Check it out

Yes, I'm with you...the lamest of headlines...but I've had kind of a crazy few weeks. Let's just say I'm grateful for modern medicine! Fortunately things seem to be headed in the right direction now.

Before it all started I decided that there was no real need to continue using my checkbook cover, which had once been very chic and lovely, but was now just some falling-apart paper and plastic. so I went online, looking for some of those fabulous tutorials that people so generously post. What I love about the myriad tutorials available is that they remind me of the many ways to get something done—that there are plenty of options for constructing the cover and no checkbook police will be hauling me to the pokey for doing it wrong.

Although I looked at several, I wound up liking best the one on Crazy Mom Quilts (she's got some fabulous modern quilts on her current and, sadly, last page: she quit her blog at the end of 2009). She has three options and because I had less than an hour to finish it, I went for simple. The only thing I did differently was use a slightly stiffer iron-on interfacing, because that's what I happened to have on hand.

I first picked a very floral red and pink Kaffe Fasset fabric, but decided I should go for something more gender-neutral, given that it's the checkbook I share with my husband. So I found this great fabric I'd bought at Hancock's of Paducah, on my way home from John C. Campbell in January.(I've somehow cut the name on the selvedge completely off and have no clue who designed this fabric—any readers have any idea?) I used a bubbly batik scrap for the inside fabric. Sadly it barely shows, but I know it's there and that the fabrics combine nicely.