Shades of Gray Swap

Well, I've done it again!!  I have fallen under the spell of a swap...If you click on the "Shades of Gray" over there on the right, you will be linked to the gal who is responsible for this swap!  I think there may be a few more openings if you are interested. And there will be a link to the Flickr account where everyone is posting their "shade of gray" fabric.

I went shopping yesterday after my guild meeting to get my yardage for the swap thinking that shades of gray would be no problem to find!!  There were several, but not as many as I had hoped...I really wanted a batik but any batiks I saw also had other colors..not just gray.  And many other fabrics had large prints and we are doing 5" charm blocks so large prints would not work!  I finally settled on this Robert Kaufman fabric which, the  more I look at it, the more I like it!!  I got more than necessary for the swap because it may become my focus fabric.

Shades of Gray Swap

Fortunately, all this will not come together for awhile which is a good thing as I am working like crazy to get my quilts ready for our guild show the end of September.  There is a possibility that I have overplanned!!!  Nah!! I'll git 'er done!!

Now This Is More Like Why We Live in Texas!!

After a really brutal couple of weeks of weather, we had a really wonderful weekend.  This evening we were even able to sit on the porch and have a little adult beverage while cooking some 'burgers.  And last night we actually got out of our "Saturday Night Netflix and popcorn" comfort zone and went to a concert at the Ed Landreth Auditorium/TCU Campus.  It was put  on by the Classic Guitar Society of Fort Worth.  The guest stars were Sharon Isbin (guitar) and Mark O'Connor (violin).  We had heard them on NPR and decided to give it a try....it was fantastic!!!  Loved every minute of it!!  What talented people!!

And the rest of the weekend was spent finishing up my Christmas stuff...except for the quilting and binding!!  That won't take long as these pieces are for functional use, not "show"!!!

Table topper: 24" x 23"

Table runner: 50" x 20"

Eight Place Mats/ four of each pattern.

All of these started out with panels and quite a bit of fabric I had on hand for some time.  The large areas on the placemats were the focal of the panel and the other insets on the other pieces were borders, etc.  Any of the "striped" fabric was from my stash of other Christmas fabric....now I need everyone to remind me next December to get them out.

On an earlier blog, I showed the Mug Rugs I was sending to Canada for a swap.  I didn't know who had my name until my mats came in the mail this week also from Canada...not the same person and here they are.....

Laurel Burch and Batiks...a couple of my favorite fabrics!