This evening

I made this little cutie.

It's called Mmm....Hot Cocoa.  It's the first of a BOM series from Patch Abilities. Libby (no blog) gave me the pattern and the matching hanger the week before Christmas, our LQS will be carrying all the patterns.  I used my scraps, even scrap batting, sometimes just a quick little project is just what I need to do.  I will hang it somewhere in my kitchen tomorrow.

We're doing this mini series, and Many Thanks BOM, which we plan on getting together once a month to work on the block and anything else we have going on and have a gabfest, we are still planning on doing the block-a-day with this calendar; I already received the companion CD but the calendar has yet to arrive.

Design Wall Monday

This is on my wall. The 2 blocks off to the upper right are my BOM from Shannon's blog that I decided to do this year. It started in November, but I didn't make mine until last week--made 'em both at same time so if you think you'd like to do this, you're not too far behind!

The string quilt I'm not sure if I'm going to make another set for a 4th row of squares to make it twin size--going to have to think on that.  I do want to put wide borders around this one though, we'll see.

Remember to go to Judy's to see what's on other's design walls.  This is the last one for '09!

I'm ready, I think

and if it's not done, it's not getting done.  I enjoyed baking cookies yesterday and I finished today.  The food it bought, the few gifts we have are wrapped and under the tree.  My very own quilt is fresh out of the dryer and I can't wait until this evening to sit under it and maybe finally finish The Hour I First Believed  by Wally Lamb.  It's taking me forever to read and it's good.  It looks like Otis approves; it's good for napping.

Last night I stayed up way too late and made 2 quilt blocks.  I'm going to make a BOM quilt this year. I saw it on Shannon's blog a few weeks ago.  

I bought background fabric for it last week, a light brown batik, but when I started pulling from my batiks the brown was not giving me enough contrast so I nixed that.  Amazingly, *wink* I had enough of another lighter batik already on the shelf that will work fine.

The pink one is November's block, but it was a bit more challenging so I made December's block (purple one) first. 

I've made a little process on the strings quilt too.  I need to go and organize the sewing room and maybe make a list of my ufo's and new projects etc. 

Design Wall Monday

This is the same picture as a few posts ago.  It will likely be the same next week.  If it changes, I'm being very bad; not doing what I should be doing!  

I think I'm finally in the mood to bake some cookies, so that's the non-quilting thing I'm planning on doing today.

I've also started the quilting on my Quilt Block Memories quilt (formerly known as the leftover/orphan quilt.) I'm giving it to me for Christmas (I hope it's done!-ha) 

A Winter Wonderland in my own back yard!

 Woohoo it snowed. 

 I got all bundled up and Annie and I went in the back yard to play.  I also shoveled out 3/4 of the driveway, hey, I'm not as young as I am in my head,  and it's a big driveway.  And yes, I took 2 Advil as soon as I came in so I'll be able to walk around later without making little gaspy noises. (With age come a little brains...)
 Paul shoveled it this morning before he left and there was a good 2 more inches when I did it.  No pictures of me, Annie is a worse photographer than I! 
But here are a few of her having fun.  She's going to be 9 this summer, which gives me a lump in my throat to think about.  We've had some great dogs share our lives but she is the best. 

Oh how she would love to run free in those woods, so dark and deep.  But see that spanky new fence, no more running free for her.  It also deters the deer, they can still jump in and out easily to get to the apples from our trees, but at least this fence is sturdy and they have to go over, not through.

And the kids rope swing.  Paul put it up a few years after we moved in (1989).  I still take a swing occasionally in the summer--one of these days that rope is going to give out.  And boy, is Paul going to have a good laugh...after he makes sure I'm OK, of course.

What am I doing?

I started another string quilt!  My leftover strips are in 2 medium size bags now and over flowing.  So I was just going to try to organize them, ya'know.  And I started making piles by color...and I thought, hmmm I think I've seen on someone's blog a string quilt with all lights on one side and darks on the other. It was this blog. Finn has it on her sidebar.

What if I did the same thing, but by color... hmmm. And that was my afternoon yesterday. Today I planned on making purple blocks and maybe orange too.  I'm suppose to be quilting my "Leftovers" quilt, which is loaded by the way, (today). But no sewing today: aww boo.  I had to clean and take my MIL to the hairdresser's (3:30 appt. on a Friday afternoon, can anyone say traffic nightmare?)  Oh well, mom will be beautiful for Christmas. She got a perm too.  And that is more important than my quilt.  

One more thing before I forget: I've noticed that I put off loading a new quilt. It's not hard, I'm pretty quick now pinning it on to the leaders. It used to take me an hour....oh the agony. I can't say I don't like the process. I just keep putting it off and as soon as I start, I will think why do I procrastinate? It's a mystery. I think it's weird.

I know I put off sewing on bindings, because I hate doing bindings. I get that. But as I said I don't feel that way about loading quilts. I need to work on fixing this in 2010, I waste time and also, like yesterday, as I was putting off loading that quilt I started another, which I definitely didn't need to do right now.

Design Wall Monday/and other things

Here is a picture of my design wall.  It's an orphan quilt top. I do not know when I started to sew together all these leftover blocks but that top row of blocks are from Little Quilts and those I was making 4-5 years ago. It measures 60" x 79" right now.  I think I'm going to add another border on the top and down the right side and call it done.  I have a few more orphan blocks that I think I will piece into the backing.   

Here is a picture of my finished Spring Journey Sampler quilt (80 X 100) that I posted about on DWM a few weeks ago.

It took me all weekend to get the binding hand sewed to the back and I sewed the label on last night.  I was really happy with how it turned out.  I learned a lot about quilting feathers in such a large area.  I think I like the back of the quilt as much as the front and am toying with the idea of getting a big piece of white fabric and doing a whole cloth quilt.  That one's going to have to percolate in the back of my mind for a bit.

I'm so glad this is finished.  I really thought this was one that would just languish away in the back of a closet.  If I had to do it again, the only change would be the color palette, this goes with nothing in my house.  I lean towards country/primitive. I should have made it in those colors (my colors).

Here is a picture of one of the setting triangles,

here's one of the back. Crappy photo. :)

And a close up of one of the blocks.  I quilted each block differently, including using different fillers in the background of each one. In some of the blocks that's all I did was quilt a filler in the white background.  Except for knowing I was going to quilt feathers in the setting triangles, I didn't know what I was going to do in the blocks.  I decided what should be in it when I got to it. I enjoy this kind of quilting the best.

In this block I quilted flowers in the basket.

 I hope you can see them.