Works in Progress

A few works-in-progress. This pile of fabric came from a fun fabric swap with Trish.  I'm putting together a Christmas quilt. Don't ask me what I'm doing, I really don't know myself.  I'm kind of making it up as I go along.  I had one thing in mind and I tried it and didn't like it, so I hacked some more up and I'm trying something else.  I like how I can now refer to my quilting mistakes as  "improv quilting" and sound so much more creative and cool all at the same time.  I will share the final results win or loose.

 I've been trying to find more embroidery hoops for a wall collage in my daughter's room for a while now. I've had an especially hard time finding small ones. This week I hit the jackpot at the thrift store. Yay! I found 7 small and 6 medium and got them all for about $8. YES!

After the last post, a few people asked me how I find my good thrift finds.  Here it is: sheer luck. I have no great tips or secrets.  I don't have a ton of time to scour every thrift store and I don't want to accumulate a lot of stuff I don't need, so I'm pretty selective.  In fact I have just one that I hit on occasion.  Maybe it helps that I generally just stick with the one because I know exactly where to go in that store and I can do a pretty quick walk through of my hot spots.  And it's totally hit or miss. Sometimes I find something fantastic, most of the time not.  The last time I went I spent about 10 minutes because I had kids with me and we were only supposed to be looking for Halloween costumes and embroidery hoops. No luck that day. I just happened to take a detour past the pyrex and spotted the green bowl. Total luck. That's all.

This last time I went I was dropping off 4 giant bags worth of cleaned-out-closets (LOVE that feeling).  I ran in to check for hoops and got lucky.  But didn't come home with much else.  Just totally hit or miss. Luckily for me, it was a hit that day.

Here are some of the fabrics I'm using.  Once again, I will post a finished picture as soon as I finish. I'm hoping to work on this project today.

And finally, a little pile of inspiration. I recently ordered a bunch of random fabrics from Fresh Squeezed Fabrics. Some Ruby, Sandi Henderson's Secret Garden, a Strawberry Fields print that I love, a little Joel Dewberry, . . and when they arrived I was so smitten with how they looked all together.  I feel another project coming on.

Hope Saturday is (was?) good where you are. It's a rainy, blustery day here. Perfect for staying inside and working on projects and not feeling guilty because I should be outside doing yard work.

Also thanks for the very nice comments on the last post. There were some I could not respond to personally because they didn't have email addresses attached, but I was very touched by all of them. Thank you, thank you.

And I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday!