Fabric Love.

To celebrate the successful end of my first semester of grad school, I decided to do what any girl would do in my situation - shop!

By the way - have you entered my giveaway for a copy of Tula Pink's City Sampler yet? I am so glad that I bought two copies of the book so I get to keep one for myself. Now I just need to decide what fabrics to use in the sampler quilt...

Weekend Sewing

After months of nonstop work, my dashing husband finally has weekends off this month, which makes me jump for joy. Since the weekend is usually my sewing time, I haven't made much progress on anything really in the sewing front.

In the evenings my husband and I have been watching Prison Break (ya we don't actually watch tv much) so I've been in search of a creative outlet that did not involve my sewing machine. I tried my hand at english paper piecing awhile back without much luck....it just didn't stick. I have since moved on to cross stitch, which seems to be doing the trick for now. Here's a sneak peak of my recent project.

Despite not having time to use my sewing machine, I have managed to get my hands on some new fabric including this glorious charm pack of Architextures.

I don't usually purchase charm packs - but I love this line and am hoping to make a quilt out of it sometime soon...anyone out there a fan of charm packs or have a quilt pattern you'd like to share?

Quilt Shop Spotlight: Quilt in a Day

While in Southern California I had the wonderful opportunity to visit a darling quilt shop - Quilt in a Day. 

If you are ever in the area, I highly recommend planning an afternoon to go visit. I even took my non-quilting family members who kept their complaining about my substantial amount of time looking at fabric to a minimum.

The people who worked there were so friendly and graciously allowed for me to take a billion pictures of their shop. Sadly my memory card messed up so some of them didn't turn out, but I do have a few to share with you...a little teaser if you will.

First up, gorgeous quilts like the one above adorned all the walls. I loved the fact that there were modern quilts mixed in with some more traditional quilts...my dad was especially enamored with the lovely quilt featured below.

Quilt in a Day has an excellent collection of fat quarters displayed in fun ways all throughout the store. I really liked this bookshelf display, but there were other equally awesome displays in the other 3 rooms (yes 3!) of the shop.

This is one my favorite vignettes in the store - love the use of the oven!

They also carry a lovely collection of solids...I wanted all of them of course, but surprisingly walked away without any of them...I am sorta regretting it but luckily for me they have an excellent online store so I can remedy that...and you can too!

While I obviously wanted to purchase the entire store, I showed massive restraint and only went home with these beauties.

Project Sneak Peek!

One of the benefits of having a husband in medical school is the access I get to the library. His school's library offers to get any book - and if they don't have it, then they will borrow it from another library somewhere in the country. This is a lifesaver for our budget (especially since I read quickly). I've checked out a lot of quilting books - which I enjoy because it lets me look through the book before I decide if I want to buy it.

Recently I checked out Patchwork Style: 35 Simple Projects for a Cozy and Colorful Life by Suzuko Koseki. Stay tuned for a review of the book and one of the projects. So as I begin to work on a project (or two) in the book, cross your fingers it goes well and enjoy the photos!

I am linking up to Lee's blog for WIP in Wed...because this is my major WIP. =)

Mail Love!

As many of you are aware, my third love (behind my husband and quilting) is reading. So obviously I was over the moon when I discovered the Quilting Book Club over on Flickr. Combining two of my favorite things? Sign me up!

To make a long story short, I won a giveaway as part of being a member of the Quilting Book Club. Look at all the awesome goodies that were waiting for me in my mailbox:

Why yes, that's a copy of the pattern On a Whim by Thimble Blossoms, fat quarters of Moraccan Mirage by Anthology, some super cute scissors and a tape measure that even is magnetic! 

Wahoo! I now will go dance a jig.