Shopping!

Not a whole lot to show here today. We had two and a half grand kiddies (and their parents) for a long weekend of fun. The three-year-old entertained us with her free-form songs at the piano. (Any subject can be turned into a song!) The five-month-old rolled around and did lots of baby crunches (He'll be sitting before you know it.) And the littlest just looked adorable inside of mommy-to-be. But now the house is quiet again. I had cleaned up my mess before they came (my "studio" is the whole house, so I had to), but now it's all slowly coming out again. Mostly I've been cutting strips for the bedspread extension project for my niece, and I'm starting to play around with how to place them. Here's a quick look:

I'll be playing around with these some more before stitching them together. The two solid looking colors on the left are ones I found to replace a gauzy fabric and a very slippery one that just didn't seem like they'd sew up well. These have a tiny bit of design in them that doesn't show well unless you enlarge the picture, but I think they'll work okay. 

So today was the day of the huge sidewalk sale at a local fabric store, and I went with high hopes of finding a backing for the Big Quilt. They had lots of beautiful fabric, but I couldn't find anything that I liked for the quilt. (I did buy the fabric on the left, above.)  I found a nice print that wasn't on sale, but that would have cost a fortune for a back. Now, recall that I said the other day that I wished I could steal that bud-and-vine print in the above picture. Ha! I didn't have to steal it after all. I stopped at my local big box fabric store, and there it was!! (I had previously looked online and it wasn't showing up.) They only had about half of what I needed, but the same store on the other side of town had the same amount so I bought both stores out. The fabric wasn't on sale, but I had a 60% off coupon for regularly priced fabric, so whoopee, I saved a bundle. I also scouted out batting. I needed 124" wide batting and found a bin for Warm and Natural (the only brand of that size I can get locally), but it was empty. Bummer. But then a sales associate came by and said a truck had just made a delivery. She checked, and sure enough, the batting was there. I had another coupon for that, so even though I spent a lot of time driving around, the day was a Big Success. I do wish I could have showed you stacks and stacks of sidewalk sale finds--there was a lot to love, but I spent plenty without any impulse buying. There will be another sale someday. 

I'll be sewing the bedspread extension and piecing that backing for the Big Quilt during the next few days. Then I'm going to practice some machine quilting to try out some possibilities for the Big Quilt and also figure out just how I'm going to get that beast basted. I may need to clean the basement to free up some floor space. Thanks for all your suggestions in my last post. I'm inclined to do something with straight lines, but my daughter-in-law said she really likes meandering, so we'll see what comes of it. 

The pictures here aren't all that exciting, so here are a few from my garden this week (trying to work on my photography skills):

Maltese Cross

Stella D'oro daylily

Penstemon

I'm linking up today with Freemotion by the River, Sew Fresh Quilts and My Quilt Infatuation for the weekly linky parties. The buttons are on the right. Have a good weekend, everyone! See you next week.