Giveaways

In my travels around Blogland, I find that a lot of bloggers have giveaways for various reasons. Usually all you need to do is post a comment on their blog to be entered. If I had been on the ball, I could have done this for my Blogiversary, but that came and went. Maybe next year!

However, I wanted to clue you all in to two giveaways that are going on right now:

Heather Mulder Peterson of Anka's Treasures is having a giveaway for her Blogiversary, and this is a great one! The grand prize is a quilt from one of her books. Hop over to her post to get the details.

Next (and I'm sure you are getting tired of me mentioning this one) The Fat Quarter Shop is also having a giveaway. They are debuting a new block of the month program called Pennsylvania Dutch using a new line of Moda fabric. Link over to their post to enter a chance at winning some of that fabric.

I'll keep my eyes open and try to let you know if I see any more!!

Stash Busting - Week 34

Well, as promised, I'm confessing my fabric purchase this week. Although I try to use lots of different types of prints, my usual color pallette seems to be darker, fall colors. But I've been seeing quilters posting pictures of their creations using these new, brighter colors, and they've really been growing on me. When I saw the Hopscotch collection at the Fat Quarter Shop, I just couldn't resist. In the past, fabrics that I've seen and was interested in ended up not being available when I wanted to purchase them, so I decided to just go for it this time. I already have a project in mind for them, too! I'm thinking that once class starts, this will be the next project that I work on. I have two other quilts in my head just waiting to be made, too! The bundle had 14 fat quarters, which is 3 1/2 yards of fabric. Yikes!

I did finish the second quilt top for class, which was all made from scraps and stash. I need to plug it into EQ so that I can calculate how much yardage I used, but I won't have time to do that for a couple of days. I'll count that yardage out next week.

Fabric in this week: 3.50 yards
Fabric out this week: 0.00 yards

Fabric in this year: 32.16 yards
Fabric out this year: 29.50 yards

Website Find: True Up

I ran across a great blog today called True Up . They have interviews and links and all things fabric. I'll be adding this to my list of blogs to read daily. They are also having a giveaway for a $75.00 gift certificate to the Fat Quarter Shop on the post where they interviewed the owner of that online fabric shop. And speaking of that, The Fat Quarter Shop is an awesome shop for the newest fabrics. I, ahem, bought some recently... I'll be confessing that in my Stashbusting report this weekend.

Project Runway is back!!

Yay!! Project Runway is finally back on tv after some legal troubles. It starts again Thursday night, August 20 on the Lifetime network. For those who don't know, this is a competition reality show where clothing designers complete crazy designing challenges to create runway fashions. It's a lot of fun to watch, and as a sewer I find it particularly interesting. Even though I've been hearing a lot of hype for the premiere, I think a lot of people still don't know it's back. Can't wait!

Blogoversary!

It's my 3 year blogoversary today!! It's hard to believe I've been doing this since 2006. It's been fun and it seems like I'm getting a little more traffic lately, too. I still want to do more -- maybe post a pattern or tutorial, but there never seems to be enough time in the day. Maybe when I retire (in 25 years)!

I busted a little stash this week. I had a class project quilted this weekend, and I intended to use my scraps for the project for the backing, but I didn't have nearly enough. I picked up a couple of yards of one of the prints from the front and I still had to do some creative piecing to have enough. Other than that, not much sewing done as we were out of town this weekend. Next weekend seems to be free (so far), so I plan to get a lot of sewing done to prepare for class, which is coming up fast.

Fabric in this week: 2.00 yards

Fabric out this week: 4.50 yards

Fabric in this year: 28.66 yards

Fabric out this year: 29.50 yards

Piece O' Cake & Alz Contest

I was blog surfing recently and found out that Becky Goldsmith from Piece O' Cake designs has a blog. I read through a month or two of posts and was riveted. She has an eye for color and design that I find fascinating. I've been a fan of the Piece O' Cake style for years, although the majority of their patterns revolve around applique, which I had been horrible at until recently. I read a lot of blogs regularly, mostly of regular home quilters like myself, but I do find some the blogs by the "pros" to be interesting and insightful. A lot of times you get to hear the inside scoop on designing, teaching and publishing. I think Becky's blog is a jewel and I look forward to reading it regularly.

One thing I found interesting is that Becky, John Flynn, Sue Nickels, and Hollis Chatalain (all quilting powerhouses) challenged each other to a fundraising showdown by creating small quilts for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative, which was founded by Ami Simms. It sounds like some good-natured, albeit competitive, fun all for a very good cause. For those of you not keeping detailed notes on my life :), I posted about Ami and my contribution to her cause here. You can read about their progress on these quilts on their blogs. I can't wait to see the finished products!

Stash Busting 2009 - Week 31

I know I'm starting to sound like an advertisement, and I swear I have no affiliation with the website, but Sew, Mama, Sew! has started their month of hand sewing this month. I'm looking forward to it. They will have tutorials and pictures of various hand-sewing projects all month long.

I didn't get much sewing done other than my block-a-day nine patches this week. My new sewing machine was not sounding well as I made these blocks, so I decided to drop it off for servicing. I know it has only been six months, but I didn't like the rough sound (like something was out of alignment) and I certainly did not want to make it worse. So on Saturday we brought it in to Eddie's Quilting Bee (where I got my machine) and it was pretty busy in there. Drew told me that they were a little backed up on machine servicing, but he would take a quick look at it on the spot to see if it was something simple. I'm so glad he did because we set it up and wouldn't you know it -- it sounded just fine. Fortunately my husband was there to corroborate my claim, otherwise I would have felt very silly. So I went ahead and brought it back home, and told them I'd bring it back if it sounded off again. I haven't had a chance to sew on that machine since then (yes, I'm a day behind on my nine-patches), so we'll see how it goes.

Yesterday I had a sewing day with my sister and mom. We worked on a project that my sister and I had been wanting to make for (literally) years! Tiny tulips with a pretty floral border wall quilt. We all brought tons of fabric to share, and ended up only using the tiniest of pieces for the project, so nothing of any size to count out of my stash. However, when I was pulling fabrics I came across a lot of pieces that were very old and I knew I would never use them, so I washed and ironed them and donated them to a charity that makes clothes and quilts for those in need. It felt great to bust some stash and donate to a good cause. I'll have to do some more rooting around in my bins and get rid of more fabric that I know I'll never use. The oldest piece said 1982 on the selvege!!! And now I get to count 7.5 yards out of my stash!

Fabric in this week: 0.00 yards
Fabric out this week: 7.50 yards

Fabric in this year: 26.66 yards
Fabric out this year: 25.00 yards