A snuggle, for beer

I promise there are two containers full of beer on my sewing table in the middle of a weekday for a good reason.



Measuring. Not drinking.



Growler coozy!

Here it is all finished





The specs are as follows:
The football-related material is from an old jersey.
The outer coozy body is from Tim's old pants.
The lining is Kona in white.
It's padded with wool batting. During its first run to the brewery, Tim filled up a growler before we had dinner, and the beer was still cold when we got home an hour later. Score 10 points for wool. The puffiness also buffers the bottle a bit, so you can set down a gallon of booze without anyone hearing it. That can come in handy.

So I guess there was no good reason the second beer bottle was there. I was just trying to consolidate, I guess.

On other fronts, the little quilt is done!



I think it will end up on one of the very blank walls in the sewing room.

As for other projects, I grabbed some stuff at JoAnn today to make pillows for our couch. Specifically, I grabbed pillows. And yellow, blue and white linen. Also, a nice little package of Christmas fabric came in the mail two days ago.



That one's for Chowder's Christmas stocking.



The green is for Tom's.



And here they both are, securing a place on the naughty list. What charmers.

Summer pants

Yesterday I mentioned my pants. These pants.



You know those little code phrases that have a specific meaning in your house? "Summer pants" is one of ours, and it stands for any item of clothing I buy at the start of summer and wear almost daily though the season. Doesn't have to be pants. As you'll see, I'm attached to a certain shirt as well.



Tim noticed this little quirk of mine when we started dating and coined the phrase. Like salmon run downstream, each April I set out in search for summer pants. The general requirements are a sturdy fabric and a loose fit. They must be outdoor play pants. I found some khakis this year.



These pants may be the dirtiest in Montana. I'm 99.9 percent sure they haven't been washed since June.



A few laundry days ago I looked down and thought "I should really wash these pants. But then I'd have nothing to wear while everything else is in the wash. Oh well."



And then I realized it'd had that exact same thought every laundry day through the summer. Tim doesn't remember washing them his laundry excursions either.



So now I'm intentionally abstaining from washing. Until when? Maybe the first snow. That's the surest sign of the end of summer in Montana.



At least I got my money's worth.

Baby quilt done!

I finished this last week, but am just getting around to the photos now.


We love us some gas in Billings. Seriously. There are three refineries.


Back.


Here are the details:

It's 45 inches square
The grey is Quilter's Linen in grey, but the wrong side.
The binding and back strip (dots) are from Momo's It's a Hoot, as are some of the prints in the log-cabin blocks. The binding is by hand and took about 90 minutes.
The elephants are Japanese and the sashing is Essex Linen.
The rest of the fabric came from random fat quarters, but I know the wood grain is Joel Dewberry and the blue herringbone is also Joel Dewberry, one of my favorites.
The blocks are wonky log-cabin style, and finish at 10 inches.
The sashing is Essex Linen in PFD (prepared for dye) 3 inches finished. I used PFD a) because it's what I could find in stock and b) it wasn't as harsh as white or as cream-colored as ivory.
The batting is bamboo.
The quilting is an easy free-motion pattern, and I think technically stippling, since nothing overlaps (except one tiny mistake that only I'll ever notice).


Here's more of the piecing.

And here's a closer shot.






I really loved using the Essex Linen with this quilt and think it'll become a regular for sashing in the future. As long as I can find it in stock.

We snagged those photos right before heading to the horses races.





He almost broke even. Basically.






And, continuing the theme of running animals, we hit up the Reed Point Sheep Drive on Sunday.









It was a very American event.


There was Miller Light, after all. And these pants, which I'll post about next.








So that was a massive amount of photos. Speaking of massive...





This desk. It's in my, ahem, new sewing room!

All I have are cellphone photos right now. But you get the idea.






The desk was Tim's parent's. They bought it in New York a long, long time ago. It's called a partners desk. It's meant to have two people on each side, hence the double drawers. And ridiculous size.


It's solid oak. I can lie diagonally on it, reach my arms over my head as far as I can and still not touch both ends. I love it.


And, to wrap things up , adorable dogs. And a Tim.