A Year in Review

26 quilts this year. Not bad. Five more than last year, 11 more than 2012. It helps that a lot of them were started/discarded in previous years! 12 of them were my A Year of Lovely Finishes goals - that's right, I hit my goal every.single.month.

Alexander's / Tammy's Running

Denise's Running / Lori's Running

A Princess Picnic / Tennessee Waltz / Second Star to the Right

Christmas Cardinals / Catching Fire{flies} / Summer Drinks

Spin Cycle / Gigi's Memories / Cinderella

Christmas Charming Stars / Christmas Tree Skirt / Central Park Sudoku

Vera Bradley / Pretty in Pink / Chunky Log Cabin

Four Patch Frenzy / Skorca! / Cat Tails

Flirt Marks the Spot / Road to Oklahoma

Owl Always Love You / Goodnight Monkey

There's also been some table runners, pillowcases, wall hangings, and other little things. And a new website - big thing! And a new kid - big thing! And seven half marathons! Man, I did a lot this year. No wonder I'm tired all the time.

I've got plenty planned for the new year - Instagram swaps, scrappy stash busting, t-shirt quilts, UFOs, pattern testing for Jennie, a couple half marathons with the goal of a sub-2 hour...sleeping. Occasionally.

WiP - BoMs

Ahhh. Now that Christmas is over, I settled in for some block of the month work. It's nice to just catch up on projects instead of having a deadline!

The big one was Ripples and Reflections - and I do mean big. This step involved 60 new pieces, and pulling together a bunch of previous elements into nine 22" square blocks. It took FIVE HOURS. But they do look freaking amazing.

And while I was doing big, I decided to start and finish my Disney mini swap top as my final {sniff sniff} NewFO. This one is 20" square, and not at all a color scheme I would pick on purpose...but I think it suits my partner.

Then I finished the second pocket panel for my Bonnie & Camille Weekender. It's been delayed for a while because I wasn't feeling up to working with the fabrics, but I'm cleaning up the sewing room and the bag of scraps needed to be dealt with. So it's on its way to Jennie!

And my second-to-last-ish set of churn dashes! {I need eight more for a 7x8 layout.} I'm still raiding from the "large floral that can't be defined as one color" bin. Although that blue one could probably go in the blue bin. I think the last few will come from the stripes and dots bin, although I need to lay out everything and see which values I need.

I've also been thinking about the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for next year. I think I'm going to do Jack's Chain, which has been on my bucket list for a while. Like the churn dash, it's only four 9-patches a month. And no HSTs!

And then lastly, I've been put together parts of Five Spot as a leader/ender. I laid it out to see what I need to add, color-wise and block-wise. {More brights. More four-patches. No more stripes.} Baby is due in January, so finishing it up is my next priority.

So I'm going to get back to that, because checking on more top off the list before January 1 would be nice!

For more BoM work, check out What a Hoot! More NewFos at Cat Patches! And the Rainbow Scrap Challenge at So Scrappy!

Alexander's T-Shirt Quilt - Finished!

One last finish for the year! This was a semi-last-minute t-shirt quilt order that I was able to fit in for a local family. It's always nice to do these, because I am beyond terrified every time I mail off a t-shirt quilt. It's not the kind of thing you can replace if the postal service loses it!

Anyway, this is Alexander's quilt. You can tell he's an Air Force brat, because there's several different bases represented, and he cheers for a non-local football team. {If you can see the weird-ish splotches on the top of the Browns' shirts, that's because I Photoshopped out his last name.}

The blocks are cut at either 12" or 10"-then-framed. Even when using the back of the shirt, I couldn't bump some of them over 10" - but yet, others couldn't be cut down. The size of the shirts made it harder to center designs, but I think it all worked out in the end.

A couple of elements I was asked to include - some baby bibs, which I appliqued over a block and into the sashing.

The mom asked for subtle sashing in boy colors, so I went with very light blue and green dots. And then Superman borders.

And finally, she asked for a plain blue backing, but also gave me his baby blanket from the hospital. Since the quilt is twin size, I knew I would need more than a double-length of fabric, so I pieced in the blanket and it worked perfectly!

Quilting is loose loops.

82x96"

WiP - Santa's Sweatshop

Ah, Christmas. The season of sewing. I actually did pretty well this year - I finished most of my tops a while ago, quilted a lot in advance, and only took on one last-minute t-shirt quilt order. That left me sitting relaxed three days before Christmas, catching up on the emails and blog posts. And plenty of time left for fun sewing! So what have I been sewing for everyone else for Christmas?

Charming Cardinals, for my father- and step-mother-in-law.

Gigi's Quilt, for my husband's grandmother.

A Princess Picnic, for my niece.

Alexander's T-shirt Quilt, which will be blogged...soon. It was a local t-shirt quilt order and handed off just in time for his mother to wrap it.

And then my own boys will each get a pillowcase - Minnie for the Little Man and airplanes for the Dude. The Dude is also getting a minky neck warmer, because scarves aren't cool. And by not cool, he means "it's not cool that I keep getting the scarf caught in my coat zipper."

And now that I finished all this for everyone, Santa best be bringing me some fabric store gift cards!

See what the rest of Santa's elves are up to at Porch Swing Quilts!