Goofy me taking random pics

Okay, I'm being proud mommy here. Johanna came home with her uniforms for her internship for nursing school today, so I had to take a picture of the patch on the sleeve! My baby girl is growing up... sniff sniff!

The other pic is of three little flashlights I picked up at the store today. They had them on sale for a dollar and they are usually four. I love these little guys and have bought them for family and for Christmas gifts. I actually have one by my bed, one in my purse, and of course one in the sewing room! I'm thinking of putting one in the glove box of the car, too. They are really bright.

I posted a hint for using scraps to Stashbuster today. I apologize to the blog readers who are members for this being a repeat, but I think it's worth sharing in a couple places. Sure has saved me a lot of time!

Currently I'm cutting pieces for a chunky churndash quilt, with all the blocks being scrappy. Each block needs four 3.5" squares and four 2" x 3.5" rectangles of one material. I found that when I pull out scraps, I don't always know if there is enough of that material to get those eight pieces. I decided to cut a rough template in those sizes out of light card stock (I used an old manila file folder). Now when I go to my scraps, I can lay the templates on the material and move them around to see if I can get four of each out of the piece. This is really helpful if the piece I want to use has odd sections cut out of it. There might be a corner that will yield one square, or a strip that might give me a few rectangles. It's something that can be adapted for any pattern. The blocks I'm making each have two colors, one being a neutral and the other being a color. The neutral part I have covered because I have a couple bolts of muslin as back up, so I didn't need to cut templates for the neutral pieces, although in this case they are the same sizes, just different quantities, for each block. Hope this helps someone else bust stash!

And for an update on my progress, tonight I finished cutting pieces in colors for the blocks. I have to press the muslin scraps and cut them next, then I get to do the fun part - sewing! These blocks should come together pretty quickly.

Mom found out the surgery will be in a week. I want to thank everyone for their continued prayers and good wishes.