Sewing Sunday

It's been a busy week.  I have the center of Two Piece Puzzle all stitched up, now to add the narrow red border.  Next is the wide dark blue border, but I am still looking for the right fabric for it.  I ordered a nice wide quilt backing fabric on Ebay, it will be here by the end of the week.  I have never used the 108" backing before, I thought it was very expensive.  I found some for about $8.00 a yard from a vendor on Ebay.  I bought 3 yards and she only charged an additional $5.00 for shipping.  I thought that was pretty good.  Otherwise the pattern calls for 7 1/2 yards of regular fabric and that would have been pricey, too, so I did pretty good there.  I have the batting since I went to JoAnn's for their "buy one get one" sale.  I bought two queen size battings, two spools of thread, and everything I needed to make a new ironing board cover for about $40.00.  

I spent a couple of hours today on the ironing board cover.  Here is the before picture, this one isn't that old but it is worn through.

Sorry it's so blurry but you can see the tears in it.  And here is the new one:

Aren't those little owls cute!  The fabric is a heavier weight cotton so I'm hoping it will last a while.  I put the new cover over the top of the other one so it will have some padding.  Now it will be fun to iron!

I'm still quilting the Halloween wall hanging but I think it will be done this week, I hope.  I decided to do a cross hatch quilting in the outer border.  It is all done going one way, I am now working on the stitching tilting the opposite direction.  I think I will use solid black fabric for the binding once the quilting is done. 

The weather today was sunny but cool.  Tomorrow more bad weather is expected.  Some parts of the state are in for 30 to 50 mph sustained winds with gusts up to 70 mph predicted.  That means we won't put up our flag tomorrow, I spent a little time today mending some rips in it anyway.  We will see what happens.

Oh, I have one more "wildlife" pic. 

I was outside a few evenings ago and found this praying mantis chowing down on a black widow spider.  How cool is this?  I can't take credit for taking the picture, my DH is the photographer in the family.  I see praying mantis' in the flowers all summer long, usually when they are much smaller.  When I go out to water, they pop out to say hi and watch what I'm doing.  They are my little pets!

Hope everyone had a great weekend and lots of sewing was done.