Feb Wrap-Up & March Goal Post

February Accomplishments:

Complete Finishes:  This was a great month! Two fantastic quilts, and two minis that were long-time UFOs.

"Jovial Trees"

"The Snooty Sisters" - UFO finish!

"Koo Koo Puff" - UFO finish!

"Fancy Me A Rainbow"

[Still needs a photo-op, although I confess that I'm not positive yet if I'm going to submit it to a magazine first. It turned out really fantastic with the quilting!]

Flimsy Finishes:

Baekjul Boolgul - Which was actually a NewFO all from stash for this month as well! More later on this. It's the motto of our Taekwondo dojang, meaning "indomitable spirit," and I started this because I needed a hand-work meditation project to calm my worries during the cancer diagnosis workup process. Nothing as awful as the wait for news each time, eh???  

NETY pull-out:
(This is how I begin to incorporate Never Even Touched Yet items on my monster list of long-ago purchases into my work cycles)

Star Crazy - which is now in the 2nd-Sunday slot of my BOM rotation.

and - 

Woodland Stars Winter Fun - a Connecting Threads kit from mid-2012. It's washed, ironed, cut out and boxed with careful notes about all the changes I want to make. This will probably come out next December or January for actual sewing.

Community Sewing:

So, for reasons completely non-religious, I despise the whole 50 Shades of Crap thing. In response to a friend's challenge to do something constructive about that, I committed to making a quilt for the Cinderella House in Colorado Springs. It's a place of refuge for girls and women rescued from human trafficking. This project is coming from stash. There wasn't enough of these fabrics to make a quilt center larger than baby size from these blocks, so my thoughts right now are to frame one half in white and the other in a nicely-playing-along gray (or other color) before bordering everything with a pink hibiscus print I have that would look great with these.

March Directions:

(Please note: I work best with open-ended guiding matrices that direct my work in a variety of projects as I move things forward, with something marked as the priority work. Lists with items meant to be checked off as finished in a finite period of time stifle me. So don't look at this as something intended to have everything absolutely completed in a month. That would be amazingly stressful!)

Quilting for the finish: "Fireflies in the Meadow" -  This is my chosen project for ALYF.

I'm really jazzed to try the glow-in-the-dark thread that I got for the quilting on this. It's pin-basted, ready to go. 







UFO work: I'd love to get a couple more of my McKenna Ryan Sea Breeze minis from 2011 finished up.
"Twinkletoes" and "The Nerdles," I'm thinking.

"Lori & Aliyah" - Still have to dive into the intensity of this one. Waiting on some confirmations from the customer.

Community Service:

Get the Cinderella House blocks made into a flimsy. And find a real name for it.


Piecing: Woohoo!!!!!!  It's all about the 2015 Hobble Creek Retreat!!!!!  I am SO JAZZED about this! Two years ago I went to Emily Herrick's bring-your-own-project retreat, and I had the best time. Met some fantastic people who I'm very much looking forward to seeing again. I feel like a kid waiting for Prom to get here.  :D

I'm going to take more projects than I'll probably get to, but I'm using this as an opportunity to work on things I wouldn't normally pull into the current work load, but that call to me.  My own "Boomerang" (Emily's pattern, even - I hope she likes it), "Leaded Glass," "Stepping Stones," and "Top Secret." Maybe I'll throw in the Chubby Chicks that need applique stitching just to make sure I don't run out of work!

Pieces are all made, just need final assembly

Yep, this may have something to do with an upcoming family wedding.  :)

This was washed, ironed, and kitted in November, I think. Ready to start sewing.

Something like half of these blocks were made in 2009 or 2010. 'Bout time I make the rest!

This was a summer 2013 NewFO. The chick bodies are all fused, waiting for blanket stitching.

Evening Handwork Station: Continue pushing block 1 of "Fiesta Mexico" along, taking breaks from it for binding work on Fireflies. Also, I STILL need to make labels for "25th, Baby!," "Kelly's Joseph Smith 2," "A Laurel Burch Christmas," "Patriots in Petticoats," and guide label making for Heather's dragon quilt and Marissa's community service quilt. And now "Jovial" and "Fancy Me a Rainbow" as well! 

BOMs:
Carry on the once-weekly attention to the projects on the Roll. Continue the FMQ on Kelly's; do another set or two for "Star Crazy"; finish button-hole stitching on the interior blocks for "Garden Friends"; and finish the mini quilt for block 1 of "Wind in the Whiskers" and trace out block 2's pieces.

NETY Pull-Out:
Eyeing "Dove in the Window"