What's Up?

I admire those who blog every day.  There is one that I follow (http://karensquilting.com/blog/) that I use as personal inspiration.  She does beautiful hand and machine work  (mostly quilting), keeps lovely gardens and cooks delicious looking and sounding food.  She posts daily with her progress on thread-based and home-based projects and I find her very motivating.  I do some sort of needlework almost every day, and the  competitive side of me thinks that if she can get so much done, so can I.

So, this is what I've been doing (thread-wise) since I last posted in August.

I really like knitting socks, and was starting to feel guilty that all but two pairs that I knit were for me.  So, DH, DD and MIL all got socks for Christmas this year. Oh, and there was another pair for me, too.  They are the pink/purple stripey socks that are my "Monster" socks using left overs from other socks.  I still have lots of left overs, so there will be more "Monsters" in the future.

In my quest to have a decorative table runner for each month of the year, I finally made one for October.  It is a pattern from a Row By Row a few years ago from Bits n Pieces Quilt Shop (http://www.bnpquilts.com/).  It's machine appliqued and quilted.

The blocks in this quilt were from a star block exchange in my quilt guild.  The idea is that you chose two main colors and an accent and whether you wanted 6" or 12" stars.  Every month one person in a group made a star in your colors, put it in your container and passed it to the next in line the following month.  We did this for two consecutive years.  The first year I noticed that one member made a block for herself in her colors every time she made a block for another member, so that's what I did the second year, too.  I had 20 blocks at the end and put them together in this quilt I've called Constellation.  I just machine stitched the binding to it yesterday and will complete the hand stitching to it this week.  This wasn't on my radar to finish this soon, but our guild is having a show this spring and they would like to have a display of the competed projects from the exchange.  The quilt finishes about 66" x 80". 

This little crib quilt was made from left overs that I picked up as a bag of scraps in one of our guild's UFO auctions.  One day when I needed some mindless sewing, I put together the center (see http://mairsmusings.blogspot.com/2016/02/oops-i-started-new-quilt.html) and set it aside. In the effort of trying to reduce my UFO list, I completed it.  It's put away in case I need a baby gift.

This beauty is my guild's raffle quilt for the year.  Because I thought it was important for guild members to be involved in making as well as selling tickets for this fund raiser, I was in charge of the committee.  Members were given either a kit for the chain blocks, or a piece of the blue and asked to make a star block of their choice.  The committee arrange the blocks, I assembled the quilt top and another member of the committee did the long arm quilting.  I think the quilt is gorgeous.  It will fit a queen sized bed.  If you want more information about this, let me know.  The winner will be drawn in May.

I've also completed a small shawl made from hand-spun fibers a friend gave me (she's clearing out her stash of yarn in preparation for a move cross-country) and am working on an applique border of another UFO that's been sitting for far too long.  The triangle quilt (called Flower Up) will probably be completed by the end of January.  That's the plan, anyway.

That catches me up on what I've been working on for the past 4 months or so.  It looks like a lot more than it feels.

There's a lot of projects I'm looking forward to working on once the Constellation and Flower Up are done.  I think next in the queue are a Fisherman's knit sweater I just got the yarn for and a cat block quilt that is another old UFO.  Keep an eye out for progress on those (but I make no promises on how soon.)