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.