What I Have Been Up To

The first part of the month I was able to serve in Tsaile, AZ with an organization that is near and dear to my heart, Sierra Service Project.  My family (parents and husband) and I drove to Tsaile and served a week completing wheel chair ramps, and stairs for people on the Navajo reservation.  We had two days of mixing concert in wheelbarrows, which was not easy, and using plenty of power tools.  We had a great time.  Below is a picture of me in front of the tool trailer with their logo.

My family and I stopped at Canyon de Chelly before our week started at Sierra Service Project, and a thunderstorm moved in right as we got there.  We stayed in the car until it was over, but the end result was amazing.  Water was running off the canyon walls as waterfalls into the canyon.  Here are some of the pictures from it, plus the White Houses, which you can hike down to.  I have done the hike twice before, but did not do it this time.  The ruins are from over a thousand years ago.

Because we drove from Southern California over to the Eastern part of Arizona, we were able to stop at a few quilt shops along the way.  The first was:

And I collected these wonderful goodies from them.

Here is a picture of their business address.  It was a cute shop with lots of fabric.  It was very nicely organized and the sale room fabric was small but had some wonderful deals within.

The second shop we stopped at was:

These are the goodies that I collected from them.  I love how the lady who cut our fabric folded the pieces together.

I am thinking about making a pillow case for me from the princess fabric and pink.  One day.  This shop was huge!  They have a big machine service section of their business, along with a few different brands of machines.  They even had a long arm or two within the store.  Their selection of fabrics was gorgeous!  Some yummy Christmas fabric, and my biggest surprise was finding the wonderful red batiks.  I was so excited I found them.  They also had a huge wall of notions, and some pre-quilted fabric and other types of fabric.

My Mom and I loved visiting these shops as we were passing through town.  Both shops were very friendly.

Right before we left for this wonderful trip I found out that I had won one of the Christmas in July's blog hop prizes from Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  My beautiful prize is below, I love all of the prints in this line.  Now I just need to figure out what pattern I'm going to use to show off the prints.

The morning we left I ordered some beautiful fabrics from Pineapple Fabrics as they were having their anniversary sale.  These are what ended up in my cart.  All items have goals for them.  I just have to make sure they get where they are going, aka projects.

Once we got back, I had to catch up at work and at home, some serious cleaning needed to happen, which is mostly done.  I just need to finish a few smaller things now.  Then this last weekend my Mom and I took a paper piecing class from a Judy Niemeyer certified instructor.  I will share more about that and what I was able to finish on Friday (hint, come back and check it out).

This next weekend is a serious sew weekend with some things mixed in, but I have goals and I want to work towards completing them.

Linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts for her Lets Bee Social and I'm excited to see what is going on with everyone else.

-Christina