Fiber Babble: New Year's Resolutions

New Year's Resolutions

January 14, 2011

It was a very good Christmas. "Visions of Sugar Plums" by Janet Evanovich ♦♦♦◊◊

Huh. Well, I kinda made a new year's resolution. I decided I want to sew for at least 15 minutes a day. I didn't break my resolution until... uh... January 1st.

Why procrastinate? I guess I just got the Fail out of the way early. Now I don't have to dread the day when I realize I've not lived up to my own expectation.

2010's resolution (or was it 2009? I forget) was to use up a bunch of my scraps in quilts. Since probably 80% of any sewing I did last year was making samples for the shop, the whole "use up what I've got" thing didn't fly very far. Fail again.

Wow, that's pretty harsh. And I really don't beat myself up about resolutions. They're just the thing one does on New Year's Day.

Okay, I confess: I was just being a Drama Queen. I'm over it now.

But look! I actually have played with fabric today!!

I not only decided upon a pattern, I drafted it, cut up an old phone book for foundation papers, made templates for the funny-shaped pieces AND cut most of the fabrics for the main part of the design (there will be some scrappy action, too, and those aren't cut yet).

So, this is gonna be the base/background to showcase some thimble-shaped appliqués that we swapped over on the Coming Together to Quilt forum. The original pattern (called "Thimbles", of all things) can be found at FatCat Patterns here.

Another confession: I've had a vague plan about what to do with the appliqués since almost the day I received them in the mail. But today one of the other swappers, Quilton, posted pictures of her finished wallhanging. I don't feel competitive, but all of a sudden I got pretty interested in starting my project.

And, that's all I've got on this for now. No hints, no sneak peeks at the final design. Oh, and no promises when we'll see more of this mysterious project.

But wait! There's more! On the other forum I play in, Quilter's Last Resort, a signature block swap had a sudden opening. Do I need another ready-made UFO? Not hardly. But, hey: It's the new year. I can do anything I want to. Clean slate, right? Those UFOs, WIPs, and PIGs (both in the fabric AND yarn areas) are all so last year.

The deal is to make 16 modified rail fence blocks. Scrappy. White or off-white center. Write stuff in the center. Send to the hostess by February 28. Get swapped blocks back after that.

I've got all of the 'rails' cut for the blocks - woo-hoo! Again, now I just need to sit down and start sewing.

There's also a cute shop sample that I made a week or two ago, but of course I forgot to get a decent picture of it before I took it to town. I'll share that one eventually; it'll need to be taken down from the display for me to teach the class on 22 January. Heh. Stay tuned!

Labels: quilting

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1 Comments:

At 1/16/2011 10:00 AM,

quilton Babbled Back:

May I suggest if you don't get it done before, you take it to retreat and those there can see it and perhaps get inspired. I'm waiting patiently......no pressure from me to get it done.

Thanks for mentioning the blog. I appreciate it.