The prize money has all been spent! I didn't have any problem spending it. I seem to have gotten into a knack this summer of shopping like crazy. Too bad I haven't made any time to actually sew, but I do have lots of projects to tide me over this winter. The end of the summer this year has been crazy and we've been going non-stop. My apologies for not responding to many of your comments! I have been reading them, but been lackadaisical about responding. Unfortunately for my quilting while the rest of the country has been sweltering in hot summer temperatures, we have had the perfect summer with temperatures in the low to mid 80s. Who wants to sit inside, when you could be at the beach?
In the mean time, here's where the prize money (and some extra) has gone.
I picked out border fabrics for the strip quilt I finished in July. I bought 3 yards of each, so I should have plenty extra to use in the backing or for another project.
I believe this book of Christmas patterns just came out. See the Matryoshka (Russian stacking dolls) on the front? I lived in Russia for a year after I graduated college and loved it. There are items from all over my house from Russia.
I loved these little ornaments, so I picked up the book and a stack of felted wool to make them. They might stay here at my house, or I may send them to my good friend who moved back to Russia permanently a few years ago and now lives there with her husband and daughter.
I've bought a lot of books lately. These three are all modern quilt books. I never thought I would be much of a modern quilt person, but lately I have been intrigued by some of the tequniques and "patterns". The back two are pattern books and since most use a lot of sold background fabric, I also picked up a few yards of tone on tone white fabric.
The front book is a really neat book of quilting patterns. There are a ton of neat free-motion patterns in this book, but one of my favorites was the pattern that Ruth at County Log Cabin showed as part of the June FMQ challenge which she is taking part in. If you haven't already, you should check her version of this pattern out
here. For now this is just inspiration, but one of these days I'm going to start trying out some patterns and improve my free-motion quilting skills.
The last things I picked up was these two panels. I've never seen these panels before, but I think I have fallen in love with
Susubee Textiles. The full panels are darling. The photos are better on their website so I didn't even try to take the entire panel photos. The sheep are named Lewe and the giraffe is Zoe. I am going to have to track down Norton (the elephant) sometime here soon as well. These should make really cute baby blankets the next time I need a gift in a hurry.
I'm pretty sure these should keep me busy for a while. Of course I still have those pesky block of the months that I need to catch up on. I'm making progress, so I'll post photos of those later this weekend. We have a class on Saturday to work on them for a few hours, so hopefully that will help.
