February finishes

Ok, I swear that yesterday was February 1st! Where did the month go and how did it slip by so fast? I didn't get to spend quite as much time as I would have liked to this month working on projects but I did manage to complete all but one of my finishes. The only one that didn't make it was my Valentine wall-hanging and no worries on that one now that I have nearly a year to get that one done!

All righty, on to the good stuff. I'm all caught up on my Saturday Sampler blocks. Yay! I had six kits in all to do and here they are. I'm a big fan of triangles on a roll and they came in handy with these blocks. By the time I was ready to assemble the blocks, I almost didn't care if my points were matching up anymore, I just wanted to get them done. The last kit turned out to be 36" strips that needed to pieced together which was a huge respite after completing the other ones. The strip will eventually be appliqued with leaves and acorns.

Last but not least are my two final heirloom blocks. Now that all of my blocks are done, I can't wait to get the quilt assembled!

Doing the happy dance!

After years of putting up with a phone line that would randomly go dead for no reason at all, sometimes for days at a time, and static so terrible that I could hardly hear the person on the other end (especially annoying because I'm hearing impaired), the phone service guy finally located the source of the problem and fixed it today. Now I don't have to worry whether or not the DSL line is going to be working long enough for me to be able to log on and post on here!

I can't tell you how annoying this problem has been, and it didn't help that the phone was always working the previous times a technician was called out. All I can say is that I'm so glad the issue has been resolved and I can now make phone calls again without worrying that I won't be able to hear the person on the other end because the static will start up again and drown him or her out.

February projects

Oops, here it is the 7th already and I just realized that despite taking pictures of my projects at the beginning of the month, I haven't posted them yet. The Rocky Mountain Sewing Expo is this weekend and I've been there both Friday and Saturday. I'll write more about that later in a separate post.

OK! The projects that I want to get finished this month! First, a little background on this one. The Great American Quilt Factory is a fabulous quilt shop here in Denver that does a Saturday Sampler program every year. Basically, the idea is that you collect a kit to make a block the first Saturday of each month. You take the completed block to the meeting the following month and you get the next month's block kit for free and on it goes. If you miss the meeting, you have to buy the kit, make the block, take it to the next meeting and you are back on track. When I did Saturday Sampler previously, I had perfect attendance. This time, not so much! For various reasons, I've missed three months in a row now, so I have those basic kits plus the the enhancement block kits (that are always paid for) to construct. Eventually, those blocks will be assembled to create this enhanced quilt called Pine Lodge:

Here are my kits, six blocks total to complete:

Next up are my final two blocks for my Heirloom Sampler quilt. I am meeting with my instructor at the very end of this month to start assembling the quilt top and I can't wait to see it completed.

Last, but not least is my Valentine wall hanging that I started during the Valentine Sewing Party. I spent the whole day after the party trying to come up with pieced panels that I liked to go on the top and bottom of this block and nearly drove myself nuts in the process. I learned some really good lessons that day, one being to just step away and go do something else for a while. If I had done that, I think I would have saved myself a lot of frustration when it just wasn't looking like I wanted it to. The other lesson I learned was not to hack up a fat quarter if that's all you have of that fabric! The store has none of that fabric left and I'll have to pick apart the blocks that didn't work to salvage the pieces that I need for the fabric combination that I eventually settled on. Of course, only after the fact, did I remember a tip that I had read a while back that if your fabric is limited, copy it on a color printer and use the printed paper to make block mock-ups to decide on your final design.