Calm Before the Storm

I am in that awkward time of year again: The calm before the storm. I start back up as a full-time adjunct college professor in the beginning of September and until then am relishing my time with only one job. Of course by relishing my time I mean sewing my butt of!

Plus, the power steering on my car went out, came back, went out again, and came back again so I am trying to not go anywhere that isn't a requirement (Can't I just stay home and sew instead of going to work? My car is quasi-broken!) which leaves me with a lot of time at home to sew.

I have been working on another purse except this one is for my upcoming trip to Ireland!

Sadly I selected directional fabric and because of the pieces that fold over, some of my trees are coming out upside down. This is ridiculously frustrating to me, so I didn't even take a picture and will probably never finish the bag in this fabric.

But wait! There was happy progress also! I finally decided to sit down and force myself to try more FMQ. I am still too scared to try anything too big, and had only done a teensy bit on a mini-quilt, so I decided to make a potholder. For all of you Billy Madison fans out there, I made the fox blue because I'd never seen a blue fox and I wanted to see one.

Here are a couple of close-ups that show the FMQ.

I used linen for her tail and cheeks and opted to leave these un-quilted so she would look extra poofy and adorable! My mom called dibs on the little fox potholder before she was even done.

I also started messing around with stuff for Mug Rug Revival. Not sure if this will be what I go with, and I can't say much about my partner's wishes to get advice, but this is what I have come up with so far. I was going to start doing some FMQ on it, but the needle on my sewing machine broke and shot at my eye! Scary!

I also finished up the puppy dog quit.  It is a sample for my local quilt shop. I have no idea what to do with it when it come back to me.

Here is a close-up of the quilting, done by Kenneth Butler.

The reason I wasn't able to get a TON of sewing done this weekend was that it was a scuba weekend. The shop I work at had a trip to Reveille Peak Ranch, about 4 hours away. I was actually leading this trip which meant more talking than diving for me. We had almost 20' visibility which is amazing for a murky Texas lake!

The lake is actually an old granite quarry, so the water sparkles!

We even took the dogs! Of course they spend most of the weekend asleep under a tree, but they did both get swimming lessons!

Right now I am a little in-between projects. Mostly I need to come up with a hand sewing project to take to Ireland. The tricky bit is that it needs to be small since I am limiting myself to just a backpack. But for now, I am leaving y'all with a preview of the 2013 Quilt Across Texas Shop Hop fabric. This is the panel that will be available. It is all postage stamps with the major cites! Ack! Can't wait until September to buy it!