That Time of Year

About this time of year I start collecting fabric and patterns for quilts I'd like to make throughout the winter since I seldom go anywhere during the cold months. We took advantage of the beautiful day yesterday and headed over to Elm Creek to see what I could find for more background fabric for Bee Happy. And pick up anything else that caught my eye.

Here's my haul...

A few goodies

A new pattern book for a Double Wedding Ring, which is one of the last quilts on my bucket list. I'm going to attempt one. Background fabrics for Bee Happy, and a pattern/jellyroll/background fabric for a cool star-like quilt. 

I've been picking up things here and there. The Produce Section is one of those examples and what I hauled yesterday is another. I should have enough to keep me amused through about April. Or just about anyway. 

Saturday, after coming home from the art show, I met the mailman and my box arrived with the thread order placed last week, so DW is going to be cranking most of today. Well, it depends on which of the two quilts (DW's or Bernies) are from the Oscoda group because I have to head up there tomorrow night. I'll take with me anything I can. 

It Has NOT Been A Week!

My last post WAS indeed a week ago. I have been quilting. Honest. I have. 

Ummm...problem?

I can see from the first couple of passes we are going to have some issues

T-Shirt quilts are different beast altogether. This particular one did not have stabilizer on the back of either the t-shirts nor the border. But it's finished and being delivered downstate today. Hopefully she'll understand the four tucks and the finagling I had to do with it. 

A Cute Little Double Wedding Ring Wallhanging

This is actually one of mine. I haven't a clue what exactly I'm going to do with it, but I was waiting for a specialty thread to arrive for one quilt, my new iPad to arrive for another (I'm going to customize the top instead of quilting the individual blocks and need my iPad to sketch my plan before starting to mark the quilt top itself), and so found the time to slip this little cutie in between those. 

The one below came in yesterday and because I'm still waiting for the iPad, and, of course, the specialty thread came in yesterday after this one was loaded, will quickly do this for Emily before loading Cathy's specialty thread piece. The iPad won't be here until Thursday.

Emily's Yellow Brick Road which will get a wandering flower motif throughout

We have to head downstate later today for another one of Jims dentist appointments. So quilting much today isn't going to happen, but I can get a little started before we actually have to leave. 

Friendship

I am very fortunate to have about four or five close friends; those people you can tell just about anything to.

And I am blessed to have many other friends whom I can share quilting pitfalls and accomplishments with. Sarah McNary is one of the new AIQ friends. You can see her on the latest HQ live talking/teaching/inspiring about color theory. Which, until this week, was a yawner subject to me.

Sarah talked about the color wheel (don't yawn until you watch her video...seriously). She made one and although didn't out-and-out challenge us to make one, there was a challenge where I was concerned. Here's mine in the works yesterday.

A very fun, but very challenging project

This was probably one of the hardest things I've had to do in a while. I could go on for hours about what it took just to prep the underlayment.

Here's another project I've always wanted to tackle in my quilting world.

Double Wedding Ring Wall Hanging 

This was a class on Craftsy/Bluprint by Jackie Kunkle. I wanted to see if this was a direction I would head in with Lia and Caleb's wedding quilt. It. Is. Not. It took three days over the weekend to get a 30" wall hanging pieced and while it's beautiful, I'm just not going there for their quilt. Next option.

Work yesterday, work today and then tomorrow I hope to get some long arming started on the new Dresden a customer brought over last Wednesday.