Happy New Year!

 

I'm back! And while I don't generally make New Year's Resolutions, I'm going to make an exception and resolve to blog regularly, which also means I'll be quilting more regularly.

 

The past couple of months have been filled with travel, family illness, getting ready for the holidays, and entertaining/being entertained. It's been a whirlwind, but all that's left is to take all the trees down and put away all the decorations and I can concentrate on spending quality time in the studio.

The task should be a bit easier this year as there are only 12 trees to take down.

There are fewer ornaments to put away....

 

Thanks to Tucker, who celebrated his first Christmas,

 

and managed to destroy a total of 21 (to date) ornaments he removed from various trees.

 

 

Fortunately, the tree in the studio is out of his reach, so no casualties there.

 

 

And a couple others came through unscathed...

 

But this morning he was finally brave enough to snatch and grab off the snowman tree.

As I said, Tucker has been a very bad boy.

 

While Paco has been the perfect angel.

 

 

Okay, most of the time

 

And through it all, I did get a project finished.

 

I'm in the middle of a killer headcold, but I've still been able to get a little hand-sewing done on Vintage Rouge's back art, so I'm just inches away from piecing the back and heading to the sandwich table. It's a big quilt to work on in a domestic machine, but I'm going to give it my best shot. Check back this week as I document my first 'planned' machine quilting project. It should be entertaining. :)

 

Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2013 to you and yours!

Go-al!!! (She shoots, she scores)

Rather, GOAL MET!!!! (woo hoo!)

The Vintage Rouge center has been completed and blocks and rows stitched (pretty darn exactingly, if I say so myself).

The center plate 10.5 inches, the same size of all the other blocks.

I like the center cornerstones (though this one isn't looking as perfectly round in this photo as I expect it to be. Hopefully that will press out.

And the other night I was obsessing over these outside blocks. The pattern called for words to be embroidered in the centers (Love, Joy, Peace, Hope). I wasn't a fan of that so I did a little freehand applique of two styles of flowers. That served to teach me that freehand applique is not all that it's cracked up to be, or possibly I'm not as good as I like to think I am because they were a 'tad' (ha ha-that's an understatement)  uneven. So, I ripped them off earlier this week and made mini-Dresden templates to create Pointsettia petals, used rulers for centering and measuring, and a McDonald's coffee cup to draw a circle to align them within (whatever happened to be on my desk at lunch on Wednesday in the office became a quilting tool). Now I've got 4 blocks that look pretty uniform and I'm a happy camper (or at least I'm telling myself I am.)

I wanted this done so I could go to the last block pick up tomorrow and be this week's overachiever (stitching the blocks together is part of the upcoming packet). And if that doesn't do it for me, I've already sewn together the plates that will be flowers on the borders, made 56 little berries, and cut out 30 something leaves (all of these are part of the last part of the BOM). If that doesn't cinch the overachiever crown for me, I don't know what will.

It's only midnight so I think I'm going to go pour myself a glass of wine and sew the borders on two of the Aurifil Designer's Blocks.

Enjoy your weekend! 

Hello October!

Alrighty then, one last finish for September squeezed in under the wire. It's the Aurifil Designers block for (prepare yourself) July--with added design elements (sun and waves). I think this one took so long because while I was finishing it up the August block came out, and I really do not like the August block, so it just put me off the project. Not sure what I'm going to do about August, either suck it up and make it work (channeling Tim Gunn) or skip to September and revisit or redesign the block in the end.

I pretty much finished up Fall decorating. This is my mantle. It needs one more thing...a candlestick lamp which will be placed where the banner on the right is and the banner will then move to the left to either replace or join the clock.

Love the crow. Wondering how long it will take Tucker to figure out it's up there, bring the ladder up from the basement and turn him into lunch. (It probably didn't help that when I brought it home from Michaels I played 'let's peck at Tucker' with it. Tucker is now crated whenever we leave the house, even if it's only to walk down to the mailbox .)

After looking at the mantle for a few days I decided it needed some sort of floral thing. Not a fan of flowers (unless they are fresh and in a vase), I picked up just a couple stems and tucked them in with the leaves.

I'm happy with the colors. Now if only I could do that well coordinating fabric colors on my quilts.