Yearly Archives: 2014

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I've LOVED seeing the beautiful work coming out of the do. Good Stitches and Stash Bee quilters for many months. A while back I put in my interest in joining do. Good Stitches and this month they had a spot for me! I've joined the Promise group as a stitcher to make quilts for Threading Hope, an organization helping to provide quilts for children in poverty stricken and war torn countries.

These are my first blocks for the group. Ailish chose the pattern for this month. They went together very quickly and easily. We used this Alternative Method of piecing HSTs.

before stitching to make HSTs
before stitching around edges to make HSTs
finished blocks
finished blocks

November Bee Blocks b

November Bee Blocks two sets

I look forward to seeing the finished quilt. I think it will be lovely. My wheels are also turning on how I could make one of my own with this pattern in another color scheme... I'm kinda feeling a rainbow look.

dogoodstitches logo

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As our Disneyland trip in late October approached I realized that The Boy had a bunch of Disney shirts he could wear from our last trip a year and a half ago, but The Girl (age 1 on our first trip) had outgrown all her Disney clothes. I knew I didn't have time to sew an outfit for each day, but I aspired to a dress and a skirt. (Oops, the skirt didn't get done.) I had previously made a Lazy Susan top for her second birthday in May, so I decided to make a Lazy Susan dress for our trip. I love that this pattern goes together so quickly and easily and I think the flutter sleeves are adorable. I had thought I'd need to layer the dress over a long sleeve shirt for the cool Fall weather, but it was 85 degrees at Disneyland the last week of October!

She had a great time wearing her dress. She even got to show it off to Minnie Mouse.

at disneyland front

at disneyland back

mickey and minnie dress

Pattern by Brownie-Goose.

Linking up to Finish Along 2014 Wrap Up Party. Here's my full list of Q4 goals.

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Do any of you have seemingly infinite quilt projects underway? So many WIPs you can't even make a list? An inability to not start new projects despite the fact that you have a million in progress? Yeah, that's me.

I also have a bunch of new fabric burning a hole in my pocket.

I've decided that I need to focus.

My attention span isn't good enough to just work on one project start to finish, so I'm allowing myself three. (We'll see how long this lasts, eh?) So here it is, my public declaration of the three quilting projects that I'll be working on.

#1 The Little Letters quilts. See, I'm already cheating... that's two quilts right there. But since I'm working on them assembly line style I'm counting them as one project. Weeks ago I pulled fabric for the next many letters. Last night I cut fabric for 16 blocks, G thought N in each color way, and I pieced most of them today. I'm stuck on N. It's hard. I'll be cutting those pieces again. :-/

Little Letters G through N pieces

Little Letters GHIJKL bluegreen

Little Letters GHIJKL brights

Little Letters M and N in pieces

 

#2 My IG Mini Swap quilt. Nothing like a deadline. I'm also super excited about this project that I designed as I went. I made some great progress on it this week to finish my ALYoF November goal of completing the top. I also created the label and prepped it for quilting. I got the recommendation for the Concepts iPad app ($7.99 for pro version) from Urban Quiltworks and installed it to try on some free motion designs before I get to work quilting it. I'm not ready to put the full view out there until my partner receives it, so here's a peek:

Basic Shapes finished top sneak peekBasic Shapes label

 

#3 The yet-to-be-named (yeah, I should get on that*) 2006 Mystery Quilt. It's pretty close to being a finished top. I'm excited about the fun backing fabric I have for it. I'm also excited about giving it as a gift to a friend, perhaps in time for Christmas. Guess I should get on that, huh? *That star block is apparently called Churn Dasher. That's kind of entertaining to me, since my first mystery quilt used the Churn Dash block.

2006 mystery quilt

 

I'm already really wanting to work on other stuff, and not letting myself... that's making finishing one of those three an even more exciting goal... cause then I can replace it with a WIP or new project that's tempting me right now.

What are your best tips for keeping yourself focused on one project or a short list of projects?

Linking up to ALYoF November finishes Party.