Life is good!

So not so much a quilting progress post (or at least not solely) but more about progress in general.  Thanks to the support of a dear friend, I finished my first 5K.  I'm a firm member of the run-only-if-something-is-chasing-you category, and even with that I frequently gauge just how large the thing chasing me is before running.  But middle age is a cruel thing, and my middle section is rapidly expanding to take on a general whiskey-barrel shape.  So running and exercise, and cutting down on my beloved carbs and sweets, really has to happen.  My dear friend, whom I haven't seen in over 5 years, told me if I signed up for a 5K she would come run it with me.  As a "real" runner, I'm sure sticking with my snail pace was painful for her, but we had a great time and it was wonderful to see her!  Kid events are also taking over the calendar more and more, and I'm sure it will only get worse as the kids and niblings get older!  Isadora had he...

So there actually have been finishes recently, but I've been terrible about getting pictures.  The pictures have been largely dumped in favor of getting the quilts to where they belong.  The one above went to my Grandma, for her new assisted living facility room.  She was NOT happy about being moved out of her beloved house, but she simply can't live on her own (she's 95), so this was my attempt to help make her new digs a little more homey.  She loved the final quilt, so at least I made her smile for a bit.  It's a pattern called Secret Garden, and is made of a layer cake of Hoffman batiks.  I've had the top in progress forever.  I did the quilting for it on my Elna, and I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.  FMQ is such a learning process, and the only way to learn is to do, but you do end up with a lot of quilts that I wish looked a bit more professional!   The sad looking little guy is another reason not as much has...

I took almost two weeks off for Christmas.  I honestly can't remember the last time I was off that long, and it was blissful.  Crazy busy, but blissful! The biggest task accomplished was the migration of my sewing room.  It's been in a basement bedroom since we built the house.  Marc has always wanted that space for the guest bedroom.  So when we built a new shop this fall, we put in a 12x30 foot loft room in one end.  That's where my long-arm will eventually go, but for now most of my quilting stuff moved there.  My garment sewing/cross-stitch/craft stuff moved to the old (much smaller) guest room, and the guest room moved into the downstairs room.  Which, by the way, looks at least three feet wider than it did when all my sewing supplies were in there.  I'm honestly not sure how it all fit. I did throw away about five garbage bags full of stuff.  Projects that I don't have any interest in completing, mystery synthetic fabric that w...

I feel like I've finally been making some progress, although I'm not sure my list shows it!  I've completed section A of the Moda Building Blocks, and got five or six quilts basted.  I finished the quilting on two of them - my FMQ is certainly not great but I feel like it's coming along!  I didn't actually finish my last Moda project, I ended up taking pictures of it unquilted.  So it's gone into the tops pile for now.  I found out my in-laws are coming for Christmas.  We don't see them often, so it was a bit of a surprise, but I'm happy they'll be here and that my kids will get to spend some more time with them.  They shortened their projected stay to only three or four days, so I don't think I'll have to empty my craft room, which is good!  Recent Completions: WIPS Aviatrix Farmer's Wife Moda Building Blocks PB&J Four Square (Leader/Ender project) Needs Binding Landscape Secret Garden Top Completed, Waiting for...

Does anyone else feel like they can spend just as much time organizing and planning projects as they actually do DOING projects?  Maybe it's just the effort that's going into planning my new sewing room, but I am itching to do more hands-on sewing. I did break out the scrappy Vintage Modern blocks, and realized I'd made a lot more of them than I'd thought.  So I may start working on that in spurts again.  The QAYG blocks may find themselves turned into minis for my new sewing space, as well.   I'm enjoying working on the Moda Building Blocks quilt.  I love the Downtown Abbey fabrics, so it's nice to finally be using them!  Recent Completions: Final Frontier Geometric sewing machine mini (swap project) WIPS Secret Project #4 Aviatrix Farmer's Wife Moda Building Blocks PB&J Four Square (Leader/Ender project) Needs Binding Top Completed, Waiting for Quilting Breezeway Landscape Secret Garden KerBloom Stars Planning  Bla...

Time for a much, much overdue WIP Wednesday... This week I had to entirely empty out my huge fabric cabinets.  We are building a shop on our acreage, and we designed a loft room to go into the top of one end.  It's going to be 12x30, so a good sized space. The idea is that someday I will own a long-arm quilting machine, and that will be its home.  In the meantime, it will still be my primary sewing room.  The current sewing room will covert to the guest room, and the current smaller guest room will be my 'satellite' sewing room.  So I get a ton of room, but that does mean a LOT of thinking and organizing about what will go where.  The loft room is open right now, and I put the cabinets on pallets so the construction company can lift them up with forklifts and get them put into place.  The things are well over six feet tall, and weigh a TON, so this is by far the best way to move them!  It involved 5 adults just to move them the 15 feet to the ...

This was a fun one!  I'd sketched out the design a while ago, and when picking fabric options for the Moda Bakeshop, the center of my 'octagons' seemed to call out for the animals in this line, rather than the pinwheel shapes I'd originally planned.  I love how it turned out! Key to the success of actually constructing the quilt top was to find away to make the half rectangle triangle with the right dimensions, so that it was 2 inches wide and 4 inches tall.  The provided template will work, as well as several rulers.   This one goes together very quickly.  I did simple straight-line quilting, which was both easy to do and emphasizes the outlines of the stretched stars.  Windy day!  I finished this up and had to get the pictures taken. Unfortunately, the wind wasn't really cooperating, but I did like this location.  I'd have a hard time saying which little animal is my favorite, but this guy probably wins. :) Another fun ...