Thursday, August 4, 2011

Birthday Cake for Me

Adam and his girlfriend, Katie, came down the other night with a birthday cake for me. Oh, it was 10 days AFTER my birthday, but I am the QUEEN of Late Gifts myself, LOL! It took me by surprise to the point that I "puddled up" a bit...aren't I the one who's supposed to be doing stuff like that for others? What's with this "somebody doing stuff for ME" thing?

Umm, here's the cake. Umm...ok, so it's a HALF a cake. No, Katie didn't just bring me a half a cake...some peeps have been munching on the cake (who would that be?). But when they brought it down, I was so stunned, I didn't think to take a picture right away.


SO out-of-the-blue it was...it rocked me to my core! It also made me think that the old saw "It's better to give than to receive" goes both ways - sometimes you've just got to receive so that someone ELSE can give ;-) But, having said that...I immediately pondered how I could get back at Katie, LOL! I decided she needed some reusable grocery bags. Her favorite color is green, and I'd recently tried Keyka Lou's Grocery Bag pattern, so decided to make her a couple of those. I love this pattern, and the only change I made was to add a hanging loop in the middle of one side at the top. This was Ben's idea so that it would fit over that little pokey-outey peg on the grocery store bag holder thingie at the checkstands (technical terms, I'm sure).

Of course I didn't have anything suitable in my stash (IS MY NOSE POKING RIGHT OUT OF THE COMPUTER SCREEN INTO YOUR EYE?), so I zipped off to one of my LQSs, Bayside Quilting, and got these lovely green batiks and a green dot. Since they are lined, these bags take a LOT of fabric, so they are definitely in the GIFT category, rather than the money-making category (unless you have some fabric that was on sale to the point it was almost free). About $15-$17 apiece if using LQS cotton quilting fabrics since it takes 1 1/2 yards per bag at the going rate of $9.49 to $11.49-ish per yard (of course it would be less using JoAnn's or similar fabric). But since I don't sell my stuff, that's ok with me. Also, the fact that the pattern is an instant download pdf is a real bonus - no waiting for the mail!
The colors aren't quite so garrish in person - believe me!
A couple people have commented that the fabric below looks like The Matrix movie!
Thank you Katie for the wonderful cake! You are such a sweetie :-) And I hope you enjoy your bags :-)