Project Quilting 15.1 - Birdhouse Postcard

A new season of Project Quilting!  This is my fourth year of participating.  The challenge:  a quilt inspired by bird houses.  

These challenges are so much fun.  I never know where they'll take me.  My first thought was to piece together a mug rug.  I even had the design in my head.  But as I hit the sewing room, I discarded that in favor of an appliqued postcard.  I dug through my scraps until the right color combo came along.  It seemed too plain, so I fussy cut some leaves and flowers.  

My prior postcards have had square set binding.  I decided to try mitered corners on this one.  Would you look at that?  They came out nearly perfect.  I wish my normal-sized quilts came out so square!  (Although I'm not showing you the back - the corners are not so pretty.)  

I love it!

Sharing with:
Persimon Dreams - Project Quilting 15.1
My Quilt Infatuation - Needle and Thread Thursday

A Short Stay

Our two guinea pig foster boys from Dakin didn't stay long.  They were just getting getting into the swing of things around the house.  Lots of wheeking.  Not a lot of begging.  They had strange names:  Boov and Oh! (yes, including the exclamation point).  Boov hid most of the time but was a good boy when picked up and snuggled.  Oh! was very excitable, made most of the noise of the two.  He had no fear and loved running laps.

Playing with Rick-Rack

I'm working on a couple of projects right now, including a new baby quilt.  I'm doing curves again!  This will be a variation on drunken path - it will look like rick-rack.  I'm working with green, yellow and blue.  

So far it looks like a mess!  I'm cutting the squares for now - I haven't added the curves yet.  The colors look different up on the wall than they did bundled up on the table.  I think there needs to be more of a division between the colors.  Well, it's up where I can see it during the day; I can mull over it while at work.  It will be interesting to see how this progresses.

Finishes for 2023

This was not a big year for quilting.  The majority of my finishes were done in the first several weeks of the year for Project Quilting.

Watership Down post cards, mixer cover, smartphone carrier
Dresden pillow, pink wavy pillow, bowl cozies

I Like Thursday: Winding Down 2023

December has been enjoyable, with lots of likes to brighten my month!  I met up with three of my friends to swap goodies and stories.  I also met up with my hiking buddy for a hike around Tully Lake.  The best part - being introduced to the fun of skipping stones on the ice.  I had no photos or videos of our experience, but check this one out.  The sound the stones make were really cool!

The family cookie party!  So good to see aunts, uncles and cousins.  Making the gingerbread houses is a hoot.  So many different designs.  The one in the upper left makes me laugh - the roof has two big bites and the gingerbread man is missing both his head and a leg!

Blogiversary #13

Lucky thirteen!  Goodness, where does the time go?  It was a light year - I wrote about half the number of posts compared to past years.  Fingers crossed that's just a blip. 

One of the reason there weren't many posts:  we only had one pair of guinea pigs to write about all year.  But be reassured - there will be piggy posts soon!

Holly Sweatshirt

Last year I had promised my mother an embellished sweatshirt.  I bought a couple of sweatshirts but both were too big.  Mom found a sweatshirt that fit her, so I appliqued leaves on it.  Of the extra sweatshirts, I made a wonky Dresden design for one sweatshirt.  The other was a little smaller and I wondered all year what I wanted to do with it.  It seemed a shame to just get rid of it. 

 

Yoga Mat Experiment

My yoga mat has been a series of experiments, from the design, through the assembly and then onto using it.  I have finished putting it together.  Yay!  I am extremely pleased to have gotten this far, because I really wasn't sure if the plans I had in my head were going to work.  

The backstory:  I have an old pink yoga mat looks disgusting no matter how I've tried to clean it.  I've even thrown it into the washing machine a few times - nothing works.  I also am not fond of sitting on the rubberized mat.  At some point I bought a microfiber towel to use at home.  It has no padding which is not a problem on the rug at home.  However, it lacks the grippiness I need for downward dog.  I mostly solved that problem with couple of pieces of rubbery shelf liner.  Unfortunately it is a shockingly effective thread magnet so it always looks dirty, too.  At least it's easy to toss in the washer.

 

 

There had to be something better.  Hmm... what if created a quilt?  It would be washable, would look cool, would be washable (and come out looking clean).  I could sew in the shelf liner where I needed some more grip.  How hard could that be?

Ha.