a weekend of quiltiness . . .

What a lovely weekend!  It was filled with a lot of quiltiness. For one thing, I've been very diligent about getting in at least fifteen minutes of  'quilting' in each day.  Whether it's hand-work or sewing or shopping or designing or organizing in the Nook ... I've been very successful in hitting my goal and actually exceeding it on most days, which is very exciting to me!

Thursday kicks off my weekend (we work four, ten-hour days), and Thursday evening I did a little more embroidery sketching and then spent some grand time with the girls!

This little chica has such big personality! She wore four or five different costumes before it was bedtime!

Friday, we spent on the boat. Todd fished (and fished well, I might add) . . . 

While I stitched (and read and swam and napped) . . . 

I've made four or five of these sweet little hexie mug rugs over the last several years, and gifted them all away. This one is for me!

The top is finished and ready to trim and assemble for quilting.  Yay!

We finished Friday with a gorgeous sunset . . .

Gosh, what a beautiful way to end the day!

Saturday was filled with quiltiness from beginning to end. My collaboration partner and I were one of the teams drawn at July's guild meeting to participate in a shop hop!

It was a great group of ladies . . . there were fifteen in all. And we did shop 'til we dropped! Five stores participated and treated us grandly with goody bags and fabulous discounts! In turn, I did my part by spending a little something in each of the shops we stopped in . . .

A pretty decent little haul! My fave find (well, gadget-wise, anyway) was the cute little "lipstick."

Isn't that COOL???!  The fun thing about shopping with a group of quilters is that you enable each other.  We may have bought out the entire of their inventory on this one.  LOL!

I took this shot for posterity.  These are my COLORS!!  ♥  If there's family fabric shopping for me, this is a good start.  Hahaha!

Sunday was a quilty-guildy (quuildy?) day, too.  We had our final board meeting for the 2018-19 year; our guild year ends with the August meeting.  The short board meeting was followed by the transition meeting ... where the outgoing board members met with the incoming board members taking over their respective positions, and handed over responsibilities.  Then we had a potluck dinner, provided by the outgoing board members, and then the new board had its first meeting of the new year!  Let's just say I didn't stick around after dinner.  I'll still be helping ... it'll just be behind the scenes. And I won't have to go to board meetings.  ;)

Anyway, I got home early enough that I could put in some Nook time and worked on my mystery quilt (which is due Thursday).  Have I ever mentioned I put the "pro" in "procrastinator"?

Rows 1-3 are completed and stitched together.  Row 4 is in blocks, which need to be stitched together and added to rows 1-3.  And row 5 has all the components ready to be stitched into blocks.  Then two simple borders need to be added.  It's pretty straightforward and I'm confident it will be ready in time.  Uh-oh ... or maybe not . . . looking at this picture I just realized there are two three "oopsies" in the first row.  Yikes!  Now I'm very confident I'll get in my daily 15 minutes every day this week!

:)

a successful national quilting day celebration . . .

What a fun weekend!!  Our guild's pancake breakfast fundraiser and the scavenger hunt that followed were both huge successes.  I had a BLAST!  Mostly because I was part of a great team . . .

We were "The Bloomers".  We didn't win (though we were close) but we had a lot of fun and collected all our clues! We drove close to two hundred miles. Yikes! One of our tasks was to grab a picture of the shop with the most thread on display . . . 

I was so tickled that I could take a panographic shot!  It really was a LOT of thread!

We also did lots and *lots* of great shopping.  I tried to purchase a little something from every shop:

I tried and succeeded!  LOL!!  Lots of fun things. Several were freebies. I picked up the specialty thread I needed for an upcoming swap. We also got some nice freebies. The SEW embellished! book caught my eye right away and felt like a needful thing. (Haha!) Notice what's not there??  

Not a single bit of fabric.  Not even a fat quarter!!  LOL!!  Consequently, my stash report has a little movement on the outflow and none on the inflow:

Used/donated this week: 1.5 yards

Used/donated year-to-date: 12.0 yards

Purchased/added this week: 0.0 yards

Purchased/added year-to-date: 37.0 yards

Net used/donated for 2013: -25.0 yards

I was actually pretty impressed that I managed to shop for five hours ... in fabric stores ... and not purchase the first yard. I truly just didn't see anything that "called" me. Lots of pretty stuff, though, trust me! 

I did get these fun Kanzashi flower makers ... there are several different templates available and I got three of them.  I tried my hand at a couple of flowers Saturday night . . .

Are they darling?  And they took no time at all.  I see matchy-matchy dresses and flowers for barrettes or headbands.  That's what I see!

Sunday I enjoyed the lovely, lovely weather ... I took some fun shots of the camp, too . . .

Everything's starting to bloom out ... and even the fishes were out, finally!  And they were hungry, too.  Wish I'd had Sawyer with me.  He'll make a good fish-feeder, I have no doubt!!

And since it was quiet, I had the afternoon/evening to finish up my Crazy Quilting course!  Whoohoo!!!

I'm so happy to have successfully completed the class -- and to have such a pretty set of stitching tools, to boot!  Now I'm itching to create my first solo block, which will definitely be tea-themed.

Nothing really on the design wall per se.  I've got Joc's wedding quilt to work on, still, as well as the pineapple center to put together (for this month's "get 'er done") and I've got this month's doll swap quilt to work on.  I've got the overall design/theme . . . 

I am just trying to decide which way I want to go with the Irish chains!  Any thoughts?  I posted the two pics on facebook and have had some great feedback!  I'm really wishy-washy on this one.  I guess because it's not for me?  

Linking up today's post to Stash Report #11 and Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times and to Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts!

I've got a lot of ministry / Camp MACOBA catch-up to do this week.  So that's on my calendar and will keep me from stitching today and tomorrow, probably.  But last week's time with family was *totally* worth it!  And we had a glorious weekend for our campers -- and our D-Now girls came in and did a FABULOUS job in their service project!  So even though it's raining and grey today, the camp looks *super*!  Have a great week, y'all!

:)