Friday Night Fun...

turned to frustration

I was all set for a fun night of sewing. In fact, I was chain piecing up a storm. See my basket full of pieces and parts waiting to be pressed and moved on to the next step.
All those black and light triangles and the red and blue string blocks are parts of the Orca Bay Mystery that I am behind on, but still plugging away at. There are a couple of little Christmas Mug rugs that I was using as leaders and enders and decided to go ahead and finish. Somewhere buried in there is a Farmer's Wife block or two.

I also had lots more ready to stitch:
Those trays have more black and white, another FW block, and the purple pieces of my January NewFO that I told you about in this post.

Then this happened -
See the belt for my sewing machine? See how it is in 2 pieces? It shouldn't be. I'm not sure if the small fabric and notions shop here in town will have the belt I need or not. They carry the light that works for my older machine, so maybe the belt is a pretty standard part too. I hope so. If not, I have found a couple of places on line to order it, but that means several days before I can sew again.

Design Wall Monday

I have decided very late in the day to participate in the Design Wall Monday Link-up that Judy hosts over at Patchwork Times. The idea is to show others what you are working on and to check out what other quilters are working on. I've never participated before. Other bloggers have said it is very motivating to have that link-up every week. They sometimes make themselves go sew just to have something to report. I can see that working for me too, so here I am.

My design wall is actually a large flannel backed table cloth hung on a blank wall with command hooks. It might not be fancy but it works and it is easily removed when I need the spare bedroom for something else (like a guest room).

I am working on several things today, but the one I am going to show you is a 7 year old UFO. When I was learning to quilt with a group in 2003-2004 the lady teaching us had us making a queen sized sampler quilt. She chose traditional blocks with a variety of techniques to teach us the basics. We also did some little side projects from time to time - a doll using crazy quilting, a tote bag, things like that. Unfortunately, our teacher moved away and soon I put all the quilting away including the sampler. Fast forward to late 2010 - I decided I wanted to take up quilting again even if I had to teach myself and rely on the internet for help. That is when I started the red/white/blue quilt for my son that is shown on my first blog post. At the time I was still a little intimidated about working on the queen sized sampler by myself. Last summer, I decided I was ready to figure out what needed to be done with it. These are the 12 blocks that were done with the group shown with sashings and corner blocks I cut out in October, 2011. The original plan was for it to be on-point, but there were only 2 blocks done that wouldn't work in a straight setting, so they are going to be pillows, and I'll show those later. These are the 6 blocks I have made in the last 6 months. I need 2 more and one of those - a hand sewn Grandmother's Flower Garden, is nearly done. I need to choose and make the last block, then I can square them up and sew those sashings. Then on to the borders. There really is a good sampling of techniques and styles in this quilt and I can't wait to see it on my bed. I am so determined to finish this that I actually have the next few steps written on my calendar. Keep checking back for more progress and don't forget to check some of the other design walls.

New Years Musings

Does your family have New Years or New Years Eve traditions? Do you eat blacked-eyed peas, rice and pork chops like we do? Do you go out on New Years Eve or stay home and take a much needed break from the holiday rush? Do you always stay up past midnight, or do you, like my hubby, go to bed early just to protest all the hype? - LOL

For several years I have gotten out all my scrapbook stuff and 'scrapped in' the new year. I had to break that tradition last year since we were preparing to move and all my stuff was hidden away for showing our house. It just didn't make sense to pull it all out. I was looking forward to renewing that tradition yesterday.

I started by pulling out and reorganizing all my papers. Then I was ready to start on a quick paper-craft project then move on to the actual scrapping of pictures and memories. Unfortunately, I learned that scrapbook adhesive doesn't store well long-term and trying to use the old stuff was just an exercise in frustration. I did finish my small project, but didn't move on to pictures.

Would you like to see what I did accomplish?

I took some older paper scraps and calendar stickers, put them on cardstock and made these:

Then I cut a whole stack of these:
All so I could put them in this pretty box (sorry for the bad picture) and make a Blessings Box. When this was first posted at Triple the Scraps back in March it struck a chord in me. I had already been noticing that I had a tendency to rate a day as "bad" if anything not to my liking happened. Why is it so easy to forget the good things when one little annoyance comes along? I have decided to be more intentional in 2012 about looking for and remembering the good in each day. Call it a resolution if you want to. I think it is more about being grateful and positive - more the person God wants me to be. Recording the good in each day in my pretty little box will be a good way to stay focused on those changes. It will also be a way to remind myself just how blessed I am when one of those bad periods comes along, as they do for all of us.




Now I am going to go get some sewing done. I have been working on the Orca Bay Mystery Quilt at Quiltville and Bonnie revealed the final clue today. It is fabulous and I am way behind. There is a button on the left if you want to go check it out.

Oh, one more thing - Happy New Year!