Lots o Sewin

I like things that end in zero -- my blog is getting closer to a milestone in views.

I completed a small hippo last week -- all except adding his eyes. these are so fun to make, I have a few others in the works and hope to have another 2 or 3 complete this week.

Friday was the big lock in at Sewingly Yours and it was a blast as usual -- I did manage to get my triangles quilt put together with the aid of my buddy Rox and her mad ironing skills. 

I started working on more string blocks but didn't get any actually finished yet because I was working on several at once. 
So it was an evening of fun, laughter, eating and sewing -- a great time. I did buy a new book and am excited about doing a few different projects from it. 

 Saturday was an exhausting one for me -- I decided it was time I traded the car in. We had it appraised about a month ago and had been looking heavily for a while but I find the whole process very over whelming and had given up until I saw a few new things at CarMax that I wanted to take a closer look at. We headed over there Saturday morning and in a few hours I was heading home with a new car. 

CarMax is a great experience because I suck at negotiating prices on things but my anxiety flared up so high that passing out was a real concern -- luckily I did not and only came out with a small case of hives. I am still adjusting to all the features that my other car was missing (remote entry, cruise, Bluetooth technology, xm radio) but I am loving these new amenities. This is also a good motivator in destashing more fabric and using what i have on hand to get me through the rest of the fabric fast. I will probably be putting some fabric on instagram in the next week because this will be my spending money for non essential fabric purchases maybe throughout the rest of the year if i decide to push the fast that long. 

Saturday evening I spent time in my craft room pulling out the fabrics that need to be put away properly -- you know how sometimes we just make a pile here or there with plans to put it up later or decide to not use fabrics that we have pulled so they sit to the side, apparently this had gotten out of control for me. 

So another task for this week is putting all this away -- good thing I'm off Friday. 

Yesterday I finally sat down and worked on actual projects for a short period and made some good progress. I trimmed the triangle quilt and had a super helpful photo assistant that tried wearing it as a hat. 

The wind was not being very cooperative so I finally got one decent shot of the top. 

It turns out there are 504 triangles in this quilt -- I think I have exactly enough yardage left over to make a backing. I love when that works out. Maybe I can baste this week? 

My other exciting progress is on the clam shell mini -- I got her quilted and am debating on binding. I am leaning toward the sketch fabric over the gold. I wanna get this completed so that I will take it to the guild meeting next week before shipping.

I tried my hand at paisleys for the quilting and I am generally happy with the outcome -- I can work to make them smaller next time and also not have bare spots (this was a directional issue at times and thread breaking at others). 

Looks like a busy week ahead but it's a long weekend so that means happy quilting for sure. 

I'm linking up over at SEWjo Saturday and she wants to know of an inexpensive and unconventional thing in my sewing room -- for me it's my thread catcher, AKA a soup mug.

linking up at Linky Tuesday