Now We Settle In to 2024

Since we are now officially over the holidays it's time to settle in for the winter. I love winter. I know. I'm weird. But I don't feel guilty not out working in the yard or around the outside of the house. I love gray, overcast days where I can turn on all the lights in the studio, turn the volume up on the music, and lose myself in the long arming process.

I hope to get the bulk of Anns quilt done today; still lots to do on it. 

I did some "self" sewing yesterday. Stitchin' Heaven from Quitville, TX had an all-day sew along via YouTube and I participated with over 1500 others around the world. What a great time! Lots of laughs, give-aways, and even two techniques I knew nothing about. Here are the first two blocks I completed at the end of the five hour cutting and sewing marathon...

Blocks A and B

These are all the blocks in the quilt, but the setting is beautiful and creates a nice pattern. I'll chip away at building the block pieces (along with Metro Rings) over the next few weeks so I can take them to retreat to finish there with larger design walls available. 

The house is back to normal now. All the decorations are down, the tree is being recycled today, and the furniture is back in its place. Jim still has to get the outside stuff put away, but for the most part, we are ready for 2024. With a little luck, our lake will return this year, and that in of itself, is starting the year on a high note. 

Happy Christmas Week

For most of the world, this is Christmas week. It won't be Christmas week for us until next week, so this is just another normal week, except Jim is taking a few days off for???

Monica's third quilt was finished Saturday afternoon and yay, only eight more customer quilts in the holding pattern. I'm going to take a really quick break from customer quilts to work on these...

????

You'll see tomorrow what I did with this fabric we jumped over to Pieces on Saturday afternoon to snag.

While I was doing some stuff with this fabric on the frame I hit 60 million stitches on DW! 60 million at 6:30 on the week Jim turned 60 with my 612th quilt top. That's a lot of sixes, but many say it's an unlucky number. However, every one of the boys have a 6 in their birthday or time. So it's lucky for us!

Goals and Aspirations

I currently have two quilts in queue right now. My goal is to get those completed before starting to pack for the DeGroot Reunion...which is next weekend. This one will be worked today.

Pats gift quilt

Prior to getting this loaded last night, I long armed this quilt.

Joanies quilt

This is for a first birthday too. 

Once Pats quilt was loaded, I had pretty much been on the long arm eight hours yesterday and decided the fabric bundle and book I purchased at the Pieces of Thyme sidewalk sale last week needed to be dug into. 

I'm just starting to prep and make the first set of blocks for a quilt top I'm going to call Star Bright. This is from the book titled Stash-Buster Quilts by Lynne Edwards.

The copyright on the book is 2006, but for some reason, Pieces still had a copy of it. And how I didn't have it in my library was puzzling since I usually get any stash-type of book out there. There are a number of tops I'll be making out of the book, most of which can utilize the stash I have around here. But this particular top I wanted to make very bright and consistent so I am using a large fat quarter bundle (35) for its construction. 

Running Out Of Fabric

I have six projects going on in the studio right now. My Jacqueline is at a standstill because I need more fabric to finish the last go-around. I can't order any for it on-line because I need to make sure the correct colors get placed in each section. Computers aren't always true to color.

The flannel rag quilt for Jim is on hold until my order comes in from MSQC.

The Happy Camper piece may be worked next, but I'll have to pirate some of the black fabric from the Jacqueline piece to work on it.

The Row by Row quilt along is a monthly thing and until Irene puts up another month, that's parked.

The Scrap Happy top can be continued for a little bit, but once all the slabs are built, I have no background fabric for the thing...unless I pirate the white from the Row by Row to continue on. See...I need more fabric.

The quilt for my mom is in the works and the top will be completed today. The center section of this quilt is the quilt along I'm doing with Helen Godden and won't be able to quilt it until she gets through all her videos (in two weeks). BUT, I'm thinking with the leftover fabrics, I may just get creative and make a matching pillow to go with the quilt.

Moms Mothers Day Quilt for her new Condo

The wind outside today is screaming (again), so long arming probably would not be a good idea. I'll make the back for the animal/barn top from last week and at least attempt to get it loaded.

Maybe I need to get a large black and white order in to MSQC for some more white and black? I don't think I'm going to be able to get anymore otherwise.

Santa's Sweat Shop Studio

Yep, not sweet, but sweat. With these damn hot flashes it does get pretty warm in here at times.

And Christmas is quickly approaching. I always think I have an additional week more than I really do. But, I'm about 2/3's of the way through project Ho-Ho-Ho and here's last nights results.

Any ideas what these are? And I wonder who they're for? 

This customer quilt is coming off the frame this morning and I'm going to try to tackle the last phase of project Ho-Ho-Ho. BUT, there will still be a few little projects I need to also get at before the family eventually arrives on the 27th-28th.

Customer quilt leaving me today

Yep, our Christmas is going to be a few days late this year. Jim and I are used to this since our previous years' jobs required us to be flexible in the holiday celebrations. Onward Rudolph.

New Year, New News

So, let's get this out of the way first. Here's our baby girl.

Hazel at nearly 18 weeks

Apparently she'll mature at a much larger size then we originally thought, which is okay; closer to 75-90 pounds rather than the 40 we were lead to believe she would mature to.

Quilt Camp! I made this top.

Antelope Canyon

I constructed 36 blocks like these eight. I now have to play on the design wall to get them all together.

Scrap Buster for Sure!

Future project: Katie sent me a link this morning about a Project Quilting thingie. It sounds like fun.

Basically, you have a week to make something "quilty" focused around a word/theme and then post for a chance to win prizes and an opportunity to see what others are doing. I have to ask myself if I really need more things to do and I can't help but wonder just how much I need to make more "little" things that are of virtually no use to me around here. Getting a whole quilt done, start to finish, in a week is not where I want to venture into, and making more wallhangings just isn't what I need around here. I think I need to think about this further.