goose chase

As I am finishing up the binding on my nephew's eagle quilt, his sister has been talking more about her graduation quilt!  My Magpie will be graduating in December and she's really excited about her quilt.  I'm going to use this pattern, Goose Chase by Mark Lipinski.  This was published in Quilty magazine (July/August 2013).  Magpie has always liked flying geese blocks so this is the perfect quilt for her.

We went shopping yesterday (Labor Day sales) and bought seven  or eight different turquoise fabrics.  I'll sub turquoise for the black and red for the pink.  She also asked that I use a white on white text fabric instead of flat white.  Boy, that girl really knows what she wants!

A finish!

Magpie finished her quilt for her little sister.  Isn't she cute??

First projects of the year!

Magpie decided it was time for us to knock out the tooth fairy pillows for the Mafia.  So we did!

I also figured out my goals for 2014:

1. Follow the No S diet rules
2. Finish my Pilgrims quilt
3. replace my horrible sofa
4. replace my horrid carpet

Sounds doable!

Making with Magpie

Magpie needed a case for her kindle fire and needed to document a project for her speech class.  Ergo, auntie got sweet-talked into sewing.  This is a nice tutorial at Charm Stitch.

New totebag

Magpie finished her new totebag Saturday. She did almost all of this herself. I only helped with pinning and the topstitching. She's becoming quite accomplished. She can chat knowledgably about boxing and seam allowances-she even reminded me to "add an inch" when I went to measure blocks on a quilt that a friend had given me.

Upon completing the totebag, in true quilter fashion, Magpie immediately began cutting out squares for her next project. She's taking the FQ bundle she suckered me into buying on the shop hop and making a quilt for her little sister. I'm cutting and making Jaynie's quilt at the same time so we had a long discussion on what size squares to cut and how many we will use for each quilt. I won't see her for two weeks so she wanted me to delay sewing Jaynie's quilt until then. I told her I couldn't wait as I'm not sure when Jaynie is having her surgery and I really want to have it ready for her when she does.

I'm really proud of Magpie for sticking to her project and doing such a good job. My mom said that Magpie showed off her bag Sunday and that she's really proud of it.

Magpie's Bag

Magpie finished her bag last weekend:

And the proud quilter and seamstress!

Down the primrose path. . .

Magpie (dear niece #2) spent the day with us yesterday. We went off for Saturday coffee, stopped at JoAnns so I could get some more autumnal decorations, and went to my parents' church for their fall festival that they call HopeFest. It was a little disappointing this year. Very few vendors and they aren't having the children's games until today (and I am working this afternoon). They did have a tearoom so we had a nice lunch. Afterwards we went off to the resale shops. My DM and Magpie were looking for some jeans and I was looking for a costume for Tig. Red is going to be a fireman for Halloween and every fireman needs a dalmatian, right? I scored at the second shop and found a practically new dalmatian costume for $9.99! SCORE! We headed off home afterwards to enjoy hot fudge sundaes.

Magpie helped me get out all of the autumn decorations. (I asked DH if there was enough folk art out. heh heh) Then she was agitating to do a project. I was seriously tired at this point and just sent her off to the nee-nee room. She started pawing through my scraps and decided to make a new bag. She managed to piece one side and I donated a fat q of this adorable tree fabric (I found it at the FIFTH JoAnn's I visited. Note to self: if it catches your eye every time you visit a store buy the damn fabric!). She also made the lining out of some leftovers from the duvet cover we made her recently.We ran out of time to finish and I need to get some webbing for the straps but she's hooked!!!!!!!!! My dear Magpie will be a obsessed quilter any day now.