Stars and Winter Winds

Things finally calmed down around here enough for me to finish a baby girl quilt top.  The quilt pattern is Candy-Stars from Chrissy Lux.  I love wonky stars and I love using my plethora of scraps, so this quilt is a win-win.  Now if only I could get a decent picture of the thing.  The cold wind was not cooperating.

Nope.

Nope.

Almost...

Not even close

For the Love!

Seriously?

E for Effort

I was starting to lose feeling in my fingers and about to give up, when the wind decided to cooperate for 5 seconds. 

(I hear the Hallelujah Chorus, do you?)  :)

Building Blocks Beginning

I officially started the Building Blocks Quilt Along yesterday.  It was just 3 four-patch blocks.  You don't get much easier than that.  The interest will come with the quilting. 

Leah recommends just using 2 solids for the entire quilt, but I wanted a bit more variety.  My background is Kona Gray, but for the other fabric I pulled all of my blues from my stash.  It will mostly still be solids, but I'll have a stripe and dot or two in there as well. 

While I'm working on this I have 3 baby girl quilts to get done.  They're all due in early March, so I've got a little time to get them together. 

Simplifying

Life got a little too busy during the holidays and I set the Sisters Ten BOM blocks aside.  I was finally able to get the quilt top put together last week during the nights my husband was on call.  (The poor guy had 5 days of 24 hour call, working a total of 112 hours last week- Ouch.)

I'm not quite hard core enough to go outside in the negative wind chill to take a pretty picture, so this is what we're left with for a picture of the quilt top.  I had to go grocery shopping last night, and I thought I had frozen my eye brows off.  It was so cold the latch on the trunk of my car wouldn't work after I had opened it to put in the groceries.  It kept popping open.  Crazy.  I just wasn't willing to brave that type of cold again for a picture. 

Last year I was part of 2 virtual sewing bees and 2 quilt-a-longs, but it was a little more than I could handle.  I committed to all of them before I added on church responsibilities and another child, so this year I've decided to pick just one quilt a-long, and only stay in one of my sewing bees. I'm trying to take my own advice and simplify!

I will continue on with the Wish Sewing Bee Circle of do.Good Stitches, and I've chosen to do Leah Day's Building Blocks Quilt Along, because it works on piecing and quilting.  I've got my fabrics all pulled and ready to start for the quilt along, so I'm excited.  My goal this year with this quilt along is to really master the hand and foot coordination with my pedal as I quilt.  I use my auto speed a ton just because I'm so lousy with the pedal, but it hinders accuracy with intricate designs, so I really do want to conquer this hurdle. 

Other projects

do.Good Stitches- up to date

Christmas quilt - ya, it still hasn't been touched...

Upcoming projects

3 Baby Girl Quilts
Madrid Temple Wholecloth Quilt

Stats for the Week:
New projects - 0
Completed projects - 0
WIP- 3

Linkin' up to WIP Wednesday.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

If you were in the path of this big storm, I hope you fared better than Frosty last night.  The wind and ice were not kind to him.  Stay safe and warm, folks!

Caught Up...Mostly

I finally had time to put together my December blocks for do.Good Stitches.  Gratefully the Cross Quilt Block is straightforward and simple.  She just wanted plain yellow and white, so you'd think that would be easy to come by, but I don't use yellow a whole lot in my quilts, so I had to dig in my scraps to find a solid yellow.

I'm in charge of the January block, so I'm excited to get working on that.  I still need to put together all of my Sister's Modern BOM blocks as well.  I haven't decided who I'm giving the quilt to yet, so I'm not feeling a major push to get it done at this point.

In the Nick of Time

My Skill Builder quilt just was not getting finished.  I wanted it to be done before my parents got here, but that most definitely did not happen.  This is the first time I've ever done a Quilt As You Go quilt, and when you're on a time crunch trying new methods may not be the best way to go.  Attaching all of the blocks is time consuming and a definite skill unto itself.  I researched different methods and in the end liked Leah Day's tutorial the best. 

This quilt was my dad's Christmas gift.  A while back he asked, "Where's my quilt?"  It had never occurred to me that my dad would want one, but I've been working on these Skill Builder blocks all year with my dad in mind (thus the green and blue). 

I had everything except the binding done by Christmas Eve.  Both my parents had to work the day after Christmas, so they were leaving early afternoon on Christmas.  The quilt may not have made it under the tree to be opened, but I was determined to have it done before they left.  After Christmas Breakfast I sat down on the chair and started binding like a crazy lady.  I got it done in record time with an hour to spare before they walked out the door.  Wahoo!

Giving Tree

I don't usually talk about things I do outside of my family, but today I want to share with you a little about what I've been up to this crazy month of December.  A little background:  I'm Relief Society President in my ward.  For those of you that have no idea what I'm talking about, I am over the spiritual and temporal welfare of the 200+ women that are 18 and over in my church congregation (we refer to congregations as wards in the LDS church).

One of my responsibilities during the holidays is to oversee the Giving Tree.  I try to find out what families need help with for Christmas, and then we place tags on the tree for members of the ward to take and get things for these families.  It takes a lot of coordination, because we try to make the giving and receiving as anonymous as possible, but also because in our particular ward we have a lot of needs.  For those of you who are not familiar with the way Mormon congregations work, it's all by geographical boundaries.  You attend the ward where your home fits within the boundaries.  You can literally type your address in on lds.org and it tells you which meetinghouse you would attend.  I can travel anywhere in the world and easily look up where I would go to church.  It's kinda nifty.  Anyway, the boundaries in my particular ward include a section of downtown Columbus, and we happen to have a lot of people who struggle financially and are going through hard times.  A lot of families needed to be on the Giving Tree.  I also wanted to make sure that single parents and widows weren't forgotten about.  This meant the Giving Tree was quite a huge project to manage.

For the last week my house has looked like a Christmas explosion with gifts, stockings and gift cards all over the place.  Last night I emptied my house and we came to the church to make all of the fruit baskets and organize all of the gifts to be distributed.  It was quite a production.  We put it all together in just over an hour, and then sent out people to make deliveries.  After all was said and done we gave out 44 fruit baskets, 46 gift cards, 15 stockings and 18 gifts for children, and 5 turkey dinners.  The cellophane wrapping didn't hold as much fruit as we originally thought it would, so we also had a lot of extra fruit and nuts.  We ended up giving another 20 families the rest of the fruit. 

It was a completely chaotic evening, but it feels so good to have everything done and distributed.  My favorite part of this whole experience has been to witness the generosity and thoughtfulness of so many people.  The Giving Tree wouldn't have been possible without their willingness to give and to serve.  I love the holidays for this very reason.

Now that this particular endeavor is behind me, it's time to do some holiday baking.  :)  I'd say I was going to sleep for 24 hours straight, but since that's not an option I'll settle for baking. 

Catching Up

I'm determined to get everything done by Christmas.  I may go crazy in the process (well, technically speaking my husband would probably argue I've already stepped over that threshold, so maybe I should just embrace it).

Anyway, I was thrilled to get both of my Skill Builder blocks quilted yesterday.  I took very opposite approaches with them.  The first I went for minimalist quilting.  It just felt like less is more with this block:

 The second block I really wanted to play with Echo Shells.  I've never tried quilting around an applique design before, so it was really good practice for me:

 I particularly like the view from the back:

Inside the diamond is my favorite part.  I believe Leah Day affectionately refers to this stitch as the Hairball.  The name fits a little too well.

I have one more Skill Builder block to do before I can put this quilt together.  It's finally starting to come together!