Stripping...

I've been cutting my leftover fabrics into strips for the last year or so and had accumulated quite a collection of them. I've made a few quilts with them...a couple of log cabins, some heartstrings blocks, nine patch quilts, but the boxes never seemed to empty, no matter how many I used. I would look at them and feel guilty that I had them all neatly cut and rarely used them. I did think about using up bunches of them in Bonnie's Orange Crush quilt, but I haven't found the time to work on it. So there they sat...until tonight.

This morning at school, the art teacher came to me and said, "You're a quilter. Would you have any scraps that you'd like to donate to the art classes? We make puppets and the fabric I have has been rooted through for so many years, I just can't look at it again. What I really need is strips of fabric, we use them for the arms of the puppets..." Strips? Did she say STRIPS? Of course I have strips. So the bags above are going to the art teacher tomorrow....and my strip bins are EMPTY!!!!

I don't know how many yards of fabric are in there, but all of them have been used in one quilt or another over the years and it's nice to see them going to a good home. AND THEY'RE OUT OF MY SEWING ROOM!!! Of course, I did manage to make room for a few new fabrics in the last week. The fabrics below are from my stash and have been paired with the new fairy fabric from Michael Miller. These will become a quilt for a special little girl.

And these are....just because I loved them when I stopped in The Little Shop a few weeks ago. I have no idea what they'll become.

Judy was having a Quiltathon today and I got to play a little bit. I spent several hours quilting on a customer quilt. I'm quilting an all over feather design and today was one of those days where I got "in the zone" and it felt good to quilt. Until my back started to hurt. So I went upstairs and sewed the binding on the front of the second graduation quilt. The handsewing will be done over the weekend since it's going to be hot and humid here for the next few days...I'll be sitting under an air conditioning vent while I sew!

Wow, two posts in the same week...my mom is going to be happy! :o)

Quiltathon

On Friday night, my beautiful daughter attended the Junior Dinner Dance with a friend. Isn't she lovely?

She was a bit more refined once we arrived at his house for pictures!

Then we took daughter number two out for some shopping and dinner at Panera...


It was a beautiful weekend here in South Jersey. Saturday was 70 degrees, although overcast, and Sunday was cooler, but sunnier. We ran some errands on Saturday morning, including a trip to the little yarn store in town, which is having a retirement/going out of business sale. I came out empty handed...most of what was left was specialty yarns, which I don't really need. Once home I was able to spend a good bit of the afternoon in my sewing room. I made my next Dear Jane block, C-3.

Then spent some time working on my Lucky Stars quilts. On Sunday we spent a few hours working in the yard, then I sewed for awhile longer.
It was a quiet weekend, but very productive. The boss is off to Anchorage this week and Seattle next week, so it will just be the girls and I at home. If I don't get lazy, I should get a lot done!

Weekend...

We thoroughly enjoyed our little vacation on Friday and Saturday. After dropping our daughter off at the Convention Center in Wildwood, NJ where she was attending the convention for the Episcopal Diocese of NJ (she was a page) we headed up to Atlantic City. It was a beautiful, cold, windy day...did I say cold? It was freezing on the boardwalk! We left a few dollars here....
and decided that we didn't need to come back to the casinos again. I haven't been to Atlantic City in years, but the last time I was there, if you won on the slot machines you got ACTUAL MONEY. That was the excitement of it, watching the machines spit out the quarters, pulling the handle, the cha-ching of the coins hitting the tray...at least it was for me. Now that the machines are electronic, the fun is gone. No little buckets to load your quarters in, no need to pull the handle on the machine...everything is done with the push of a button and I guess if I had actually won something, I probably would have gotten a little printout like I do when I put my change in the coin counter at the bank. What a disappointment.

After shopping unsuccessfully at the outlets (these are new too!) we headed into Philadelphia. We stopped for a quick lunch at Applebee's on the way. We checked into the hotel and had a beautiful view of the Ben Franklin bridge from our 10th floor window.

We visited the Art Museum and wandered around while listening to live Jazz Music. I shared my high school art knowledge with the boss as we viewed the paintings and he still took me out to dinner in spite of it!

We had a delicious dinner at the Chart House on the waterfront, and had a beautiful view of the Battleship New Jersey while we ate. Check out the battleship's website, it's done by FuriousBall, who is quite talented...not only does he design great websites, but he's an awesome guitar teacher! Yesterday morning we stopped at the 4th Street Deli for breakfast and had a view of Center City from our table...

Then we got back on the road and picked our daughter up back in Wildwood...we put a few miles on the car this weekend!

I did my best to participate in the Quiltathon today. I loaded this quilt for Project Linus this morning, quilted it, made the binding and hand sewed it down. I looked for another project to work on and realized that I don't have any piecing to do, except for my Dear Jane quilt, which I didn't feel like fussing with. I'll have to come up with a new project...time to go through the old magazines!
No stashbusting happened this week, all the fabric for this quilt (except for the four patches) came in last weekend and it's all gone now, so this week was a wash. Once I figure out what quilt to make next, I'll be hitting the stash again!

Shocking!

I woke up yesterday morning with a migraine. I had an appointment with the doctor anyway, so he gave me some Fiorcet to make the rest of my day tolerable (okay, and just a little happier!). In the afternoon I had a chiropractor appointment...he started working on me and proclaimed my neck and shoulder to be "horrendous" and promptly hooked me up to this little contraption...
After 30 minutes of watching my muscles jump in ways I never knew they could, I actually began to feel a little better...at least until the Fiorcet wore off!

Early tomorrow we're off on a little adventure which will take us here for a walk on the boardwalk and maybe a little casino action...

And eventually we'll wind up here for wine and jazz music amidst the artwork...

I can so use a mini-vacation! See you on Sunday for the Quiltathon!