It's been a long time

I haven't been on a blog or flickr for 6 or 7 months.  Life got a little out of control and I just wasn't able to get online for these things for so long.  It's been crazy.   I haven't touched my poor sewing machine in forever, it probably forgets how to work.

Making progress, and a win!

Progress continues!  Binding is ready for the hourglass quilt I just quilted.

I'm not a lucky person, I can count on my fingers the number times I've won giveaways.  The other day was my lucky day!  I won Aurofil thread on the Sew Fantastic blog.  I LOVE Aurifil.

Started work on my April MiniQT Swap quilt.  This month is ticker tape quilts.  I hope my partner will like it.  Here is just a tiny glimpse.

WIP Wednesday

It's hard to believe but I finished quilting and binding the pinwheel quilt I was working on.  (Pictures later this week, just haven't had the time.)  While I was on this "get them done kick" I decided to grab another one and get to quilting.  I basted it together at my mom's on Saturday because I don't have a large enough floor space to do it.  I'm about 1/2 done.  Hopefully it'll be totally complete by the weekend.  That will leave one more quilt to go, three years of quilt retreat projects almost complete!

Apparently my dog is a big fan, he plopped right down on it when I laid it out just to see how the quilting was working out.

March/April S.T.U.D. mini quilt received

After taking a year off from swapping I decided I missed doing it and the fun packages that come in the mail.  I jumped back into the STUD (swap til you drop) swap on Flickr.  Last week I got this beautiful mini quilt in the mail from CASharp.  The packaging was beautiful, so I got really excited from the start.

And the quilt surely was more then I expected.  So beautiful!

And she included so many goodies along with the quilt, I feel so spoiled. 

 (sadly blogger wont upload the picture for some reason)

I have her quilt all done except the binding.  I plan to finish that up this week and get it sent off. I do love swapping, glad to be back at it.

I'm trying to machine quilt. 

I'm not sure it's very successful, but I must keep trying because my WIP need finished...

Of course the desire to finish things didn't keep me from dreaming about new projects.  Black and white is on my brain.  I didn't only dream I shopped.

And a little color never hurt anyone either.

I feel a rainbow quilt of some type is in my future.

And I'm sewing

I decided it was probably not a wise idea to start a fresh project.  I really wanted to, but in the end I opted to work on some of my WIP's.  I participated in two I Spy swaps last year, and just never did anything with them.  I am happy to say one little boy's I Spy top is done.  The other is well on it's way.  As soon as they are done I will cut into my new pretty fabrics.  Not that there aren't other projects to be finished first.

This time I mean it...

I am feeling creative again.  Honestly I have not used my sewing machine in months.  Now that the boys are back in school I have time on my hands and the desire to sew.  My mom, sister, and I went to Joann Fabrics to get some fabric because the first project on my list is fabric shopping bags.  I didn't have any fabric that I really wanted to use for this project.  I usually don't have much luck finding fabric I like there, but this time I found more then what I actually needed. 

I'm also working on a sewing area.  To this point I have just been using the kitchen table to sew, and honestly it's a real pain because I constantly have to put it away to use the table.  Now with the boys in school, I am taking over a corner of the playroom to use as a sewing area.  It's not a beautiful sewing room like many people have, but at least it's an area where I can leave my sewing stuff set up. 

I'm going to go get started on a project now.