Wow!  What a December!  

We kicked off the Christmas season with a road trip to Fort Worth for my daughter's audition with the Fort Worth Opera.  We have yet to hear from them.

But, we loved the afternoon & evening we spent downtown...

She's feeling a bit giddy here after her audition has completed.  

While we were off galivanting across Texas, my son up and moved to Hawaii (ok, so he has been planning to do so for about a year).  He is working on becoming a Helicopter pilot and the school there is one of the best and one of the FEW that work with federal student loans.  He is having a marvelous adventure and meeting students from all over the world!  He plans on being home by Christmas next year!  

He sends me awful pictures like the one above...

I did finally manage to get some Christmas decorations up about a week before Christmas.  Usually they go up the day after Thanksgiving around here.  

And, I finally got to spend some time sewing the last couple of days.  Yes, and eating too.   Even got a workout in this morning, the first in almost a month.  

Yes, this is the Bonnie Hunter Mystery.  I am on step number 5, having skipped number 4 since we don't really need it yet.  Want to get these blocks put together so I feel I have accomplished something.  I also want to see what those loose triangles are going to be used for.  I prefer to use the half square triangle method when I can.  Loose triangles are so hard to work with.  

Trying to get organized for the new year this morning.  The to do list just keeps getting longer so I am going to throw in the towel, go shower, and start sewing.  Oh, yeah, an hour of cleaning is on my list too.  Happy End of 2022 to all!

Pressure is on...

So, here is one of the latest finishes.  Yes, it is actually complete.  I do finish one once in a while.  

This quilt is made from shirts worn by my husband, my son, and myself.  Then there is one other fabric added to represent my daughter since I didn't have any of her shirts, then the blue.  I used 2 layers of warm & white batting- it quilts up so much nicer that way- so it is one heavy & large lap quilt.  I usually use washable wool batting now days but I had some warm & white left over and wanted to use it up.  

Here is the back and an up close.  That pink London fabric is the one i added for my daughter.  The rest are clothes actually worn by the rest of us.  That pink & yellow plaid is from a pair of shorts.  

The quilting pattern is called "A Little bit of fluff".  This is the second quilt- ever- that I have had a problem of the back folding over on itself during quilting.  I had to remove stitching from the second half of two rows to fix it.  That was frustrating...otherwise, I love my long arm machine!

This is my other recent finish.  Made in two days.  Those hand painted panda blocks have been in my stash for years.  I was finally motivated to get something made with them.  Its a little less than 30 inches square.  Now I have to figure out where to hang it.  

These blocks called to me yesterday so I got this simple top put together and I am really loving it.  I already have the backing loaded on the long arm.  I think I want this one hanging in my bedroom where I have new solid navy bedding and a light blue-grey wall.  

I had originally planned on working on my bee quilt yesterday.  That didn't happen.  Now that I have found out that we are planning on starting a hybrid model of school this year , in addition to an online option, and I will be starting back in less than 2 weeks, the pressure is on to get some more projects finished!  

I saw this Barbie at the book store the other day.  I LOVE her!  I have been trying to make myself take some time for meditation and yoga through all this quarantine so this tickled my funny bone.  Even Barbie is more Zen than I am...

Namaste!

Long Weekend progress

Still no finished projects to show but my fifteen minutes to stitch is adding up.

I have one quilt loaded onto the machine in hopes of being quilted tomorrow, 3 more waiting in line, one upstairs that just needs a backing put together and many more that are just blocks or rows to be sewn together.

This turquoise scrap quilt, started years ago, will maybe see a finish sometime soon.  Half of the blocks are ready, another half are ready to sew into the half square triangles.

I have spent the last few hours working on a quilt with my Gone with the Wind fabric from years ago.

Here are some of the blocks in their beginning stages.  I am embroidering quotes from the movie to use as well.  I am kinda making it up as I go along since the blocks are not all the same size.  It may end up being a basic row-by-row quilt.  It is making me want to watch the movie again.  It has always been one of my favorites but it has been many years since I watched it.

On another front, my daughter just had her Junior Year Recital on Friday night.  She is studying Opera Voice Performance.  She did an amazing job!  So proud of all her hard work!  Love to hear her sing!

Already disappointed with how fast the three day weekend is going.  Still have way too much to do to pack it into one day tomorrow.  The fairies must be busy too because they have not cleaned my house yet...

Don't Want to go...

It's Monday again.  What happened to the weekend?  It is so hard for me to leave the house every morning for work.  My job isn't bad.  I love my library.  I just hate to leave my home.  It is filled with quilts to make, poodles to love, messes to clean, books to read...

Here are some of the things I have to leave today. 

I finally got around to my Threadology sew along blocks.  I still need to make one small one.  I am using my stash for this sew along.

I also got some of the Temecula One Block Wednesday blocks cut out and two sewn together.  My daughter loved the colors- heather grey and a purpley flower. 

This calendar shows my Progress for January on my 15 minutes to sew challenge.  I knew I would not make it every day but I did pretty well I think.  21 days out of 31.  This would not have happened 1- without the challenge and 2- without the downstairs sewing space I have set up.  Unfortunately, many of my projects are too large to work on in that small area.

This project has now grown large enough that I need to move upstairs to add all the borders.  ANd, anything that requires a lot of cutting must be done upstairs so I am working on the Temecula blocks and my bee granny squares downstairs while all the larger projects languish upstairs. 

And, alas, I am off to work so all the projects are left to languish, the poodles left to be bored and un-cuddled, the mess left to collect more dust...

results so far for 15 minutes of stitching

I sewed for hours each day but that's just because I was still off from work.  Have to go back Monday so the progress made this week will not be repeated for the rest of the year- most likely...

15 minutes stitching days/week = 5/5 days
15 minutes stitching days/Jan = 5/5 days
15 minutes stitching days in 2019 = 5/5 days
Success rate = 100%