Time Spent Crafting

It feels like I'm getting my mojo back a bit. It could also be that I'm finally starting to fight 10 years of conditioning. Here's the deal, my husband has been working in the restaurant industry for as long as we've been together, 10 years. In that time, we either did the long distance thing and barely saw each other, or were living together but working opposite schedules. So what little time we did have together, I felt this strong urge to at least be near him even if we weren't actively doing something together. Then about eight months ago, my husband broke his hand, he couldn't go back to cooking until it was healed and was out of work for two months. During that time he decided that he wanted to change careers because he actually liked spending time with me and so he spent the next few months trying to find something. Unfortunately that hasn't worked out, but the conditioning of 10 years was still there. So between being pregnant, having lost some of my quilting mojo, and that, it's been really hard for me to tear myself away and spend some alone time in my sewing room.

I also recently celebrated my 30th birthday (Valentine's Day) and on my birthday I always do what I want to do. That included sleeping in, cross-stitching in bed, having my husband cook me German pancakes for brunch, going to the grocery store to grab fruit and some other things I wanted, including a fruit tart, ordering Thai food for dinner, and watching something on Netflix in bed at the end of the day, I also decided to spend time in my craft room. I did and it was quite productive. I finished the top of the braille alphabet quilt.

I also cut fabric and put together one of the three blocks for the November queen bee and got the other two blocks to the trimming down stage.

Not wanting to lose momentum, I've been spending a bit of time each day since then in my craft room and have finished the other two bee blocks.

Made a scrappy improv block for the guild.

And actually got the back of the Michigan quilt put together. I even emailed the long-armer to make sure she was still willing to quilt that beast for me, since it had been almost a year since we started talking about the quilting.

We actually got a snow day today, so my three day weekend became a four day weekend, so I managed to get the memory quilt blocks done for the Bright Modern Baby Quilt and kept working on my leader and ender project.

I realized that I'm woefully behind on my memory quilt blocks and need to make myself a list of blocks I still need to make and then actually find the fabrics I used in my scrap bin or stash. I've got the fabrics laid out for the Braille Alphabet Quilt memory blocks, so I may work on those next.

Stash Bee Blocks

I finished up the second quadrant for the Stash Bee yesterday. I also made an extra component piece and will be sending the queen bee the rest of my cut background fabric.

I feel a little bad that I didn't finish the whole 24" block, but it was putting a massive crimp in my style and blocking me from doing anything else. So it had to go. Two more blocks left to make for November and then I will bid the Stash Bee a fond farewell. I will not be participating next year, because newborn (first one at that, so I expect some serious quilting downtime until I get the hang of things).

Also got some work done on my leader/ender project. Here are a few more blocks (I did not finish these yesterday, but I did work on the project).

Finally, I got the HSTs done for the DCMQG Charity Quilt and am sending those off today as well. I am hoping to get back to the Charming Kate Spain quilt soon, as it's just begging me to play, hanging in all its rainbow-y glory on the design walls. Here are the first two blocks which I finished over the last two weeks:

Snow Day and Sewing Day

Sarah from the Stash Bee organized a sewing day at the Tyson's Library in Virginia on Sunday. I actually got there roughly on time. There were three ladies there from the Stash Bee, including Sarah, and one member from the DCMQG. I spent most of the time laying out the teals/aquas and the purples for the Scrappy Swoon quilt.

I started sewing some of the joining HSTs together. Then I sewed two of the 3x6 panels and some of the 9 patches together. Unfortunately I ran out of time and had to carefully stack the remaining pieces and take copious amounts of pictures so I would remember what went where.

A snow day meant I got to stay home on Monday and sew some more. Worked a bit more on the Scrappy Swoon quilt and managed to sew together all of the panels and 9 patches that I had all the pieces for.

My current leader and ender project is the Checkerboard quilt from Sunday Morning Quilts. I have mixed in some low volume prints along with two different white solids. Here are a few of the 4 patches I have sewn together so far.