Finished Projects!

It’s been a busy few weeks, but I did manage to get two projects completed.  The first one is a wool hootie owl from “Falloween Threads” by Need’l Love.  This guy stitched up pretty quickly, but he did take a bit of brown wool for the body, wings, and ears:

Wool Hootie Owl
Wool Hootie Owl

He was so cute, I am making another one out of a dark brown plaid.  I’ll post a picture when he is finished! I am trying to think of some fun way to embellish him for fall or Halloween – any ideas are welcome!

The other thing I finished was a hand-pieced wall hanging that I started at the beginning of the summer:

Hand-pieced Wall Hanging
Hand-pieced Wall Hanging

I took a hand-piecing  class from Corrine Kerns at Plain and Simple Quilt Shop and fell in love with this method.  This is definitely something that is very portable, and good to do if you don’t have access to a sewing machine.  I plan to hand-quilt it this winter.  This project also inspired me to embark on a larger hand-piecing project – details to come later.

That’s all for now.  I am trying to finish some other UFO’s before the end of the summer, only two more weeks to go!

Garage Sale

Here’s a picture of my sewing room:

Sewing Room

As you can see it also triples as a playroom and office.  I finally got tired of towering piles of fabric ready to fall at any moment, so I decided to sell about half of my stash at a garage sale!  I can hear the collective gasp of quilters everywhere – but to be honest, don’t we all have fabric we know we will never use?  For example, I have a ton of baby/toddler fabric I bought with the intention of creating beautiful hand-crafted items for my son.  He has pretty much outgrown the fabric (and he will definitely be too old by the time I actually get something made for him) – so I feel that someone else can get some enjoyment out of it.

My tastes have also changed – for example, do I really need 10 pieces of fabrics that have Sushi on them???  Or what about skulls -for some reason I have  a lot of fabric with dragons and skulls.  It was a lot of fun to sort through my fabric – especially looking at the wide variety of styles and realizing which fabrics I REALLY liked at the time  (identifiable because they were 2 yard cuts).  I didn’t get rid of any Halloween fabric.  I tried to, but I went back to the garage and retrieved it before the sale.  I just love the orange, black, purple, and lime green colors and scary motifs so much!  I got rid of quite  few jelly rolls, charm packs, fat quarters and books.  Which leaves me plenty of room for new stuff!

The garage sale was on Saturday, and was a big success.  It was an overcast day, so I think that kept away a lot of shoppers.  The ones that did come were very happy they did!  Most everyone walked out with about 5 or so yards for their stash.  It was fun to see which fabrics people selected for themselves, you can be surprised sometimes!  My best customer showed up in the last 30 minutes and probably bought 40 yards of fabric!!!  My husband had to load it into her car. All in all it was a good day, and I didn’t feel too bad since I knew all the fabric was going to good homes.