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The Boy was very excited about starting back up at school today. I thought it would be nice to put together a little something for the four teachers in his classroom this year. Unfortunately, it wasn't in the cards to bake them some cookies. (Sorry about that.)

My quick and easy idea came from a breakfast potluck we hosted recently with friends. Someone brought Starbucks coffee, but we used actual coffee mugs. When I was cleaning up after breakfast I tossed the pile of unused Starbucks paper cups into the bin of art supplies. Then I decided that they would make a really cute little gift basket container.

the supplies

I had a couple partially used Starbucks gift cards, so the kids and I made a quick stop at Starbucks to purchase $5 gift cards for each teacher, which only cost me a few bucks overall. (I'm not a coffee drinker, so I'd had my gift cards for years.) When I shopped for school supplies I picked up colorful packs of sharpies and ball point pens, so we could put a sharpie and a pen in each gift cup. The Boy wrote each of his teachers a little note and helped me put together these little gift cups. He wadded up a piece of construction paper in the bottom of the cup to help stop stuff from flopping around. We used leftover cello bags from birthday party favors to wrap them. I love how tying them on the side kinda gave them the look of having a handle like a coffee mug.

The Boy signed them with a heart and his name.

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It's a little finish, but it's a finish!

This was my primary August goal. In order to prepare for finishing The Girl's cuddle quilt, I wanted to learn how to do turned edge machine applique. Lorna pointed me to this great tutorial at Moda Bake Shop.

Last night was my guild meeting, so that provided the motivation necessary to finish this little project up before the meeting. It's a 6" by 8.5" mug rug. Not familiar with mug rugs? Think large coaster or small placemat. I think we'll be using it as a snack mat for the kids. If I make another one for our house I could use the pair as a place for the kids to each keep their water cup for the day. It amazes me how many cups the kids each go through each day. ;-)

I got halfway into quilting the fish and decided I wasn't sure where I was going. I wanted to do a pattern that showed scales, but I wasn't sure how realistic I was going for in my details.

Back to the sketchpad and I decided on something like this:

I'm not 100% happy with it as a whole, but the goal of this project was to learn a new skill and I did do that, as well as got to do a little free motion quilting. Overall, I'm calling it a success. And I'm fired up about working on The Girl's quilt. It'll have many more pieces, so I'm thinking it'll continue to be a slow-progress kind of quilt, but at least I know what I'm doing now.

This quilt, named Goldfish (yep, no help from The Husband on this one) measures 6" by 8.5". All the fabrics came from my stash and the binding was leftover from The Purple Quilt.

I forgot to add the quilt label before I quilted the fish, so it got squeezed into the corner. It's fine, but suboptimal in my opinion.

Here are a couple close up shots of my quilting. I'm quite pleased with this part.
And my helpers:

Linking up to the A Lovely Year of Finishes August Finishes Party and Sew Cute Tuesday.

I'm linking up to Finish Along Quarter 3 Finish Party. Here is my full list of Q3 Finish Along Goals.

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As I've been folding and organizing all my stash, I've come to the realization there are some holes. I'm terribly low on yellows and oranges, but I have virtually no neutrals other than black and white prints. So when The Intrepid Thread advertised that they had moved stuff into the clearance section and had 1000+ items in the list, I decided to focus my efforts by filling one of those voids. I keep seeing beautiful quilts with grey fabrics, so I just thought I needed to have some. I'm so delighted with these and can't wait to use them. What's your favorite color(s) to pair with grey?

listed in order shown, left to right

  • Nouvelle - Laced Up Gris
  • Chromatics - Pointelle in Shade
  • Picture Pie - Scribble in Grey
  • Emmy Grace - Ripples in Pond
  • Just My Type - Type Keys in Gray
  • Shades of Black - Leaves in Line in Gray
  • Woodwinked - Confetti Dots in Pewter
  • Stitch - Stitch Circle in Charcoal
  • Queen Bee - Honeycomb in Grey
  • Stitch - Stitch Square in Charcoal
  • Empire - Typhoon in London
  • Emmy Grace - Stitched Road in Granite

Bekko Home Dec - Swirl in Stone: Oops... didn't realize this one was a home decor fabric until it arrived. I'll be making a pillow for someone.

I'm linking up to Sunday Stash with Molli Sparkles.