Sunday Stash - "winnings" from Canada :)

A while back Krystal (from over at WIP Girl) posted an offer to send a copy of Quilty magazine that she was done with to one of her readers - and I won!  Though the Canadian and US Postal Services tried to thwart us, I received a sweet bundle from her a couple weeks ago.

The copy of Quilty was the main item:

But Krystal was also kind of enough to include a few pieces of fabric in my favorite colors - red and teal (along with a very Canadian note card):

Quilty folk really are the best :)

Linking up with Molli Sparkles, who also received some fun mail recently!

Bathroom upgrades!

I spent (ok, hubs helped too) a large part of Memorial Day weekend sprucing up our upstairs hall bathroom.  There is nothing really wrong with anything in it from a function perspective, but the oak vanity was dated looking, to say nothing of the light fixtures and gold towel bar, etc.

First we (ok, hubs) swapped out the light fixtures for these that I purchased from Wayfair (I think - I looked at a LOT of light fixtures)...

Before - silver "naked" fixtures

After - oil rubbed bronze fixtures!

Pleased with this first step, I soldiered on.  A while back (when it was too cold to open a window and do this project) I had purchased the Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations kit with the intention of refinishing the bathroom vanity.  The kit comes with a de-glosser, paint/stain, decorative glaze, gauze for applying the decorative glaze, paint stir sticks and scrubbers for the de-glosser.  All I needed was a paintbrush and blue tape.  You buy the kit at the home improvement store and they tint it for you.  I chose to have them tint the paint/stain in the "chocolate" color.

Before - builder grade oak.  I got a little ahead of myself and removed the doors and drawers before I remembered to do a "before" photo!  So picture the doors and drawers with gold pulls on them, ok?

  Several steps later, I had this:

After!  Sorry for the less than stellar photography - it's hard to photograph a small bathroom!

 And here's the whole picture:

Ta da!

I'd definitely recommend the Rustoleum kit.  It was a pretty straight forward process, but not fast due to drying time and doing several coats of the different steps.  Totally worth it though!

I have since spray painted the towel bars and toilet paper holder with Rustoleum Metallic Spray Paint in Oil Rubbed Bronze, so bye-bye gold!  It sounds a bit crazy, but I think I need to get hubs to remove the toilet flushing mechanism so I can spray that lever too.  I'd spray the shower curtain rod also (woo hoo for spray paint!), but I don't think it'd hold up well with the curtain sliding back and forth.  Then new faucets (round 2, the first set I returned because they didn't seem well assembled) should be arriving next week!

Linking up with Really Random Thursday (when Thursday actually rolls around).

Sunday Stash - belated winnings share!

Hopefully most of you blog readers are aware that Faith, over at Fresh Lemons Quilts, hosts a monthly giveaway day (if you're not aware, make sure to mark it on your calendar for July 1!).  She has several awesome sponsors and her giveaways (as well as the rest of her blog) are pretty great :)

April's giveaway day was even awesomer (yes, it's a word) because I won!  My prize was a set of 8 half yard cuts of fabric of my choice from the very lovely to work with Jodie at Fort Worth Fabric Studios - awesome, right??

And then I was a blogging slacker and didn't bother to share my new pretties with the world.  But now I'm trying to be back and better late than never, right??  Without further ado, here are my picks:

Garden Pin Dot in Snow by Michael Miller (on the right)

I got the Snow to go with the fabrics for the Modern Quilt Guild Michael Miller challenge.  This year's fabrics were a set of fat eighths from his Petal Pinwheels collection ( also pictured on the left).  This is my first time participating and I have a plan for what I'm going to do but haven't started yet...it's all good though, because the challenge runs until July 25th and the plan is the hardest part, right?

Water Lily Circles and Geometric Flowers in blue/pink by Benartex.  No plan yet, just fun fabrics.

20/20 in jewel by Michael Miller.  LOVE this.  May be regretting I didn't get a full yard.  I think I see (haha - get it??) pouches in the future!

Lolli Dot and Giraffe Love in citron/grey by Michael Miller.  Cute for baby stuff, and gender neutral.

Doggy Dog Dogs in white by Robert Kaufman.  No plan, but I thought they were cute :)

So those were my winnings!  Fort Worth Fabric Studios has a great selection and it was hard to narrow down my choices.  Many thanks again to Jodie and Faith!

Linking up with the Sunday Stash-ers, this week hosted by Nicholas at Quilts in the Attic!

ALYOF - June goal

So I completely missed the boat with May sewing, but I'm determined to be back in the ALYOF game for June.  My goal this month is to get my quilt of Valor (aka Valor) bound, washed and a "presentation case" made.  As an added bonus, finishing this baby is one of my Quarter 2 goals, and you know what they say about two birds and one stone, right?

It's really kind of embarrassing that Valor's not done yet.  Literally all I need to do is bind it.  I've even had some of the binding cut for a month or more.  As you can see, it's a Denyse Schmidt print that I found at JoAnn's in the remnant bin a while back.  Since it's a remnant I don't think there's quite enough to do the whole binding, so I'm improvising a bit.  The other fabric is a Michael Miller (I think) print that I used to back my nephew's quilt (my brother's in the Army, so it seemed a fitting choice). 

I've also got to make a "presentation case," which in this case translates into a pillow case.  There's a nice tutorial on the QoV website for making a "sausage" type pillow case, and hopefully these fabrics will do the job.  The red is from Cloud9 and says "Nature Walk Moss/Crimson" on the selvedge.  I got it online forever ago to maybe make a tote bag with.  The blue stars, very fittingly, came from my door prize for the QoV Sew Along day!

Should be completely do-able, right??

Linking up with the other June goal setters!

Hands2Help - an almost finish

I have (obviously) been neglecting my blog lately, but honestly I've also been neglecting my sewing room, too!  I got out of the groove after spending so much time finishing up the floor project, and then my allergies were crappy, and then I worked on a little bathroom project (more to come on Tuesday) and more excuses, excuses.  But I had promised Sarah, over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, that I would donate 3 quilts through her Hands2Help quilt drive and so I had to get back in the sewing room.  The linky ends at 6 pm CST and this one's not quite done, but I'm posting anyway.

I decided to go with another "low volume" quilt for the third donation.  Maybe more of a girly quilt compared to Ribbit, which is maybe a little more boyish.  I cut 5" squares from fabrics like those I'd used for my Pooh quilt and pieced it in a simple patchwork.

I've got a floral pink (with some blue for added length) for the backing and some muted blues to do the binding with.  I think it'll turn out pretty sweet.  As an added bonus, all of these fabrics were given to me, which makes this little quilt even sweeter if you ask me :)

Linking up with Sarah and all the other Hands2Help finishers!

April ALYOF - goal complete!

It appears that I haven't touched my little ol' blog in about a month!  I don't have much sewing to show for the month of April, but we did get our floors installed!  Man, what an under taking that was.  We're pretty happy with the outcome, but I'm honestly not sure if I'd be up for doing it again.

Here's a shot of the foyer after - before was covered in icky linoleum.

I knew that April was going to get eaten up by the floor project, so I didn't set a very lofty goal for April.  (An as an added bonus, this finish is also on my Quarter 2 Finish Along list.)  One of my co-workers just purchased her first home, so I made her some of my favorite cloth napkins.  I had wanted to do them in that cool lime green that's so popular now, but I didn't find exactly what I was looking for.  So instead I went with a green and blue combo that (I think) is fun and summery.  Hopefully she'll like them too - and put them to use!

Linking up with the other April finishers and with the Quarter 2 finishers

More goal setting - Quarter 2 and April

It's time again for goal setting - both for the 2014 Finish Along and for April in ALYOF.

1.  House-warming napkins
No photo yet, as I haven't bought the fabric (going to do that tomorrow), but one of my co-workers has just bought and moved into her first house.  Her kitchen is that funky (nice funky, not icky funky) Granny Smith Apple Green color, and I hopefully I'll find some fun fabric to make some of my favorite cloth napkins for her.  In my head I'm picturing zig-zags and polka dots, but we'll have to see what's available, I guess.  Finishing these napkins is also going to be my ALYOF goal for the month.

2.  Chinese print napkins
No real plan for giving these to anyone, but they've been sitting in their little piles waiting to be finished.

3.  Quilt of Valor
This is actually #1 on the list, as it's really the closest to being finished.  It's all quilted (beautifully by Jordan at the Quilt Corner) and is in need of binding, a label and a "presentation case" before it can be sent off for it's new owner.

A close up of Jordan's beautiful quilting from the back.

4.  Quiet Volume Quilt
I have more 5" squares left over from the Pooh Bear quilt and had been wanting to make another one, minus the Pooh fabric because that's all used up except for one square.  Sarah, over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, is hosting a quilt drive for three different charities, so I thought now would be a good time to make up the next Quiet Quilt.

5.  Baby Shower Gift
Another coworker is pregnant with her first baby, due on August.  In the name of trying to get stuff done in a timely manner, I pulled some fabric to make a taggie blanket and/or some squishy blocks to have ready for a shower.  They've decided not to find out the gender, hence the somewhat neutral nature of these prints.

So that's it!  Five goals for Quarter 2, and a small goal for April.  There's probably not going to be a whole lot of sewing going on around here for the next two weeks, as the hubs and I are going to try and install our new floor.  Wish us luck!