Odds and Ends

I wanted to show the fabric I bought in Koblenz, Germany.  The shop had a large assortment of fabric designed by Tone Finnanger for the Tilda brand.  All so very sweet.  I probably could have got it for less back home but couldn't resist the shop's display of it.  Sorry, no pictures, they are part of the 300 or so that my memory card did not record due to my lack of formatting the card.

I forgot to unpack this little guy and had simply put the bag he was in aside.  Wish I'd bought more of the wooden toys and ornaments especially from this store in Heidelberg.

It was just chock full of wonderful Christmas things!
Here's some more pictures of Amsterdam that Blogger wouldn't let me load the other day,

We had the best time walking through the red-light district.  It was so, well, awkward, I mean how can you not stop and stare.  We were cursed at in Dutch a few times.

And lastly, I'm amazed this even turned out and turned out well.  I snapped it through the glass of our cabin at dusk.
Thanks for visiting!

Snippets

I am way behind in doing this,  posting the last block in the Moose on the Porch Quilt Along and

the finished Sampler Quilt.  It's mostly the Fig and Plum fabric line except for some random greens and the sashing which is called Dot.  It went so well I had to use it.  All in all, I like it.
I ended up having more leftovers than I thought and made this,

To change gears, Spoonflower had a free swatch giveaway a few weeks ago.  All you had to do was pick one of the many different designs of fabric and they'd send it to you.  If you are not familiar with them, you design your own fabric and then pay from $18 to $32/ yard to have it printed.  Here's the swatch I chose,

I ordered the quilting weight but was so disappointed with the quality of the fabric.  I am assuming the quality was the same you'd get if you ordered it.  Held up to the light:

Has anyone ordered Spoonflower fabric?
                                          

And lastly some pictures of Amsterdam from our trip last month,

I've never seen so many bikes!  I was a bit envious of it all.  It seems the residents of Amsterdam own 2 to 3 bikes apiece.  I don't think I mentioned it before but like a dunce I neglected to format my camera's memory card before using it and lost about 300 pictures.  It was a heartbreaking discovery.   I have zero of Vienna and only some of each day's pictures.  Really weird how the memory card/camera only captured some images.
I've a few more pictures but I'll have to begin the next post with them as Blogger won't cooperate this morning.  Talk to you later!

Leave of Absence

Hello readers,   I have a lot of catching up to do.  We had a truly wonderful river cruise despite some mishaps, and even survived Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.  What a disaster!  Arrived half an hour late (due to sitting on the tarmac in Atlanta for an hour) for a tight connection.  And we only had a 'connection pass' and needed to get actual boarding passes either at the gate or ticket counter.  The right choice was the ticket counter.  After running walking about two miles to get to our terminal, we had a rough time getting through security without a boarding pass.  We finally made it to Vienna, but our luggage did not.  It showed up early the next morning. 
I had a new memory card and forgot to format it so I have zero pictures of our time in Vienna and Melk, Austria.  I didn't discover this until we got home.  
We had so much good food, on and off the ship, lots of these~

We saw some pretty buildings,

and towns.

And too many of these.

Cute German ladybugs,

and a large red chair!

Johnny Depp's hatmaker for Alice in Wonderland movie,

and Marc Chagall stained glass in a church,

and some mime artists.

Some cute small trucks,

sewing machine stores,

and wonderful produce.  Much better than what we get here.

And I found a quilt store in Koblenz, Germany!  Fabric was so expensive.  Doing the conversions, something like $25/yard.  I saw Moda, Andover, Timeless Treasures, all stuff I could get here.  I did buy some fabric designed by Tilda from Norway.  

I'll show those some other time.  Don't forget tomorrow is the Year of Schnibbles Parade so be sure to check back!  I also finished that Block of the Month which was really a Block-Every-Two-Weeks sponsored by Moose on the Porch.  
Thanks for stopping by!

Up, Up and Away

Heading out the door for the airport on our way to Russia and Ukraine! Tell you all about it when we return the end of July, until then, happy sewing everyone!