January Finish for ALYOF

Top is done! Yay! Just in time to link up for January's ALYOF goal party.

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Sashing and Cornerstones

I am diligently working on getting my Christmas Dresden quilt top done by the end of January.
Not quite sure how this month got away from me so fast, but there are only two days of January left.
Getting the top done by the end of January is my ALYOF goal so I will be spending the rest of tonight in the sewing room.

The sashing is already sewn together and  I sewed a little bit during my lunch break today and got most of the 9 patches finished.

Tonight I will make the red red centers to cover the holes in the dresdens.

After that all I need to do is sew the rows together.

Lets hope all goes well in the sewing room tonight!

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Project Quilting Week 2 - Missed it by a few hours

The Theme for Week 2 of Project Quilting was Sunrise/Sunset.  

I had grand visions of creating a nice size quilt this week.
I had the pattern I wanted,
picked out my fabrics without any trouble,
and got everything cut out in record time.  

Piecing was going great and everything was on schedule to finish by Saturday night, and then my previously empty week was fill with appointments, family events, and my son's broken collarbone (Bone is mending fine thank goodness).  

At 11:45pm last night I seriously contemplating staying up to finish the quilting and binding, but when I started adding up the hours I knew I would be up till at least 5am and if I did that I wouldn't make it to church in the morning.  So I resigned myself to sleep and missed the deadline by 5 hours.

I still feel like a winner though having this new top finished.

And I am excited to vote for all the other fabulous entries for week 2!

Go Check them out Here!

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Actual First Finish for 2015

I started this quilt at the end of 2014 and put the last quilting stitches and the binding on during the first week of 2015, making this quilt my first finish for the year.  It was made for my new friend Marie.  These are her church T-shirts and she wanted them bordered her church's color, a light green, I dropped it off to her this past Saturday and she loved it.

Now its time to tackle some of my own UFO's.

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Tammy 4 All Seasons Blog Hop

Welcome to another day of Tammy Bags, applique, and cross stitching,

For today's hop I picked both summer patterns to showcase.
I couldn't pass up the Summer theme since it has two of my favorite things:

the beach and the color red.

I fell in love with cross stitching when I was 11.  I was at a youth church activity and one of the leaders gave me a red piece of gingham and some thread.  She told me to make x's in the white squares and gave me a heart pattern to cross stitch.  After that I was hooked and asked my mom, who has been cross stitching as long as I can remember, to get me started on more intricate designs.  

 As a teenager I was lucky enough to take some cross stitch classes from Pat Carson of Designs by Gloria and Pat. I learned a lot of great tips from her, several of those tips are the same that Mdm Samm has already mentioned at SewWeQuilt. A tip I remember the most is to make sure all your stitches on the back go either vertical or diagonal, never horizontal.  It was hard for me at first to concentrate on the direction of my stitches on the back but eventully I got use to making them only vertical or diagonal and over time my backs looked almost as good as the front and the back was less lumpy.

The pinny was fun to make, I choose to do raw edge applique and covered the edges with some embroidery floss. 

Thanks to Mary and Mdm Samm for hosting another fun hop.
Go check out the other hoppers sharing the day with me!

Lovelli Quilts
Quilted Delights (Me)

Cheryl Wilkinson will post to Ipiece2-Mary

Just Because Quilts
Stitchen' My Life Away

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Project Quilting Season 6 - Week 1 - "Trees"

I turned this one inch pile of strips into my entry for the 1st week of Project Quilting Season 6.

The theme this week was "Trees".

I used the Jelly Roll Race method to turn them into the background for my tree silhouette.

My inspiration came from a tree shadow box I saw on etsy that was made out of old magazines.

I wanted my tree to be a winter tree at night. So I choose the blue background and the black silhouette.

This wall hanging measures 26 inches by 39 inches.

And I am naming it "Winter Sleep".

All the other entries can be found at Persimon Dreams.
At 1pm Eastern time you can start voting for your favorites.
To Vote you click the heart in the corner of the image in the linky list.
Voting lasts till Friday.

Go Check everyone out!

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January Goal ALYOF

This quilt is still number one on my UFO list.
It was my goal for October and November last year and I've made small progress on it each month, but this month I am determined to get the top done.  In October I finished sewing most of the dresdens together. In November I glue basted them on the backgrounds.
This month my goal is to add the centers, the sashing, and the borders.

I am linking up here for January's Goals for A Lovely Year of Finishes.

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ALYOF 2014 Final Link up

  My 2014 goals for ALYOF were to finish quilting several quilt tops. Most of the tops had been sitting in the closet for a couple years waiting for their turn at the machine.  I am happy to say I did pretty good until October rolled around and I forgot where my sewing room was from time to time.  No Worries, I'll just move my Oct/Nov goal (didn't even make a Dec Goal) to 2015.

Over all I finished 9 quilts.  I am happy about that and so are some of the new owners.  There is a final Link Party for everyone who completed 6 or more goals for the 2014 ALYOF.  You can see the link party here.  Go check it out and cheer everyone on!

January - Christmas Pinwheel  - Goal  Post - Finish Post
February - Dimestore - Goal Post - Finish Post
March - Wild Thing - Goal Post - Finish Post
April -Floating Pinwheels - Goal Post - Finish Post
May - Slide Show - Goal Post - Finish Post
June - Butterflies -  Goal Post - Finish Post
July - Fat Quarter Stars Quilt - Goal Post - Finish Picture - Blog Post

August - Baby Cakes - Goal Post - Finish Post
September - Reunion Scrappy quilt - Goal Post - Finish Picture - Blog Post

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