A clean house is a sign of a broken sewing machine

Just returned from a trip (more on that later) where I was able to shop at Greenbaum's Quilted Forest. OMG what a great shop! In 2007, American Patchwork and Quilting magazine named the store one of the 20 best quilt shops in the United States and Canada.

Above is my haul. I was very restrained. Probably because there was so much to look at that I was constantly distracted from one pretty piece of fabric by another pretty piece of fabric. Also because I don't really need anything.

I ended up buying a few bits that related to things going through my mind lately, such as Laura Gunn's Lantern Bloom, the new Gerta collection that I'd read about the night before, and three pieces with text on them, including a half yard of "Housework Whenever?" by Sharon Yenter for In The Beginning fabrics.

That's where I got the title for this post. The fabric has retro images of women with quotes, including:

• I got a sewing machine for my husband! Good trade, huh?


• If I sit here long enough maybe they will fix their own dinner!


• I sent my son to college so I could keep my fabric in his room ... expensive storage!

I also got a couple pieces of Aboriginal fabric to add to the ones in this block I made right before the trip.

The pattern is block No. 6 from the Sue Ross Block of the Month that I'm doing through Material Obsession. This is going to be a quilt as soon as I make more blocks and figure out how to set them.

Speaking of the BOM, here is block No. 7. All done. Piecing was not too hard, and the templates made it easy to cut accurately, which always helps. Appliqueing the piecing to the background is where I have trouble. This was one of my better efforts. Not too wobbly a circle at all.

What's black and white and red all over?

A Kindle cover for my friend Lynn. The pattern by Sherry Cowley was in the January "Quilter's Home" magazine. It was easy to make. Hope it fits a Kindle. I don't have one to test with. Boo.

I made it with the optional pocket. In the magazine, there were reading glasses in the pocket, but isn't the beauty of an eReader that you can make the point size as big as you need it to be?

I love this fabric. It wasn't the fabric I'd planned to use. The fabric I'd planned to use said "Lynn" to me more than this, but I couldn't find it. I'd set the fabric aside with the pattern, and then when I went to make this I could find only the fabric for the inside. I searched for an hour, pulling fabric stacks from the shelves, digging through UFO drawers and various other places I keep fabric. Finally I gave up and picked this because it kept with my color joke and the present was going to be late anyway, but needn't be that late. Then after I cut this out, I found my original fabric. I really should have learned by now that any time I put something in a special place so I don't lose it, I will not find it until I've given up looking!

If you are looking for a good read might I suggest "The Ghost Trap" by K. Stephens? Although after reading that and "Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger in tandem, I needed something light. "Ella Minnow Pea" by Mark Dunn and now "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" seem to be fitting the bill. Both are humorous and written in epistle. The later reminds me of "84 Charing Cross Road," which I read ages ago and loved.

And the winner is ...

ME!

I won this lovely commemorative panel from Sue. I've been reading her blog and others who have been posting about the V&A exhibit "Quilts: 1700-2010." The panel arrived yesterday, and it is so soft and silky. A short post this one so I can go pet my panel and imagine her in various quilt layouts.

Can anyone help me with a Google Reader question? I have added numerous (too numerous) subscriptions to my Reader and have organized them under various categories (Quilting, Fabric Shops, Fabric Designers, Food, etc.). Since then I've tried Following blogs, but then it adds the blog to a new category called "Blogs I'm following." And it seems that if I try to move the blog to one of my categories, that it also stays under "Blogs I'm following" so that I have double the embarrasingly long list of blogs in my Reader. Clearly Google has not anticipated my need for categorization. So I've removed most of the following until I can figure out how to effectively organize Reader without having every blog link appear twice in the list. Any suggestions?