ninety-five cents well spent

It was my birthday over the weekend.  We’re pretty low key around here around Valentine’s and my day.  On Friday night, Rob and I went out for dinner.  I love Italian.  He’s kinda “egh, whatever” about it.  So, he asked me for Italian.  We had appetizers and a humongous pizza.  We were back home in an hour and it was a very special hour, indeed.  We each brought up work, once, but neither of us wanted to talk work.  We talked about kid for a second, but neither of us wanted to talk about her, either.  So, we talked about us.  And, that was very nice. 

On Saturday, we went antiquing.  Rob and I like this very much and usually choose it as our go-to activity for special days.  Sydney goes along.  She brought her camera and I saw her several times out taking pictures of the countryside.  And, there were several things she picked out that I paid for. 

We weren’t in the mood to buy things, tho.  We shopped and we had a very “bad for us” lunch in a country cafe, but we didn’t really bring many things home.

One of the things I brought home was a tiny placemat in homespun fabrics.  It cost me ninety-five cents.  And, it was a red hot mess.  No points matched.  Some blocks were squares, some were rectangles.  And, it had white spray paint or flocking or something in a section of it. 

I ended up taking it completely apart and re-cutting the hst’s and putting the whole thing back together on the two spool machine.  And, then I free motion quilted it on that machine, using a bent paper clip as a foot (okay, I’ll tell more about that later) and it did pretty good.  I have some changes to make in how it is set up in the cabinet.  But, once that’s done, I can see me doing bigger things on it. 

Anyway, I added the border to make it the original size (yes, I cut a lot of it away to get evenly sized blocks) and re-used the poly batting and blue cotton back and even the binding.  So, the only thing I added was the border, and that was a piece of binding left from another quilt I made. 

I also made a boatload of spool pin doilies.

Different patterns, one I made up and will be keeping.  I’m going to feel a fool if the guild doesn’t want to sell these.  I think I should reach out to that lady, pretty quick. 

And, I bought this terrible little bag to carry all my supplies in.

It’s made from a table cloth and some rickrack and has a button.  Like a pajama bag, I guess. 

It’s so cheerful.  And, so out of character for me. 

Lane