Saturday, June 18, 2011

Quilted bags for the women in my family!

I LOVE fabric, so when I saw this wonderful group of Bali Batiks at Alley Kat's in Marquette, I bought the package of 2.5" x 44" cut strips. I also bought a great handbag pattern that was perfect for these colorful strips. So I layed the strips down, choose color groups -purples, pinks, greens & blues, and followed the instructions. I'm actually going to get a total of 8 handbags out of these fabrics, as I only needed 9 2.5" x 22" strips for one bag.  I have another group identical to the ones I'm showing you here in my sewing room!  The lining fabric in the bottom photo was purchased while I was in Texas last summer. It is a great batik, and just happens to be perfect for the lining in each of the handbags. It's amazing how well it goes with each color group, and that I bought plenty of it without knowing what I was going to do with it!
I normally don't do a lot of sewing on beautiful sunny, summer days, but if it's cloudy with even a chance of rain, I'm sewing!!

Thursday, June 16, 2011



Dogs are so funny-they never check the temperature of the water before they dive right in, and Brinkley is no exception. Lake Superior is cold right now, and may stay that way for quite some time since we haven't had tropical temps to warm things up. Ok, 'tropical' is probably a misleading term when referring to UP summers!

Summer, almost!

It's the middle of June already! Brinkley & I have been out doing some exploring, but if I had a choice, I'd forgo work to explore every day. We recently went to 12 mile beach, which I mistakenly called 11 mile beach. I happened to mention this to a co-worker and he said "You're only off by 1 mile". There are days I feel I'm off by a dozen miles! Anyway, Brinkley & I are going to go to this beach whenever we can this summer, if it ever really warms up, because it's beautiful and long!