I Like #318

 Welcome to another week of things to like!

The weather here has been lovely which is a great boon after the hot summer.  My garden has been loving it.  In addition to continuing to cut flowers, the ones in the garden are really lovely too.  And I saw this great butterfly enjoying the space this week.

I had all my lab members over for dinner this weekend to celebrate getting a grant submitted, fingers crossed that it gets funded.  But it was fun to have everyone over and I made my mom's yummy chimichanga recipe.  I love it but it makes tons and tons so I only ever make it when there's a party.  This is the meat cooking.

Spooky and Blue loved the party, they each got to come out in turn and have lots of attention.

And Cash and Brett came over this week too which of course Spooky loved.

I'm headed to an retreat in Phoenix this week with my art quilting group 4 Common Corners (I'm really looking forward to it).  In preparation, I made a new notions pouch for traveling.  You might wonder whether I needed a new pouch/bag, and the objective answer is of course not.  But I'd been seeing this quicky flat circular, folds-into-a-taco bag on instagram so I had to try it.  Of course I modified it to have an internal zip pocket and changed the finishing a bit. 

here's what the inside looks like laid flat.  I love that acid green print with the rainbow circles and I've never had anything great to do with it.  The little teal felt circle is for needles and pins since I wanted to be able to use it for notions.  The whole thing is about 10.5" in diameter.

Here you can see how it looksin the process of being closed up.  It folds and zips up like a taco!

One of the things I wanted to do with this project was use up some of the leather scraps in my studio, so as a final step I added this red and silver leather to the outside.  It coordinates better than you might think with the inside.  I used the red and silver together because I only had scraps and needed to piece.  It's fun to finally use some of these leather scraps and now I have a nice new pouch!  I love pouches with fun or clever geometry or closures.

Finally, I blogged this week about another project I finished this summer for a SAQA entry called Fierce Planets.  Sadly, I didn't get into the show, but you can read about the quilt here, here, and here!

Hope everyone is hanging in there!  Click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like!