a new table mat and some morning tea

The other night I was itching to finish something and since I was waiting on some fabric to arrive to finish my most need to finish project, I settled on starting a whole new one and staying up late watching old episodes of Law and Order next to my sewing machine to finish this one.  It was nice and felt good to finish something quick and pretty.

I started off just making string blocks and then sort of eyeballed a triangle shape and ironed it and resewed it enough so that it lays flat.  And I think it looks so pretty and adds such a nice splash of color to my table.

The other plus is it acts as a nice place to set my teapot in the morning.

Today I'm linking up with:

   

A new year and a new quilt

The other night I stayed up after all my boys were asleep and finished up my red and white hourglass quilt top.

I like how it turned out and sort of wish I'd have finished the whole thing up before Christmas.

It would have been a nice little addition to the decor.  Oh well.  It will be ready for next year.

My intention in designing this quilt was for it to be a wall quilt in my living/family room.  We have this enormous blank wall that I feel needs a little something to homey it up.  I tried to tape it up on the wall to see how it might look but wasn't terribly successful.  I got the basic idea of it and I think it may work. 

We'll see once its all quilted up.  I think I'm going to do straight line quilting on it once I find the right backing for it.  I need a good white fabric with a red print on it. 

Any recommendations?

Today I'm linking up with:

 

A new toy...

Santa did a good job this year thanks to my rad sister-in-law.  She planted a little seed in my mom's ear that this was something a crafty girl might like to have. I think I have the best sister-in-law ever basically (and not just because she knows how to plant good gift seeds in my mom's ear-she's actually really fantastic anyway)

I freaked out when I opened the box since I've never mentioned one to my mom before and I couldn't figure out how she even knew what it was in order to think to get it for me.  I believe I've entered every bloggity giveaway for one of these because I would never really allow myself to entertain the luxurious notion of actually buying one.  There are just too many other more practical things I feel like we need to buy so I never have even really contemplated putting it on my wish list.  

Now my dilemma is hooking everything up in a non cluttered way in my little studio corner.  My Bernina embroidery machine uses a computer and so does the Cameo.  Unfortunately my Bernina software isn't made to work on any Windows operating system after XP (which no one sells computers that run that anymore) and the computer that I've used thus far is so darn old and ssssllllllooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

 I'd rather not use it.  I found a website that said how I can still do it on our Toshiba laptop that runs Vista but so far I haven't been able to get it to work. Blah. 

But I'm really excited to get to playing with it!