Auction quilt, earrings and my poor, poor dog

Whoo-wee, I've been busy! My new job at Quilter's Corner is going great! Also, the Richmond chapter of The Modern Quilt Guild is in full swing. Personally, we've also been busy with RT's exam, typical end of the year school activities, and purging all of our ridiculous junk in preparation for a big yard sale this Saturday. I love yard sales. I am happy to give things to Goodwill, but I like to at least try to get something for them first. Yard sale to the rescue!

One thing I haven't done much is sewing, hence the lack of posts. But I have a few things to show. the first is a not-so-great photo of this past year's auction quilt. I stepped into the project after the idea had been determined, so I didn't have much say in how it was put together. Basically, each child chose a country and then they colored the flag for it. This photo shows it draped over some chairs in the lobby of the school. The lobby chairs all have arms, so that's why it looks so lumpy.I have to say, this is not my favorite project. I felt like the kids didn't have much involvement in it (coloring? Really?) and so they didn't have the emotional investment they have had in the past. I don't even know how much it went for! Oh well. If I do it again next year, I'll make sure I have some say in what happens. With Molly being in first grade, this was a new classroom for her.

Over Spring Break I went to Corolla, North Carolina. They rented a house for the week and Molly and I were able to join them for a couple days so RT could study. I bought these earrings.
At first I didn't realize why I liked them so much. There were several styles, all using the same beads, but in different shapes. Later I realized these look like little quilts! No wonder I love them so much!

In sad news, Snickers is not doing great. She's 16 now, which is very old for a Belgian Malinois. She has been losing weight like crazy. For most of her life, she was 55 pounds. A couple nights ago she was down to 29. She still eats, but nothing sticks with her. The vet said she probably has cancer somewhere but she's so old she wouldn't be able to withstand the anesthesia for a biopsy, much less any kind of treatment. I don't know how much longer she'll be with us, but for now we just love her and pamper her as much as we can.
Those bumps sticking out by her waist are the wing-y parts of her vertebrae. And here you can see her backbone pretty clearly.

Those are her hipbones; yes, they are.
A dog with this much undercoat shouldn't show her ribs. But I don't think she's hungry. She eats with the same patterns as she always has (leaves part of her breakfast but eats it all at dinnertime). I think it's just not staying with her; the cancer is taking all the energy and nutrients. This post shows what she looked like in healthier times.

We have had her a long time. We got her when she was seven years old from the Humane Society. I never thought she'd be with us longer than she was with her first family. She's a wonderful companion and we are doing our best to show her that we love her. I don't think she's in pain. She doesn't pant or whine. And she still wags her tail and follows me around the house when I have food. So in that sense, she's just like she always was. What a good dog.

Shopping, shopping, shopping!

Oh, sure the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival had plenty of quilts on display, but we all know the real reason we go: shopping! Truthfully, I didn't buy much. Being an employee of a quilt shop means I see so many fabrics go by that if I had $1,000 to spend on fabric, I know right where it would all go! And tools can be ordered. No, for Mid-Atlantic, I had my eye on things that I couldn't get at Quilting Adventures. I only bought two things of note (other things I purchased were stocking up on things I could get for a bargain).

One is this ingenious kit. It's laser cut! Such perfect little pieces, down to the notches! It's tiny; it will finish at 16 x 20 total. The blocks finish at four inches. And those curves would be a bear to cut myself. Totally worth the 20 bucks.
I also bought these shoes. Yes, shoes at a quilt show! They are a little dirty in this photo as we were doing some yard work yesterday. But they feel awesome. I have to stand for long periods at work and I've been having some plantar fasciitis in one heel, and these shoes help a lot.
Also, you may have heard that Borders is in bankruptcy, so we did a little shopping there this weekend, too.

Books, 25% off!
Magazines, 50% off!
Good thing my birthday is this month!

I'm in love!

This past Friday, my wonderful husband and I went to lunch. I said, "I have no ambition. I think we need to get away." He said, "okay, where are we going to go?" I wasn't really meaning this weekend, but thanks to him, we ended up leaving the next morning and spending a long weekend in Philadelphia! I love that we have a small enough family and a great next door neighbor (who is always willing to watch our pets).

So, Saturday we went to the Mütter Museum. Their website isn't very useful, but it was a great museum to go to. It's full of medical specimens. Have you ever wondered what a 75 lb ovarian cyst looks like? Or are you curious about forensic anthropology? Or the skeleton of a man with a disease which causes his soft tissues to calcify into bone? They have it all. It's amazing. To hear a description, you might think it's like a circus side-show, but it's all presented in an educational, non-exploitative manner. In fact, no photos are allowed inside the museum. So here's Molly outside instead.We also went on a short horse-drawn carriage tour of the Independence Mall area (Molly's favorite part of the trip) and saw the Liberty Bell.On Sunday we went to the Franklin Institute Science Museum. Later that day we drove around and eventually ended up at the King of Prussia Mall. I have memories of going there on band trips in high school when we went to Philly to march in the Gimbels parade.

On Monday, we checked out of our hotel. We ate breakfast at a cute diner called Mrs. K's. We had been sick of eating at the extremely overpriced hotel restaurant (seriously? Nine bucks for a bowl of oatmeal? You're kidding me) and were very happy to have found it. The waitstaff was really nice and the locals eating there were friendly and chatty. And a bowl of oatmeal was only about $2.50. No website, though.After breakfast, we checked out Fabric Row. I only went to one shop and was a bit turned off. Maybe I went to the wrong shop. It was crowded and it was hard to see everything. I did buy a bit of fabric to make a ballet skirt for Molly.

The highlight of the trip for me, though, was a quilt shop we stopped at called Spool. This is why I posted that I was in love. The shop was quite small and didn't have a ton of fabric, but what they did have was breathtaking. No batiks, no blenders, no novelties; just designer prints and some solids (and a few shot cottons and Kaffe homespuns and stripes). But what they didn't have in quantity, they made up for in quality. So clean and gorgeous!First impression as you walk in:This is pretty much the extent of their fabric shelves. The only shelves you can't see here are a couple in the back where they have sale fabrics and some home decs.
Here is their classroom area. So cute with the coordinating sewing machine covers!
Another view of their display (really, their only one).
Their patterns.
Here is my haul. First is a laminate that Molly picked out. I need to make the Amy Butler kids raincoat for a shop sample. So I'll make two, so Molly can have one now!
Here's the fabric I bought, just because. It was hard to stop at five yards. The person helping me, who was super friendly, said that the whale fabric was designed by someone local. There were several of her designs there.
And I bought their two bags of scraps. Seriously, you could make something beautiful out of anything they had there. I figured even their scraps would be delicious. I bought the only two bags of scraps they had. If they had had ten, I probably would have bought all ten.
If you go to Philadelphia, visit this shop. I was blown away. So small, but perfect. Only the best of the best. There's a yarn shop next door called Loop that I didn't go to, but they seem to be connected in some way. If I were a knitter, or if I hadn't already spent over $100, I would have gone there, too!

Mid-Atlantic

I went to the Mid-Atlantic quilt show on Friday and did a little shopping. Not much. I bought a necklace made of buttons (which I don't have a photo of at the moment). I also bought some African fabrics:
And a very cute pattern I'm going to make for Molly (along with some fabric for the brick walls):
And if you haven't heard, we had a boatload of snow here. This is by far the most we've had since we've lived here. It's like being home!

Shopping!

Okay, I know, like I needed a new project. But we were in Michigan for my aunt's funeral, which meant I was with Marie, my quilting sister. So of course we had to go to a quilt shop! We went to one that has a lot of flannels and I bought this collection. This is actually a couple of bundles plus two more fabrics I bought from a shop we visited during the drive home. The darkish purple on the right is for the back. The starry print will be the main print -- it's what I have one yard of. The rest are half yards and fat quarters. It's all flannel! I haven't done anything with flannel before, so this will be fun. And since Molly moved to her twin size bed, her existing quilts don't fit any more. So yeah, that's it. She needs me to make her a new quilt. Right? Exactly.