Life is good!

2018 is off to a running start - I have a feeling it will just get faster as the kids get older! I did finally get a couple of things finished - my PB&J four patch being one of the primary.  I make a lot of quilts with no specific destination in mind, but this one was always meant to go into the guest room.  I finished the quilting on Social Ladder! I did feather shapes in the diamonds - it was harder to go in one direction than in the other, but it was good practice. Since the colors in this quilt were so vibrant, I could not see using one color for the whole quilt.  I ended up using different colors of thread for each colorway.  All the color changes were between passes, so it was pretty easy to manage and I'm definitely glad I decided to go that route.  Now I just have one more quilt on the binding pile.  I've been continuing to work on Crystal Gems.  I have a bunch cut, but need to get a few more shapes cut.  I nee...

I know I've had several quilts listed on my "Planning" section of the WIP list for some time.  To reiterate (for my own piece of mind), here they are. Baby Quilt for Heather (Rail Fence stars?) Sparklers Abacus Triple Barn Star - for Bev Aviatrix - stalled, need to get moving on this one!  Making Modern - Rainbow quilt Downton Abbey economy blocks quilt  However, I've got a number of other ones that I also want to do.  So even though it's a ridiculous number, I'm going to try and get them all down on paper, and get a grip on what I'm actually going to be working on this year.  I'm going to lay off the swaps this year, so hopefully I'll have time to make a significant dent in this list.   Rail Fence Stars So - starting from the top of the WIP list - the baby quilt for Heather is definitely number one.  Baby is due in Feb/March, so I need to get cracking!  I pulled out the jelly roll last night, and it's a quick project  ...

My biggest finishes of the end of 2017 were undoubtedly the memory t-shirt quilts.  A wonderful family in our parish lost their dad to cystic fibrosis several years ago.  K asked me to make quilts for their three kids out of his t-shirts in October.  I basically dropped all of my other projects and started working on these. I didn't share a ton, and I'm not putting them on Instagram.  But not many IRL acquaintances read this, so I feel a little better about sharing them here.  They just seem like really personal things to share in my community. I designed each of them myself; they were based off of various pictures and inspiration from Pinterest and Instagram, but I didn't use a pattern from anywhere.  K picked out which t-shirts needed to go in which quilt, so I based the designs largely from that.  They were the first t-shirt quilts I've made.  The steam press is an absolute must; it made putting the stabilizer on SO much quicker and easie...

Recent Finishes PB&J four patch F at Quarter quick quilt - Black and White batiks Mom's quilt - basted Christmas Swap Piecing  Quilter's Patch - BOM from FQS.  Finished six(?) blocks Crystal Gems - just 10 minutes project  QAD Flight Effects mini   Angela Walters BOM - three blocks finished Needs Binding Making Modern - Blues Anna Maria Horner Little Fan Dance  Top Completed, Waiting for Quilting Every Which Way - ready to load  Social Ladder   Moda Building Blocks Frond butterfly quilt Loominous Kool mini by Libs Elliott  Applique mini - AMH Hoop mini x 2 Planning  Baby Quilt for Heather (Rail Fence stars?) Sparklers Abacus Triple Barn Star - for Bev Aviatrix - stalled, need to get moving on this one!  Making Modern - Rainbow quilt Downton Abbey economy blocks quilt  UFO's Craftsy QAYG Fabulous Flowers Blossoms Farmer's Wife - should move indoors for the smaller projects... Batik HST - quilting partially don...

As I expected, I didn't get as much done over break as I would have liked, but I did make a decent amount of progress! I finished piecing Modern Blues, and decided since it was done and pressed, and I didn't want to iron it again later (seriously, had I considered the amount of ironing involved in quilting before I started, I might never have picked up the hobby...) I just went ahead and loaded in onto the long-arm.  I knew I wanted to do something pretty simple, and modern.  The background fabric I used didn't lend itself to dense quilting.  I had some variegated thread what was light blue, dark blue and grey, so that was a perfect fit.  I did wavy lines across the quilt, and used a template to add a circle somewhere on each bar.  It was a quick finish, and I love how it turned out!  Now it gets added to the binding pile... Speaking of the binding pile, I did make progress on it!  I quilted mom's quilt, and bound it, and bound the PB...