Splendid Sampler

Like about a million people on Facebook I have decided to join Pat Sloan's year long Splendid Sampler. (I finally started hiding the posts because people were getting crazy with comments and posts)
I have a selection of French General fat eighths I bought several years ago. I added a couple background fabrics to the mix.

 Surprisingly, I have the first two blocks completed!

As an aside, I am very frustrated right now. I had to delete Live Writer from my laptop and now I can't reinstall it.  I am writing this on the blogger app which is NO fun! Limited fonts, no photo options and editing is tough! And I hate that my signature has a white background.

Oh well...things could be worse...
 

The February Project

I have been working on the red quilt and the going is s  l  o  w…

I had originally planned to quilt in a variegated gray and I had even tested the thread on a sample of all the fabrics but when I started quilting the quilt –even just outlining the blocks, I did not like it.  I decided to go with red instead. There is a row with a lot of white so I think I will use the gray there. It is beginning to grow on me but I now wish I had thought to use the mono filament polyester thread.

Grid quilting the blocks took me two days.  The quilt is bulky and heavy.  I was able to keep the quilt rolled while doing that part but quilting the individual blocks is another story.

I pulled out my table and set up my ironing board on the left.  There is lots of turning and adjusting to do so I spend a lot of time getting up and pulling the quilt through the machine.  After a bit, my arms are tired so I have to take a break.  I keep thinking of the riddle, How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time…

In the evenings, I also do my knitting.  I have a couple of projects I am working on but this one is the most exciting:

It is a baby blanket for Lauren and Jeff’s baby! Yay!

The blue is a provisional cast-on and this is what the blanket will look like (I hope!):

I haven’t picked out a quilt pattern yet but I have until July. 
I can’t wait!
Diane

February Project

I have been trying to use what I have, finish what I have started and appreciate what I have. And I have lots of gorgeous fabric and an abundance of tools and supplies!

That being said,  I did complete my January goals, although I did not post about it.  A few years ago while visiting with Mimi we went to a quilt shop in Virginia Beach. A stunning quilt was hanging; unfortunately the shop was out of the pattern. Two weeks later, the pattern showed up in the mail. That is how Mimi was. She knew I loved it and she found the pattern for me.

This is the quilt:

The pattern is Woodland Star.  The fabrics are all batiks. The quilt was about half done when I pulled it out last month-no appliqué was done and only the star points were done. (I guess it was less than half done...)

Of course, I had fabric left over so I even made another top.  I will use it for my Learn to Quilt class:

My February project will be a quilt I started last summer.  We got a line of fabric in at the shop that begged to go home with me.  Then I found this pattern:

And I came up with this:

(Note rare CNY winter sun coming through the window)

I put a border on and as you can see it is a good sized quilt. In fact it's too big to put on my long arm. So I will be using my Bernina to quilt lots of straight lines. It is pin basted and all ready to go!

By the way, I am posting from my IPad. I am not sure how this will look on the blog but this is where my pictures are.

Do you have any goals this month? Let me know and I will cheer you on!