Oh, the beauty of batiks!

At the beginning of this year, I only owned about a half-dozen batik fat quarters. Five of those fat quarters were put to use in a "still-to-be-finished" autumn table runner for my friend, Connie. It's almost finished. :-)  I am crazy about so many other fabrics that I never really got into buying lots of batiks. But then last fall, I was playing around with that candlemat pattern I designed and I thought........hmm ........what if I changed this and that and made a tablerunner..........and so I had to buy some batiks!! I bought about a dozen fat quarters sometime in January and February. To be honest, they were colorful in an otherwise very white and long winter!!! I finished the table runner made with those fat quarters and here's a sneak peek at a corner of it.

This is the one that will be available at Firefly Quilt Shop during the upcoming "Sew Close to Home" Shop Hop. You can check out the details here and the full photo will be posted this Friday here on my blog. :-)

I enjoyed making this project so much that I got hooked on batiks. They are so beautiful when you begin looking at all the colors and designs on each of the bolts of fabric. I figured I needed more of them because making the table runner was fun but I can see a couple new designs that would be lovely done in batiks. So, last Friday, I met my friend, Pandora, at Firefly Quilt Shop for the monthly "Fat Quarter Friday" when all fat quarters are just $1.50.....even the batiks!  We had so much fun choosing first one, then another, and then even more. LOL!

We decided to take our pile of fat quarters to a table in the classroom. Here's Pandora with her initial bundle...........

Look at that gorgeous quilt behind Pandora!

The fabrics that I was gathering are those in the bottom half of the photo above.

And in this final photo, Pandora chose all these fat quarters and bought yardage of the gorgeous fabric on the bolt that will be her border. Now what do you think we are planning to make with all these batik beauties. You shall see, because you know I'll share as we go along. :-)
After a couple of very busy weeks with family things, I am slowly getting back to some quilty things. I enjoyed a nice Mother's Day weekend and hope you all did, too.  I started this week with my yearly physical today.  Always nice to get that done and feel that all is well (for the most part as age is making good health a challenge some days and I don't even consider myself all that old).  Since I had to fast for blood tests, I was pretty hungry by the time I left the clinic about 12:30 p.m.  I treated myself to lunch and enjoyed time to relax with a good book (A Light in the Window by Jan Karon). There was another lady nearby who was also eating lunch and reading a book. I thought how lucky we were to be able to do that. I am mindful of the fact that not everyone is so fortunate. I decided, I would match what I spent for lunch and make it as a donation to the Food Shelf. I'm thinking maybe I should double it since I've reached the point in my life where the Senior Citizen price has kicked in. LOL!  $6.39 doubled is $12.78. Done!
More quilty stuff tomorrow..........
Sandi