Care to guess?

A couple of friends and I have a silly hobby of picking up pennies or other loose change we find on the ground.  I seem to have a knack for it, so I decided on October 1 of last year to keep all the money I found in a piggy bank, just out of curiosity, to see how much I actually found in a year's time.  So now is your chance to guess - how much money did Lisa find on the streets of Seattle in the past year?   To help you a bit with your guessing, I weighed my piggy bank - the weight of just the money was 1 pound, 8.6 oz.  So - care to guess how much I found?  Submit your guess by the end of the day October 7, and the person who comes closest to the grand total will win 6 batik fat quarters in your choice of colors.

Happy Fall!

I love Fall - I'd have to say it's my favorite time of year.  Just the weather to make you want to throw something in the crockpot and work on a quilt!

I don't have any progress to show for my weekend.  I'm working on a Halloween gift for my swap partner, so while I did finish it (except for the quilting), I can't show it quite yet.

We're all supposed to make Christmas stockings for the quilt shop where I work.  I chose a fun Alexander Henry cowboy fabric and plan to make mine with suede-like fringe at the cuff.  But I haven't started my stocking, so I can't show that.

I finished the binding on my 4OT/Portobello Market quilt and dropped it off at the shop on Thursday.  I hope they get it up on display and when they do, I will snap a photo, but for now, I've got nothing.

Doing the binding in 2 days really did a number on my shoulder - that old rotator cuff injury flares up at the most unexpected times.  This is not good news, as I have about 6 quilts that need bindings.  My buddy at the quilt shop, Liz, agreed to a barter - she's going to sew a binding for me in exchange for some fat quarters.   This may be a good solution.

Move along people, nothing to see here.

There is not much being accomplished in my sewing room of late.  I am starting to get some projects ready to take to my guild retreat in November.  I try to have simple projects all cut out and ready for production sewing, but long sessions of cutting really aggravate my rotator cuff injury, so I have to do it a little bit at a time.

I picked up a new magazine at the grocery store last week, McCall's Quilting America Makes FAST Quilts.   This magazine is great and has 4 quilts that are now on my "must make" list.  My favorite, though is this Starring Repros quilt.  I love everything about it - the fabrics, the size, the star blocks.

You can buy a kit to make yours just like this, but since I wanted to be able to choose my own background fabric, I ordered a fat quarter bundle.  The fabrics are from a collection by Pat Yamin called Come Quilt With Me.  These 1940s reproductions are so unlike me, but I just fell in love with the picture in the magazine, and the fabrics in person are prettier still.  Even the few prints that I wasn't in love with grew on me as I began to cut them up.  These big, scrappy stars will make the perfect retreat project!

Two steps forward, one step back

Wow - it's been a week since I last blogged!  I should have a lot of progress to show for my week, but no, I don't, really.   I didn't get a lot of sewing done over the long holiday weekend, so I'm a little grumpy for not having spent much quality time in my sewing room.  I did finish these 3 Web Sampler blocks, so based on my last blog post, I should only have one left, right?  Well, in theory.  But, the setting I'm using requires 13 blocks, so that one on the right in the photo is my extra block.  I also decided to re-make one of my earlier blocks.  When I first started this sampler, I was planning to use 2 different background fabrics.  I guess I forgot that I planned to do that, and all of the blocks except one have used the same background.  The odd-ball block looks out of place because the background was quite a bit lighter than these Civil War Classics fabrics, so what's a Type A quilter to do, but remake the odd-ball?  So 8 + 3 -1 equals 10 and that means I still have 3 blocks remaining to finish the sampler.  Oh and a fafillion sashing blocks.  Best get started on those as well.....