Hey! It's my birthday!

To celebrate, I'm taking the day off work, meeting up with some friends for dinner, and having a little giveaway! (Oh, and going to DMV to renew my driver's license. How's that for waiting 'til the last minute?)

For the giveaway.... how about this sweet little stack of 10 fat quarters from Sandi Henderson's latest collection Secret Garden? To enter, leave a comment (by Sept 1 at noon) wishing me happy birthday, of course, and sharing a silly birthday story of your own.

Here's mine:
A few years back, my good friend Kristina, who was going to Grad School in Iowa at the time, called to wish me a happy birthday. (It was early morning, but not THAT early.) I quickly interrupted her to say that it wasn't my birthday, my birthday wasn't until the next day. She replied that it was indeed my birthday - her phone had told her so, and after thinking about it for a minute, I realized she was right! And it wasn't just that I had the day's date confused, I actually had my birthday wrong. Unbelievable! I guess that's what happens when my standard reply to "when's your birthday?" was "at the end of August." for so long. Never again, though.

Today's the day!

feeding frenzy.

Not long ago, I went on a bit of a favorite-ing binge on Flickr. The results were both predictable and surprising. 
 I like Pinwheels and Improv Log Cabins (predictable). But also zig-zags and wonky stars. Wonky Stars. Who knew? There were also quite a few string quilts that made the cut and some ticker-tapes.
I seem to prefer either very busy and bold quilts or ones that are quite minimal with a lot of blank space. (Quilt backs were sometimes favored over fronts). 
For whatever reason, quilts that used exclusively prints from one fabric collection didn't seem to find their way into my favorites very often.  The exception was Heather Ross's Far Far Away. A surprise.  I had never been particularly compelled to purchase the fabrics and didn't have any in my stash. (Which was quickly remedied, I should add.)
Favorite color combos - when not totally random - orange and green, and aqua and yellow.
All in all, quite the feast!

Image from left to right, top to bottom:
1. charbronico 2. {brooke} april two eighty 3. Ann StewArt 4. Annamal Quilts 5. Blue Elephant Stitches 6. CampFollowerBagLady 7. dspaz_12 8. Elsie'sGirl 9. filminthefridge 10.flossyblossy 11. Handpicked 12. Insung from NAMOO 13. modernquiltrelish 14. oh-cherry-so 15.One Green Apple  16. Pikku-Kettu  17. r0ssie  18. s.o.t.a.k handmade  19.  Spotted Stone Studio   20. SunaStudio  21. susan weinroth 22. Sweet Baby Jamie 23. syko Kajsa 24. teaginny   25. verykerryberry

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I managed to get these blocks done this morning after a two week break from sewing (and pretty much everything else) due to a problem shoulder. Both used paper piecing and went fairly quickly, thankfully, as I'm still a little achy. I'm finding that I have very little yellow in my stash and resorted to using some light orange/aqua prints from Joel Dewberry's new Heirloom collection. I think they make a nice addition to the mix.