First and Last #6 Q4 FAL

This is my first finish for 2014. 

 It is also the 6th and last finish I will get done for the Fourth Quarter of the 2013 Finish Along.

The link to add fourth quarter finishes closes tomorrow at midnight, but I highly doubt I will get another finish done off my Q4 List.  Tonight I will be working on another quilt for a guild mate and then later I will be finishing up my entry for the Kona Solid Blog Hop.

Other than the border, this quilt is made from all Half Square Triangles. 

I quilted everywhere but the insides of the green pinwheels.
Wasn't sure what to put in there so I decided to put nothing in there.  :)

I love cute Christmas prints.  Particularly at the end of the Christmas season when they are super cheap.
But sometimes I don't know what to cut them into.  So I save some of them for quilt backs.  It is hard to see, but these are cute little Santa's and a added some green starry fabric to make the backing big enough.

Letting the sun show off the quilting.

The quit isn't too large, but perfect size for the back of a couch or the end of a bed.

These are the other five I completed from my Q4 List.

On January 9th I'll post my new Finish-A-Long list for Q1 of 2014.

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Quilt as you Go Table Runner and Kits

This is a small table runner I finished up last fall but never got around to blogging about.

It was a quilt as you go pattern and came as a kit from Connecting Threads.

This one was fun and quick to put together. I did it in one evening.

I like to order fabric and thread from Connecting Threads and from time to time when my shopping cart is close to free shipping I throw in a kit to bump me just over the limit. 

As I was making goals for the new year, ~~ Goals which ended up being somewhat vague - better chances for success if I leave them open to interpretation ~~  I listed "start on some of those kits I keep buying".

I have a total of 8 unopened quilt kits sitting on the shelf in my sewing room and 2 in progress.

Two table runners, 1 wall hanging and 5 quilts. 

These are the only two not from Connecting Threads.
One is from Fig Tree Quilts, the other I won in a blog giveaway.

These are the two in progress.  Again from connecting threads

   I'll be listing these two on my Quarter 1 Finish Along list for 2014. And, if I get these done I will well be on my wait to completing my new year's goal.  :) 

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Happy 2014!

In 2013 I finished 16 quilts, one table runner, and a plethora of smaller goodies for my friends and family.

This first collage is a recap of all the quilts.

 This next one is of all the smaller non quilted items I made throughout the year.

It is fun to see everything I created grouped into these collages.
Some months I felt so busy with school and sewing for other people that felt like I didn't have time to work on some of my own things, but these pictures prove otherwise.  It was a great year for crafting!

I have big plans for 2014 in the sewing room: 

Use more of my Stash
Finish up more of my UFO's 

Start on some of those Kits I keep buying

And of course start a couple new projects in between.

~Happy New Year~

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Last Finish for 2013

I wanted to get one more finish in for 2013. So I worked on this little quilt late into the evening.

This is my Jacks Schnibbles quilt.  It only took me 2 hours to quilt the whole thing.

It is fairly small, it measures about 45 x 60

That gives me 5 finishes so far off my FAL 4Q list.
Link up for the Finish Along starts tomorrow and goes till the 8th.

So Technically I can work on more finishes for the quarter. But as of now I have 5 completed.

Happy New YEAR!!

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Celtic Solstice - Still on Step 2

Yep, still on step two, but I am making some progress.  I got all my white and yellow squares marked, and have various steps completed for step two.  I knew the king size would slow me down a little but not this much, but to be fair, I do have some really good excuses for being little behind on the mystery.

First off, when step two came out and after all the Christmas parties were over I had to study for a final exam for my Microeconomics class. I aced that with a 96 and got an A in the class, and I am sitting pretty with a 4.0 GPA over all! Yehaw!

For those who don't know I started back to college about a year and half ago.

I'll finish this coming May with my Bachelors degree.

When step three came out I was packed and driving so I could take a ride on this: The Carnival Dream.

When Step 4 came out I was somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

The kids said all they wanted for Christmas was a cruise, so Santa brought them one a week early.
We spent the week walking on beautiful beaches

Snorkeling in the blue water...

And exploring the islands of  Nassua, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten.

Can you believe I did not even miss my sewing machine?

After the cruise we spent a little time in Daytona Beach, Florida. We got home in time to relax for a day before heading out to visit relatives for Christmas.  The wee bit of sewing time I did squeeze in was reserved for my Starry Night Quilt. I really wanted that one done by the end of the year.

So December was a busy a month which didn't leave much time for Mystery sewing.
And those are my excuses, and I'm sticking to them.  ;)

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Starry Night Complete - 4th Finish 2013 FAL

I've had quite a busy December and didn't get as much sewing done as I'd like (I'll give more info about my December adventures on Monday), but I did get another project knocked off my 2013 FAL list.  I finished binding My Starry Night Quilt late last night.  Got it done just in time for Christmas next year. 

  

I went down to the beach today to visit with family so I decided to bring my newly finished quilt along for a photo shoot.  No fancy quilting on this one, just some meandering and some continuous curves.
This quilt is for me and will be used till it wears out.  

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Pretty Pouches for Christmas Presents

Merry Christmas!
I can finally show off the little creations I made for my friends and family.

First up, two jewelry pouches.

I really like these jewelry pouches. Hopefully my two young friends in MN do as well.

I can't gift an empty pouch, so I added a couple necklaces and a pair of earrings for both of them. 

For my friend in TN, I made a pencil pouch. I used this free tutorial.

I like the look of scrappy batiks. I makes me think that this pouch is perfect for an artist.

 I even made the ends scrappy.

For the stitching on the top I used a heavy weight variegated thread. It think it helps add to the scrappiness.

I also sent her three ear bud pouches.  One for her and her two daughters.

I am very proud of these three.  They are the best ear bud pouches I have made.
The actually turned out as circles!  The other ones I have made turned out as wonky weird ovals.
They still ended up with a home though, my daughter is the savior of pouches gone bad.

And of course, some hand knitted dishcloths to give away.
Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

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Gamecock Quilt

 If you live in South Carolina you are either a Clemson Tiger fan or a Carolina Gamecock fan.

I particularly don't see the point in rooting for a chicken when everyone knows that tigers eat chickens.

That being said, one of my guild mates wanted me to quilt her Gamecock quilt for her.  She is giving it to one of her relatives for Christmas.  I finished it a couple weeks ago and gave it to her at our December guild meeting.  She did a great job with the piecing.  She even fussy cut the row of Gamecock logos so there is a chicken... er I mean Gamecock centered in each square.  

I quilted some overall freehand footballs for her mixed with some double swirls.




She did request that I put one tiger paw in the quit for her. I was happy to oblige.
She obviously knows Tigers trump chickens.

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Celtic Solstice - Link Party #2

Here are my pieces for step 2 cut out and ready for sewing.  I spent most of the weekend attending Christmas parties and finishing up some holiday gift sewing - I'll post those photos after Christmas - so the sewing part of this step is still on the to "do list".  

Check out the progress from everyone else working on the mystery at the Monday link up.

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Celtic Solstice - Link Party #1

I did pretty good tackling step one of the Celtic Solstice mystery quilt this weekend.

I sewed all my orange triangle squares together and 20 of my white ones.

And got half the blue on the remaining white triangles.

220 more seams to go and I'll be done with step 1.

Yep, I am doing the king size version!

To see how everyone else is doing check out the link party on Bonnie Hunter's blog.

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Starting Celtic Solstice Mystery

Usually when Bonnie posts her mystery quilts I sit back and watch as each step is posted. Then when the big reveal is posted I wished I had played along.  So this year I am doing just that.  This will be the first of her mysteries where I follow the steps as they are posted.  This afternoon I took a break from my regularly scheduled quilting projects to cut out all the pieces for step one. I am going to tackle the king size version!

Now i'm off to the sewing machine....

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3rd Finish for Q4 FAL

I was working on my Starry Night Quilt in hopes of having it ready for Christmas, but I had some cat interference and then I ran out of white quilting thread.  So what is a girl to do when the closest shop that sells white Guterman thread is 30 miles away?  ....

She gets out her yellow and pink threads and quilts up a different project on her Fourth Quarter Finish Along list.  

This is my Schnibbles Leap Year quilt.

I made it when I was playing along with Another Year of Schnibbles.

It was cold at the park today, but the sun was nice and bright.

My daughter's artistic view of how quilts should be displayed.  :)

I really like this yellow fabric, but as I started quilting it I made a mental note to myself to watch out for fabrics that have something "imposed" on them instead of it being part of the print. 

 I'm not sure what this white overlay stuff is, I usually see it on white on white fabrics, and I have been good about avoiding those but I didn't think to look for it on colored fabrics. So when I saw this yellow in the discount bin I didn't even think about it being like those white on white fabrics that my machine hates so much.   When my needle hits it a glob of white stuff head on it jerks slightly, makes a big hole, and gets me off my groove, which makes my next few stitches out of whack.

And sometimes it will make the machine skip stitches.

What ever that white stuff is, it is too thick in places and my needle doesn't like it at all.

Sometimes, it will just flat out break the thread as the needle goes down.

The fabric is pretty and feels nice to the touch, it just doesn't make for fun quilting.

This must be Sheen's favorite spot.

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November FNSI

When I signed up for "Friday Night Sew In" I commented that I was going to sew the night away.
What I really did was "press" the night away.
Each stack below has 10 blades in it.  That makes a total of 400 blades that needed be be turned and pressed.

Who knew turning and pressing 400 wedges would take most of the night.
All these blades will end up making two quilts, one for me and one to give away.  

I did want to get some actual sewing done for FNSI so I stayed up long enough to sew one full Dresden plate together. It was nice to be working on this Christmas quilt and the one I posted yesterday.  I have spent most of my time quilting for others these past couple weeks so it was fun work on a little something of my own.  

Click here to see what every one else worked on last night for FNSI, (scroll down for the link ups).

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Christmas Top Done

After fiddling with different layouts for my Half Square Triangle strips, I finally came up with this layout.

The top is made from nine big star blocks, but when they all got sewn together a whole new pattern emerged. Perhaps I can do some quilting to emphasis the stars.  

Tonight for Friday Night Sew In, I am going to tackle my Dresden blades.  I have quite a few left to press before I can even start sewing them all together.

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