Merry Ever After

Hope everyone had a swell holiday. If you follow me on FaceBook you pretty much have shared in mine and seen some of the decorations I managed to get up this year--serious whittling down from years past...and I have to admit, I'm enjoying not having my house look like it's 'throwing up Christmas' throughout. And I'm enjoying even more the fact that I don't have to spend weeks putting all that crap away, once I finally decide I've had enough.

Now it's time to get back into the studio and start having fun. Which is what I spent a bit of this afternoon working at....

Santa brought me a quilt kit for Amish With a Twist 2. Not for the fainthearted, this project. 29 solid fabrics, which were not accompanied by a color-key. We all know it's pretty much impossible to color match fabric from your computer screen, but thanks to a kind woman at Hancock's of Paducah for digging up the store's cutting instructions and reading me every color name and the measure cut I was able to sort it all out.

Then I wrote out a notebook page for each color and detailed the cuts that needed to be made for each block in the project. There are 14 different block styles, some are log cabins (I'll wait to cut that fabric when I finally get to those blocks), some are 21-patches with stars. An overall total of 73 blocks (it's a weird number, I know), finishing with 3 borders--one made up of 2-1/2" squares, and piping inside the binding. 105x105".

Yes, I am certifiably crazy, or if not already, I will be before the end of the year. Once I slog through all the cutting and bag the pieces in Ziploc bags, I'll be playing this one out as a Block-a-Month (and we use the singular term 'block' quite lightly, as there are months where you need to make 36 blocks). Organizing  and cutting and bagging in advance will hopefully prevent this project from becoming all-consuming and I should be able to knock out some finishes of quilts I've started.

I hope that everyone had a lovely Christmas and got lots of fun sewing stuff. In tomorrow's post I'll show you some of the small treasures that I found under the tree and in my stocking.

Saturday night...it's date night. If you haven't got one planned with your sweetie, think about showing a little love to your sewing machine which you've likely neglected for the past couple of weeks. That's my plan for tonight.