He Loves Me....

Mr. Random.org, that is.

I've been having the best of bloggy luck lately!

Things I've won in the last month:

A Briar Rose charm pack from Pattern Crush: (I borrowed this photo from Samantha, too).

Samantha (Pattern Crush) is local to me, in the sense that about an hour's drive can be considered local in the Chicagoland area.  She has an etsy shop that has some great modern fabrics in it!  Plus, she's a member of the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild, too.

So far, I also made a few things from the Patchwork, Please book and entered them into the Zakka 2.0 drawings.  You might remember my place mat from a couple posts ago, and the BLD towels.  Anyway, I was lucky enough to be the winner of the first quarter drawing, so I won a $50 gift certificate to Fat Quarter Shop!!!!  I'm a little bit overwhelmed by the choices and haven't used it yet.  Plus, I've been waiting for pay day, in case I go over the gift certificate amount, which we all know is easy to do!

As recently as this morning (well, it's still morning, I just woke up waaaaaay early today), I was notified that I won a giveaway over on 627handworks.  It's a nice little bundle of a fat eighth set, some Aurifil, some clover clips, a pincushion, a seam fixer, and a cute little box!  I just recently started following Julie's blog.   She has this series called Block Rock'n, which I think is weekly, and she posts a free paper piecing template.

Overboard....

I might probably have gone overboard on the pouch making:

My friend, Emily, was making a LOT of pouches for a garden walk faire and that put me in the mind to make some pouches, too.  Plus, earlier in the year, Emily was being totally generous to a few quick responding friends (she had put an offer on her FB page) and gave away a few pouches she had made. I was lucky enough to get one!  Anyway, it is such a nice size.  When I asked about fabric cutting sizes, she was nice enough to share with me.  I figured out/made up the rest on my own... pouches can be pretty standard once you have made a few.

So, on Thursday, I went on a cutting spree and cut out fabric for 10 pouches.  You might notice that there are only 9 in the photo... I ran out of time before I had to clean up for company and hadn't finished the 10th pouch yet.  Today, I sewed up the 10th pouch and cut out 8 more pouches, because that's all the interlining supplies I had on hand.  I had planned to finish them all today, but then I had a lazy day instead.  I'll finish them tomorrow.

Of course, I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with all of them!  I did manage to sell one of them to my friend.  My dad's cousin said she wanted 6 for Christmas gifts, but I'm not really sure if she wants them now or closer to Christmas.  We'll see on that one.  If all else fails, my family will be getting lots of pouches as part of their Christmas gifts.

In other news, I manage to make three trips into Chicago in one week:  1) a Cubs game with my dad/step-mom, step-brother and his g-friend, and my husband  2) a fancy dinner and 30 minute cruise off of Navy Pier for my friend's birthday  3) a concert at Soldier Field

These are only photos from the fancy dinner and boat cruise, of course.  We were actually supposed to take a sunset cruise on Lake Michigan, but we missed our boat.  We were running a bit behind, but still okay on time... except that the boat company has like three different spots on the dock and we followed what we thought we understood based on the map, but that ended up being wrong.  We're all college educated adults, so I think that the map/tickets and the boat company booths could all have been more clearly labeled.  Something like, "Your boat leaves from spot A/B/C" and then have each booth labeled with an A/B/C.  This would make a lot of sense to me, anyway.  Luckily, though, the sunset cruise was not the last cruise for the night.  So, they let us just switch our tickets to the next boat and that ended up being pretty cool with the night skyline of the city.

{catchy title here}

These photos are of most of the things that I have made in the last few weeks:

A bib for my youngest nephew:

A shopping tote made from this pattern:

The bag was really quick to put together.  I pretty much followed the directions.  The only thing I did differently for this one was after boxing the corners, the instructions would have you just tack up the corners on the inside, instead of cutting off the excess fabric.  I just cut it off.  This bag has batting on the inside, but I think that next time I will forego the batting.  I can see if you wanted to carry this as a purse, you might want the batting.  I just want to use this a a shopping bag, so I think leaving the batting out would make the bag less bulky to carry.

Another project from the Patchwork, Please! book:

This is called the Diamond Patchwork Placemat.  I used foundation paper piecing to make the diamond panels on each side.  The middle fabric is linen and the prints are all Anna Maria Horner fabrics that came in a scrap bag that I ordered last week.  I didn't have a whole piece big enough for the back/binding, but I had two pieces of the same fabric that I was able to stitch together and use.

A ninja pouch for my oldest nephew:

I just love the ninja fabric!  I only bought a fat quarter and I think I've used most of it already.


Over the weekend, I also attended a workshop sponsored by the Chicago MQG and taught by Victoria Findlay Wolfe.  Of course, that probably deserves its own post, so more on that one later.