Hello, everyone, and welcome to 2023! While I’m sort of sad to see 2022 in the rearview mirror, I’m also excited about what the new year will bring. I know that it’s become sort of a thing to be ready for the year to be over by about November, and discussions about the end of the year almost always start with, “I’m so over this year,” but I’ve been taking a different stance the last couple of years. No year is going to be all rainbows and unicorns, so I’ve been making a conscious effort to live in the present. I’ve always believed that in order to get to the rainbows, you have to first go through the rain, and living in the past has never really been my thing.
So, again, Happy New Year! I would do a year in review, but quilt-wise, there isn”t a lot to review. I think I had a couple of finishes, but nothing to write home about, really. I did get these super cute Christmas Stockings made for my grandkids before the holiday.
My grandson is all about science lately, so his stocking is naturally science themed. And my granddaughter loves all the animals and anything purple, so I think hers is self explanatory. 😉 These were made using the Designs By JuJu in-the-hoop quilted stocking design. It may be too late for 2022, but it’s never too late for next year! And yes, I’m already thinking about next year. I got this stocking done for my husband a couple of days after Christmas. I had everything cut and ready to go, but I just couldn’t get back to my machine before Christmas Day.
These stockings are fully lined, and they are tons of fun to make. Each one took about an hour to make, and that’s mostly because I just was not paying a lot of attention to the machine, as I was doing other things at the time. I highly recommend them!
For 2023, I am giving American Patchwork and Quilting’s UFO challenge another try. I’ve made lists the last couple of years of the UFOs I need to complete, and that’s about as far as I ever get. You can learn about it on the AllPeopleQuilt.com website. Download the form, make your list of 12 projects you want to work on this year, and each month a number is drawn that corresponds to a project on your list. For January, the number is 3, which for me is my yellow, gray and black quilt. This is a photo I took of it during construction; all of the blocks were done, but the quilt top hadn’t been finished yet.
I’m fairly certain I started this quilt in 2012, but I could be wrong. Fortunately, the top is completely done, and has been for a while. All I need to do now is sandwich it and get it quilted and bound. It’s a fairly large quilt – the original blocks were supposed to be 12″ square, but my sizes were sort of all over the map. So I bordered the blocks with white sashing and cut them all to the same size. I then ran a 1″ sashing between the blocks. It made the quilt bigger than it was originally intended to be, but I don’t mind too much. I ordered some backing fabric from Fat Quarter Shop a while back, and I’m going to finish this one with an end to end quilting design.
One of my biggest challenges to finishing quilts is getting them sandwiched. I just do not have enough room to be effective, but I have an idea for a design wall, which require some rework of my studio. I’ve already started working on it, and I’ll let you know how it goes. I watched a couple of videos yesterday on YouTube about using a design wall to sandwich quilts, so once I get everything set up, I’ll let you know how it goes.
Texas Quilt Girl 