Checking In

What's been happening around here?

As it tends to do each year, my attention turned to quilting over the holidays.  Christmas is stressful.  Between the shopping, the cleaning, the decorating, the cooking, and more cleaning, I tend to get overwhelmed.  So simple, straight seams on well behaved, colorful cotton prints can help me calm down and relax.

I noticed that I had quite a bit of Dolce fabric left from when I made the Bento Box quilt a few years ago.  So I decided to cut up everything that was left into 2.5" squares and use it up on this:

I combined the prints with a tone on tone white to give the eye a place to rest.  The blocks are simple 9 patches that will end up 6" square once they are sewn together.

I messed up when I counted and I ended up with more print blocks than I thought.  When I laid them all out this morning, I had enough blocks for 2 extra rows.  What to do?  Make more white blocks of course!  Luckily I had extra Dolce squares left.  I need 16 more white blocks.  That will have to wait until tomorrow when I can run to the fabric store and get more white.  (I was already planning a trip since the ponte knits are on sale this weekend...)

I still have a few garment projects in the works.  I made a pair of pants for the Princess over the holidays, but she has no desire to model for the blog.  I'm also in the middle of making a top for her.  And I have a wrap dress cut out for me, waiting to be sewn together.  And of course, a stack of Burda magazines with projects earmarked.

I got a new heavy duty sewing machine for Christmas and I'm looking forward to broadening my sewing skills this year.  I want to make things like jeans and coats using heavier fabrics.  I also want to experiment with leather.  And the new machine has adjustable pressure on the presser foot, so I'm hoping lightweight fabrics will be easier to sew as well.

Hopefully this will be an exciting year in sewing!