Okay, so I feel like this is a little unfair. Only because those of us in the greater Portland area are REALLY REALLY fortunate to have several wonderful fabric shops from which to choose... Bolt, Pioneer Quilts, SewPo, Hollyhill, The Pine Needle, and though it's questionable whether this falls into the appropriate category, there's always Fabric Depot.

BUT, none quite compares with my home away from home away from home - Cool Cottons - in its individuality and character. Probably because no other shop has Marie. Nor an entire inventory based on her unique tastes.

I was initially hesitant to share my endorsement with the event at the heart of this "Visit Your Local Quilt Shop Day" for fear of crossing a conflict of interest line (I'm one of those lucky gals who gets to work part-time at her favorite LQS), but in scouring their page and the photo contest rules we didn't find anything to deter employees of the individual shops from participating. So I decided to add my photo to their photo contest, open until 11:59 PST tonight, January 24.

Some of the friendly critters you might have the luck to meet on a visit to Cool Cottons... gathering to say "Goodnight!"

I actually took over half a dozen photos trying to capture just the right image to share. I hope this one goes over well...

And as a little boon, she's been giving away some fun "free with purchase" fabric samples like these:

The bag was dwindling by the time I hit the road this afternoon, but if you're in SE Portland there might be a few little gifties for the taking - and 4 more hours to shop and get photos to enter in the contest!! And even if you don't have a chance to enter, go and vote for your favorite photo, starting at midnight Jan. 25th! But most of all, keep the spirit of this throughout the coming months and patronize your favorite places so they can continue to be there for you! WE LOVE LOCAL!

Another week of sewing! Lots and lots of sewing. And a few other things in the wings. I feel I should mention the great positive commotion related to the upcoming Visit Your Local Quilt Shop Day... it's been fun to see all the props people are giving their favorite shops. I've stayed in the wings on this one not wanting to unleash a potential conflict of interest, since I am employed by my favorite LQS, but it's great to see that Marie and her shop got lots of love on the blog hop this past week! Let's keep our fingers crossed that the love carries over into tomorrow and becomes a big shopping day!

Getting right to it, thank you Lee for continuing to host WIP Wednesday!

New

It's been a while since I've delved into my zipper bags of scraps to put one of THESE together. And doing it on my newest hand-me-down The Bernina Activa 240 - seems to be a little power house, let me tell you! And I have to admit it's kind of strange to be sewing in my basement again! I'm now spread out across half the city!

HST quilt-to-be. I have had the yardage for these guys piled up and set aside for about 2 years now. A project that I have wanted to do for my unofficial in-laws that somehow always got pushed back. You all know what I'm talking about, right?? But 2013 is the year, I tell ya!

This will be changed around, I am certain. If I even continue to pursue it. I talked a bit about this challenge in my previous post here. It's getting down to the wire and I should have been working on it when I got home from work yesterday, but the inspiration just wasn't there. What can I say?

Some Progress

Got this basted, but haven't begun quilting it. Which I need to do so that I can retrieve some of those pins in order to baste other projects!

I'm also nearly finished hand stitching the binding onto my warm/cool QAL wall hanging. I don't have any new photos of it, but I'll be sure to post a stellar one for next week's "Completed" category!

And that being said":

Completed

Two more sets of pot holders. That's all, nothing so exciting. Which leaves...

No Progress/Quilt Tops awaiting quilting

If I could count, I could tell you how many more sets of pot holders are pieced and just need to be quilted and bound. I think 6.

Grey/blue Nubees quilt

Green/brown spiderweb quilt

Pink Elephants

Yellow/magenta Encapsulated

Russet 60/30 Diamonds

So, the final tally seems to be:

New: 3

Some Progress: 3

No Progress: 11

Completed: 2

Thanks again for sticking with me here! I'm excited to keep going and share some new things in the next couple of months - Stay Tuned!