Pillows, pillows, pillows!

I have been stitching my little creatures for weeks now and it has been a blast. I love watching the new friends come to life. I didn't think it could get any better...

...And then I started my pillow fronts. The squares I'm working on are just over 8" so it's a bigger canvas than the onesies and the sweatshirts. It's really satisfying to pick the background fabrics then work on the little guy who'll be featured. One of my favorite parts of the process is choosing the patterns. When I work on the pillows, I get to combine and juxtapose patterns a lot more than on the clothes. I don't have any finished yet because I'm waiting on my labels but you'll get a sneak peak this weekend.

I'm super excited about the labels. I can't wait until they get here!

The image above is my newest onesie. I'm calling it a meerkat and it'll be up on my etsy shop by the end of the week.

When I get some more time, I'll move my old posts from typepad over here to blogsopt where it's so much easier (and free).

Great Day Trip

Last weekend we took a trip from Morgantown up to the Northern Panhandle. It's a route we try to take at least once a year. This year, we took 79 up to Little Washington and headed up 18N. Then we stopped for some great pumpkins at a little Farmer's market just past the sharp left you need to take to stay on 18 to head W. We usually have a big Nearly Annual Birthday Party Pumpkin Carving Vegan Potluck BYOB Extravaganza just before my birthday so we needed to stock up. I bought four little pumpkins to carve out and serve soup in. The Morgantown Farmers' Market sends out a weekly email with updates and recipes and I'm hoping to make the delicious sounding apple pumpkin soup recipe.

18N leads up to Burgettstown where we headed W on 22 and over the bridge to Ohio. From there we took 7 up to East Liverpool, a once booming pottery city. It's pretty dead like a lot of towns in Appalachia where the industry has gone overseas. Luckily, there's an amazing flea market with a huge selection of local antique pottery, cool furniture, and about a million other interesting finds. After spending some time roaming the floors, we headed back over the river and into WV again. We stopped for a photo shoot at the World's Largest Teapot and some gingerale at the Sunoco across the street.

The best part of our day on this trip is always the Homer Laughlin China Co. factory outlet. I call it Fiestaland. In addition to this outlet shop where everything is very well priced compared to retail, they have a room full of seconds. We picked up some great stuff for our retro-look kitchen. The outlet is just past the beautiful singing Newhall bridge that's on the right. The sign pointing down into Fiestaland can't be missed.

After shopping ourselves into a low blood sugar euphoria, we headed the rest of the way down Route 2 into Weirton where we got back on 22 and went east over to Pittsburgh. There's a Moe's burritos just off 60 so we got some dinner there before taking 79S back home.