Where Did January Go?

January was way to busy! I have been stitching whenever I can so I have some progress to share.

A year later and I finally finished Lori’s 2011 Humble Quilts quiltalong. I’m very happy with it. I hope it doesn’t take me a year to finish Pink Lemonade, her 2012 quiltalong.

I’ve also been doing a good bit of hand quilting and stitching on other projects. I’m doing a little every evening and, though I’m slow, I’m seeing a lot of progress after just a couple weeks.

On the Design Wall-

I’ve got a top! I’m so happy I finally finished this top. As I worked on it I was thinking about how to quilt it and I think I’ve settled on feathers in the big open spaces and I’m not sure what to call the quilting I’m going to do on the stars and diamonds (concave diamonds?) so you’ll just have to wait and see! ; c ) I need to practice the feathers and I hope I can come up with something that looks okay. Knowing ahead of time that I want this to hang in the Quilters Unlimited show makes me a little nervous. I’m usually more of a – “well if it gets done it goes in, if not, oh, well”. But this is part of a challenge and I don’t want to embarrass myself!

My two schoolhouses – don’t know when I will get more made, but I’m pretty sure I will stay with the dark blues.

I found some of my dark blue stash hiding with my spool blocks. I made 3 more at a swim meet last week. Hand piecing may be slow but it is more forgiving.

More baskets – one more (in addition to the first one) for my project using 19^th century reproductions and a new one for an exchange. I’m on the Quilters Unlimited 2012 Quilt Show committee and at our December meeting we were invited to join an exchange/challenge. We were given half a yard of a new red Jinny Beyer palette fabric. We each picked a 6” block design of our choice and we have to use this red fabric and a white or white on white in the block. We are also allowed to add additional fabrics, but it looks like most participants are keeping it to just the two. I decided to do the basket because that was what I was making when the challenge came up and I couldn’t decide on anything else. I need to make 18 of these blocks for our May meeting. We will go home with 18 different blocks and are challenged to make a quilt to go in the 2013 show. Sounds like fun!

And here are 126 blocks from the McLean QU 9-patch exchange I organized. Some of us enjoyed it so much we are doing it again in February. I will get 66 more blocks. With the addition of some setting blocks/sashing/borders – whatever I settle on – it will make a large lap size quilt or maybe a twin if I add more 9-patches. The blocks will finish at 3 inches.

I guess that's it for now. I plan to practice machine quilting feathers this weekend and maybe make some baskets or 9-patches. I hope you find time to stitch this weekend. ; c )