Do you love my swap apron from Erin? How fantastic is that fabric?
And the contrasting straps? Why don't I ever use contrasting fabrics? Contrast RULES!

She also sent me a pot holder in the cutest fabric ever, and some awesome recipes. How did she know I'd be interested in something called "Hillbilly Hummus"?

I guess when your business name is "Hambone and Jennicakes," it's kind of a no-brainer.

I do wonder if it's kosher to post the recipes we got in the swap, because some of these cocktail concoctions are begging to be shared. The Scarlett O'Hara? The Dirty Girl Scout? These are too funny!

So thanks to Erin, and to everyone over at The Apron Swap!

Thrift Thursday was born this week, thanks to the clever and talented Carrie Sommer. The best part of her endeavor? It's totally self-explanatory. I've been thrifting since I was 16, and now, on Thursdays, I show you pics of my scores.

Good times.

I bought this Frank Sinatra/Tommy Dorsey album for about $2 almost 10 years ago, and I've always integrated it into my decor. I love the colors and the very 50s hyperreal paint job - perfect for placing next to my enormous painted La Dolce Vita poster.

It's also a great way to keep a big picture of Frankie around without looking like a weird mafia princess or something. I mean, I love my Frankie, but my living room is not the back room at the Badabing, y'know?

Check out these beautiful blocks I received from The Crafty Scientist! And I'm not just saying that because I now have enough blocks to sew the top together - they are completely gorgeous!

We swapped because I wanted a little more pastel in my quilt - do you see the lavender she put in there? Brilliant! I never would have thought to add that color, but it just works. It works like crazy.

Thanks, Dayna! I can't wait to show how the whole thing comes together!

Can you believe this album kit?

I just discovered sajou.fr and I am seriously in love. Authentically old-looking pieces that you can customize with your own info?

Brilliant. Just brilliant. Well done, France!

Maybe I should I have named this post for an actual flavor of soda pop, but, sorry, I’m just not all that into oranges and grapes right now. I’ve always loved cherries, but I seem to love them more and more as time goes on.

I bleached some fabric this weekend according to Martha’s instruction, and although it’s not so tough finding cheries on white fabric, I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

What’s weird, though, it that I’m just dying to turn it into some sort of doily. Why? I’m not a doily person. But a cherry doily would be so compact and sweet looking, like the one in this pattern I found.

What do I do about this sudden urge to doily?

I can't believe I haven't updated in over a month! Well… maybe I can. It's been pretty eventful around here lately, and some of that has to do with the block I'm showing here.

A few months ago, I signed up to contribute some products to the MTV Style Lounge.. You can read a little more about that here. When I was putting my masks together, I made the pieced mask from half of a block I was going to submit to the swap, but ended up being a little small. That mask is now owned by someone, possibly kind of a famous someone, who went to the Style Lounge, and that's just fun to think about.

The half of the block you can see above is now the middle of this block. I think I've mentioned that I have some mixed feelings about the "improvisational" aesthetic, but there is one thing I love about it, unequivocally: recycled blocks that don't look like recycled blocks.

There's something unbelievably satisfying about - and can you tell I LONG for season three of Project Runway? - making it work. We live in the age of fabric plenty, so there was no reason I needed to reuse this or any other block that fell short, whether in actual size or just not looking quite nice enough to send off to some anxious stranger who has every right to my best work. But I wanted to get this one right. And it's not my favorite block I've done, but I like it a lot. I like it so much, in fact, that I wish I'd thought to rework it in time to send it off to the swap.

Oh, well - lessoned learned, and now I have a block with kind of an interesting history.