winding the year down

It's Dec. 31 and I wanted to look at what I accomplished this year, look at what's on the wall now, and post some pictures of the family.  First the family photos.

The Ogg family and the Weaver family

The kids in their Christmas PJ's from Meme

We had a wonderful Christmas at my daughter's home in Texas. 

I sit and watch the kids play and play and think about what fun they all have .

The adults too, they all have their hand held pads, or phones, me included, playing all kinds of games and surfing the net and watching the kids, referring some and enjoying each others company.

On to what's on the wall, what I left before going to Texas.  I had finished putting all the rows together   I started putting the border together.  I need to pull fabrics and cut more stripes to do this, plus construct the outside border.  This will be carried over until next year as a UFO.

I looked at the list of 12 projects I wanted to finished this year and seven did not get finished. However, I worked on all but one.  So next year it might be easier to get them finished.  I plan to review the list and make a different posting of plans for next year.  Will post about that later.

In our bee Happy Scrappers, a challenge was made to count all the UFOs in our sewing rooms.  I do need to do that, but I want to also divide the list into blocks sets and kits, as well as quillts I started myself.  More later on that too.

On the Wall

Oh yes, this feels great, I got finished with another set of blocks from our red and white exchange with Apple Crisper's.  I think this is the last swap of this block.  I will only have enough blocks for a twin and if they don't want to do more swaps I'll be making some more.  Next we'll be working on the next block which is a lot easier.


And ... in addition I got the block for Slightly Bias completed for Jan. 

Now... I have two quilts almost completed, so that's my goal now.  I do have one obligation block to do for the Beaumont Guild.  This will be an machine application. Not my strong suit, but there you are, needs to be done.  Hopefully soon I'll be showing finished tops from my UFO list for this year.  The quilting will have to wait for next year, but that's OK.  I will still be able to call this a finish.

Finally back in my sewing room

Yea, kinda hard to get back into the sewing room after the week of working hard to finish deadlines. I had my Fab 4 list to focus on and get started on obligations left to do. First I cut and made a log cabin block for the SB bee exchange. This is for Dec. and it is late , but not by much. I pulled the fabrics to do Jan. which I'll owe next month. I chose blue and white with snowflakes.
Then I worked on the Apple Crisper's red and white exchange. I missed our gathering last month and need to finish these blocks. I cut more material and started another set for Jan. meeting.
While working on all this I found I had only two braids left on the Scrappy Braid quilt so I completed one and will finish the other up soon I hope.

Wow is all I can say!

Well, I've been talking about what I was working on for my groups, now you get to see what

they have been doing for me. Eliska got my name in Slightly Bias bee. I had given her the pink and brown fat quarters and you see what she did. The picture does not do the beautiful quilting justice that she did on this quilt. Just gorgeous.

Happy Scrappers Row quilt project started with my row of Churn Dash blocks, and five people worked on it. I really liked what they did with the fabrics I put in there. I like the addition of the green, it's the perfect accent color.

All the work all year is worth it when you see all the creative quilts everyone has worked on. The two parties where we revealed the quilts for each other were wonderful. This is why I love my groups. Plus you grow so much in the process.

My year long projects complete

This is the front and back of the Slightly Bias project I made for Sharie. The front is made of churn dash blocks and I decided to piece the back in a churn dash since Sharie is know for her pieced backs. It's a small quilt, however, she seemed to like it very much. It had to be completed, quilted bound. I quilted it myself and although I can do that, I don't have a lot of practice with that. It turned out good though, only a few boo boos.

For Happy Scrappers today, this row by row was due. Helen got this one and I put the top row and the bottom row on it. It was hard to show, hence the two pictures. Everyone one loved this quilt and Helen seemed very pleased with what was done. It sure feels good to end these projects. The row by row certainly helped me grow in my sewing and designing. I'm not skilled in design, but try to think what will add to the quilt top and do that. It can be tough sometimes.