Bloglovin - Claiming my Blog

As I'm sure you know by now, Google Reader is going away on July 1.  Many people, including myself, have switched to Bloglovin for reading our favorite blogs.  Apparently you have to "claim" your blog if you want to put a button on your blog for people to easily add your blog to their bloglovin reader.  So that is what this post is for.  You can click on the link below to add my blog or on the button on the sidebar.

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Batik Postage Stamp Mini

I needed some mindless sewing the last few days so I dug out my baggie of pre-cut light colored batik squares and just started sewing them together.  After awhile I decided that they would make nice little mats for under our bedroom lamps so I sewed twelve rows of twelve squares together and here is the first finished mat.  Each square finishes at 1 inch.  No border to be added.  Just a little grid quilting and binding and it will be done.  I need to make one more for DH's lamp.  The backing and the binding will be this Princess Mirah batik that I have in the shop.  It is from the Temple Life collection.

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.