Winner, and Water Bottle Carrier

You all just blew me away with your nice comments during the giveaway. Golly, some of you even became new followers when I said you didn't have to! Thanks very much. I think. No pressure to blog about interesting quilt-y things, right?

The RNG (Random Number Generator) picked 8 to win the Marmalade Fabrics $25 gift certificate. In the last post, if you count down eight comments you'll see the winner is Tricia from Ames, Iowa.

Tricia commented: 

Congratulations on hitting 152! I have been reading for months but just started following on Monday.
If I won a Marmalade Fabrics $25 gift certificate I would choose loulouthi.

I've recently become acquainted with Tricia through our Des Moines Chapter of The Modern Quilt Guild. Do you think she might let me admire, and perhaps touch, her  Loulouthi?

Last month I made several potholders using Insul-bright. When I wanted to make an insulated water bottle carrier, I learned that Insul-bright is recommended for cold too. I found a pattern here, and modified it to suit my needs. The two carriers I made are taller (11") and fatter (3-3/4") to accommodate our store-bought containers. 

This one belongs to my husband. Thank goodness for my stash bin of solids because he requested "plain," and he wanted his made with a tab so he can carry it from his belt. See the tab on the right. To make the tab durable, I cut and interfaced a selvage strip of the fabric. 

The pattern calls for French seams which add stability, as does the channel quilting.

"Plain" was not what I had in mind for my water bottle carrier! This fabric is Kumari Garden, Sanjay Blue, by Free Spirit. Would you believe that it was purely accidental that the round base has that centered flower print?!

I should have made these a long time ago, for our long walks. It will be interesting to see if they keep our cold water cold.

Last Friday (August 26) my husband and I celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary. Because he's an outstanding cook, we rarely eat dinner away from home. But for our anniversary, every year, we go to Tumea & Sons, a local Italian restaurant. The waitress, who sees us only once a year, always remembers who we are, and gives us the royal treatment. And boy is the food good. I could rave about my toasted ravioli, but let's focus on those desserts! I took a suicidal leap off the diet wagon for this one: Spumoni cheesecake. It's chocolate cheesecake; pistachio cheesecake; and cherry cheesecake topped with chocolate syrup. He had tiramasu. Both of us ate every decadent morsel.

Hogan celebrated our anniversary by lighting up! Not really, but doesn't his chew stick look like a stogie? He's our going-on-eight-years-old boy.

Because I like funnies so much, I'll leave you with one I like.

A girl went into a library and walked straight up to the librarian's desk. 

Girl: "I'D LIKE A CHEESEBURGER, FRIES, AND A SHAKE." 

Librarian: "Uh, this is a library." 

Girl: (in a hushed whisper) "Oh, I'd like a cheeseburger, fries, and a shake."

Linda