Fabulous Friday: A winner, a finish, charity blocks, and gray???

Lots to share today! First, the winners for the Garden Divas fabric giveaway, courtesy of Random Number Generator, are: 

Congrats, gccmom and Karen O! I'm sending you both an email for your mailing address. Whoever responds first can choose which bundle they receive.

My kids are sound asleep and my husband is away for the weekend. That means I'm sewing! And my best friend, Kathy, is coming to visit tomorrow, to hang out with me and the kids, and you guessed it, sew! Here's to a productive weekend and nice long naps by the kids...

Kathy's birthday was this past week. She turned 29 again, or so I like to say, since I'm 9 months older than she is! She is also the subject of my "finish" for the week. Of course, if you've read my blog at all, you probably have already guessed that my finish was also a "start" this week. Specifically, last night. I made her a medium-sized (11" square) zipper bag using some of the fabrics from my beach bag and some other scraps. Here it is:

I love the lining fabric! I'm looking forward to giving this bag to Kathy tomorrow. I hope she'll like it. Also, I'm linking up to Confessions of a Fabric Addict's Can I get a whoop whoop? Friday to show it off!

I have also taken advantage of 40% coupons from Hobby Lobby the last 2 weeks and treated myself to new rulers to replace the ones I broke. I think I was too embarrassed to reveal that in addition to my two 6.5" x 24" rulers, I also cracked and then snapped my 12.5" square ruler a month or so ago. Argh! But I'm now the proud owner of these two beauties!

The only drawback is that the long ruler is 6" wide rather than 6.5". I've been using a 6.5" ruler for about 12 years now. Any guesses on how long it'll take for me to cut a wide strip the wrong width? But what can I say? I'm a sucker for a deal...and for 40% off I'll just have to pay attention!

I used my new square ruler to cut the fabrics for these blocks, made for Margaret's Hope Chest. I have three sewn and will do the rest this weekend. SO much easier to cut large squares with a ruler that isn't broken in two pieces!!

Super easy blocks, and they changed the deadline to August 20th if you want to make some. I'm planning to meet up with them and help them join the blocks into quilts at the end of August. Can't wait!

And finally, for this week's Fabric Friday...a few gray fabrics from my stash. I just finished reading the racy book that everyone's talking about...50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James. And it inspired me. (Not in that way!! This is a QUILTING blog!) I started pulling out my "shades of grey" fabrics. Stay tuned next week to see what I'm going to do with them...and how you can be involved!

Have a great weekend!

p.s. Hoping someone can help with this. Earlier this week, while browsing blogs (either from Quilt Story or WIP Wednesday, I think?) I came across a blog with a week's worth of zipper tutorials. I didn't bookmark it at the time and now of course I can't find it. Can anyone send me the link? I need to beef up my zipper skills, especially for when I make my sister's boppy cover.