on the site.  I really want to sew, but didn't feel that my brain was quite ready for that given that I couldn't even decide WHAT to sew lol.  I am feeling marginally less exhausted today so maybe by tomorrow I will be back to normal.  Fingers crossed anyway.

Soaking Up The Sun!

We have been in Phoenix for almost a week now and are soaking up as much sun as we can while we are here since it was still cold when we left ND last Sunday.  It was finally warmer there yesterday but it's supposed to cool back down again and until the warmer temps stick for a week, I'm not counting on them staying around.

Besides enjoying the warmer weather here in Phoenix, we have been selling all of the remaining furniture in my house down here, which was most of what I had as we moved very little.  We have renters lined up for at least a year, possibly two, so figured we'd just clean everything out and start fresh if we are ever in a position to spend more time down here, which we aren't right now or for the foreseeable future.

We have also been enjoying our backyard wildlife.  We had cameras up here to monitor the house so DH put one out by the quail block in the yard and now we have a live quail cam going lol.  Here is a still pic he took:

Stash Enhancement!

I haven't been able to sew in over a month, but I did buy a couple of things last week to add to my stash and they arrived this week.

First, I splurged on some additional Vintage Modern stash by Bonnie & Camille.  I love this entire line (which rarely happens) and definitely want to make an entire quilt from it so I needed to get some more to make sure I had enough (love that rationalization lol). 

Coincidentally, the book mentioned below has a quilt made from Ruby by Bonnie & Camille, of which I have a bit, and that line plays perfectly with this one, so that may be the quilt to make.  We'll see.  Just look at all of this yumminess:

I bought this from Kris of Lavender Quilts off of Etsy.  Check out this cute packaging and scissors she included with my purchase:

Secondly, I finally got Kim Brackett's new book, Scrap-Basket Beauties.  What a great book!  I looked through it cover to cover last night and I immediately found a handful of quilts that I must.make.now.  This is Kim's third book and they are all great!  You should definitely run out and get at least one of them if you have scraps or 2 1/2 inch strips to use up.