Theme-A-Licous Update

It's time for a Theme-A-Licious update! Theme-A-Licous is hosted by Heather at It's Geek to Me. February was Fangirl February. Let's revisit what Fangirl February is about:

Send a Valentine to your favorite designer...or at least work on his or her designs for the month!

Our sampler guild is having a stitch a long so I chose to work on Ann Dale by Shakespeare's Peddler. It's a BIG project and I need to keep going forward on this one.

See where I started the month here.

I also worked a bit on Long May She Wave by Ellen Chester of With My Needle (make sure you check out Ellen's new teaching project at the top of this link - it's gorgeous). This project is sweet. I'm not quick with the speciality stitches and stitching the white on the similarly colored background is a challenge for me (that means not a lot of progress). I love every stitch though! I'm especially looking forward to the completed project as I know I'll get a lot of enjoyment out of it.

See where I started the month here.

March is March Madness. That Heather is CrAzY. Look what March Madness is about:

Stitch or knit on something different every day...it's madness...of the funnest possible kind.

This is going to be a tough one for me. I generally stitch pretty faithfully on a single project. So in March, I'm going to try and stitch a little on a few projects. It might not be much but I'll try it. It's been a while since I've stitched on AotH (I put in maybe 10 stitches in it in Feb) so I'm hoping to pick that up and I'll keep working on the two from this month. Trust me, three projects is going to be a challenge! Does anyone have any good rotation tips?

Happy Monday!

Today I have a little finish to share with you. This is a project from Prairie Women's Sewing Circle Club. If you've clicked the link this project is from Journey 2 and you will notice this was a 20 block project and mine is 9. I assembled this while I was at retreat last month. Each little block (4"?) took an hour to paper piece. That's if I got it right the first time - which I didn't. It took me some time to warm up as it's been a while. I chose to use all Jo Morton fabrics. Anyway, 9 seemed to be a good size. This will be a nice little quilt for a table top - I'll put it out around Memorial Day and leave it up until after the 4th of July.

The Quilting Gathering (paper pieced) from Prairie Women's Sewing Circle

Finished size 17"x17"

Fabrics: Jo Morton (various lines FROM STASH!)

I received a very unexpected surprise in the mail last week. Heather from It's Geek to Me decided to have an unannounced give away and pulled a name from her commenters. I won! If you're not a follower of Heather's blog - you should be! She is an extremely talented stitcher and knitter and quite funny. She is also the host of Theme-A-Licious which is a year of fun monthly themes geared toward stitching and knitting that can be adapted for any hobby/craft/art. The thread winders have been put into immediate use with my threads for Ann Dale. They'd otherwise be quite a mess! The chart is gorgeous and the notepad will be great for little notes to my DH. Thank you Heather - I love it all!

I hope to be back this week with a Theme-A-Licious update for February!

I Have to WORK at This!

I have mentioned before that sewing and quilting isn't intuitive for me. I *really* have to work at it. Proof is in the photo below. I'm sewing my rows together and think "I need to make sure those points match up when I sew the rows together. That's honestly all I thought about and I was quite pleased at how well they lined up. The points from the flower, while they don't match up ARE supposed to align. Too bad I didn't notice until I sewed several rows together. They were all out of alignment.

Sooo....here's where it ended up!

It seems like many quilters have that natural 1/4" seam and blocks just line up for them like they should. I'm not that girl!

I have an addition to my sewing room to show you. I finally framed the print that I purchased from Heather Ross from one of her online studio sales. She autographed it for me which I wasn't expecting. You can see the reflection of a valentine mini quilt in the glass of the print.

We've had a lot of sunny days this winter and I've been able to get a couple of pics of the pups to show you. Kenzie is hard to photograph because she generally shows up as a dark blob. She's tiny - about 10 pounds. She looks like she needed a good brushing too.

And poor Cody, he's afraid of the red light on the camera so getting a good picture of him is rare. He loves the sun though!

For those of you who watch Downton Abbey - Did Lord Grantham do what I think he did?

Hope your stitches this week are happy ones!

It's Been A While...

It's been a while since I've posted. Work is crazy. I'm coming home exhausted. This past week I didn't really pick up a needle of any kind which is very unusual. I'm now back to trying to at least stitch for 30 minutes during the week. It soothes me and I need it.

I've started another Block of the Month. I don't need another one but I love the red and thought it would be a good summer quilt. Air conditioning can be so chilly. This quilt is comprised of big blocks. I didn't crop out my Farmers Wife blocks so you could get an idea of the scale. Some of the seams were a bit bulky on this so I'll probably start pressing them open.

My Jardin January Theme-A-Licious progress on Ann Dale. We're supposed to post twice a month but I'm only going to do it once. Honestly, I don't have enough progress generally to post twice in a month.

Amber at a Little Bit Biased hosted a scrap giveaway and I won! I've already been sorting through it and have pulled some fabrics that I think will work well with my Farmers Wife blocks. It's been fun going back through her blog and revisiting the projects that resulted in the scraps she sent me. Thank you Amber!

Amber is not only a talented quilter but is also a talented designer. In the box of scraps she also sent me some of her patterns!

Last weekend, I spent at Camp Blanding at a retreat. Most of the people there were quilters. There were a few rug hookers thrown in. I always have a great time when I go. Here is a picture of our Florida sunset that I captured after dinner. It was a crisp evening (we've since turned the a/c back on) and the wind had died down so the lake was calm.

The sunset and the moon.

I turned 50 a couple of weeks ago. Being 50 doesn't bother me but I've done a lot of thinking about how quickly time seems to be passing. I'm really working on enjoying the present instead of looking towards the weekend. It's harder than it sounds! Right now, I'm enjoying the present watching Downton Abbey and putting a few stitches into Ann Dale! Wishing you all happy stitches!