A Wild Ride!

The time between Thanksgiving and New Year's always seems crazy, but never more than this year!  My husband started a new job in New Jersey in mid-October - and yes, I live in Massachusetts.  He comes up to visit most weekends, but this is my third time driving down to New Jersey with the kids since Thanksgiving.  I know that many, many families live apart in order to make things work financially or because of the nature of their jobs, or for any number of other reasons.  I always thought, "wow, that must be a challenge."  I was right!  I miss him terribly when we are apart, and I don't want him (or me) to leave when we are together.  That's normal, I guess.  What perhaps isn't so normal is how much I RESENT the traveling!  All I can think of when I'm stuck in traffic (usually somewhere in Connecticut) is that if I can't have my family all together, I at least want to spend the time apart doing something I love - quilting or knitting - not stuck in a car surrounded by other cars.  Ugh!  (OK, pity party is over)

As a result, I've not been as productive in the sewing room as I normally would strive to be during this time of year.  My main project has been Bonnie Hunter's Good Fortune Mystery Quilt.  I'm behind, but not too behind.  Another clue will be released tomorrow while I am still working on last week's clue - and I still haven't finished assembling last YEAR's quilt, but I'm enjoying the process.

Clue 1 done and trimmed

Clue 2 done but NOT trimmed

Clue 3a done and trimmed

Bonus triangles from Clue 3, NOT trimmed

Clue 4 done and trimmed

I've been keeping my finished pieces in a butter cookie tin (much like the HSTs that I shared last month).

I dutifully ate 5 lbs of butter cookies so I could use the tin in this way.  :)

In the meantime, my 16-year-old son has been sharing memes (is that right?  Are these memes?) with me, letting me know that he isn't the only one who doesn't know what to expect when he finds a tin of  butter cookies:

I'll have two days back at home before I get back to work.  I'm hoping I can get completely caught up with this year's mystery, make some more progress assembling last year's mystery, and plan out some baby quilts.  I have two showers in February and one in April - better get cracking!

Good (and bright) Fortune

After spending a wonderful and relaxing few days in New Jersey with my husband's family for Thanksgiving, I'm back home.  I'm proud of myself for feeding the dog and unpacking my suitcase BEFORE sprinting to my sewing room to start my Good Fortune Mystery Quilt!

First, I needed to pull fabric.  I decided on ORANGE and GREEN because I have so much of them and they are my absolute favorite colors, and then YELLOW and PURPLE because those are the two colors I have the least of and because it should make for a bright and cheerful quilt (I hope!).  And lots of scrappy neutrals make my heart sing.  I took this photo to remind me which color corresponds to which color in Bonnie's directions (please, Please, PLEASE let me remember that my green is actually blue in her directions and that my purple is her green!).

Before cutting any fabric, I went into my precut scraps to see what I could make from those.  I had a bunch of the appropriate sized squares,

and I had a bunch of neutral strips the correct width for which I just had to cut yellow to match.

To my absolute delight, I was able to sew together almost 25% of Clue #1 without even cutting into my neutral yardage, and just cutting a couple strips of yellow!

Of course, the next 75% will take much longer since I'll have to iron and cut fabric...

I'm linking up with Oh Scrap and Monday Making as well as Bonnie's Monday Mystery Link Up.

Lapped

I am a slow runner.  I don't run often, but if I run on a track with other runners, I am almost guaranteed to be lapped, to have the same person pass me more than once on my way around the track.

It is the same with quilting, I am afraid.  The new Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt, Good Fortune, starts is just three days, and here I am just now finishing block construction and just now assembling my quilt from LAST year!

Oh well, I have had so much fun doing this one, On Ringo Lake, that I am determined to do Good Fortune as well.  I am driving to New Jersey tomorrow, and won't be back until Sunday, so I'll get a late start and won't have time to finish On Ringo Lake first, but that's OK.  My goal is to do a fabric pull in the morning before I hit the road so I can jump right into sewing when I get back home.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Fly away, Flutterby!

Tonight was the fundraising event where my Flutterby quilt (based on the Jen Kingwell pattern in the Quilt Lovely book) was auctioned off to raise money for Project Horizon, a non-profit organization in Lexington, VA (my old stomping grounds) dedicated to reducing domestic and sexual violence in the area.  I've donated items before for the silent auction and brought in a couple hundred dollars, but this year, they wanted my quilt to be in the live auction.  I was super nervous - was my quilt good enough for the big leagues?

This is what it looked like when it left my house as a flimsy.

One of my friends from my old quilt guild volunteered to quilt it on her long-arm machine.

She also added the binding by machine.

My friend who attended the fundraiser (which is a fabulous dinner and dancing plus silent auction and live auction) videotaped the auctioning of the quilt for me.  I was on pins and needles watching.

Nine hundred and fifty dollars!?!  I'll be honest - I started to cry.  I'm so humbled.  I hope that whoever won the bid loves the quilt and that it brings him/her many years of comfort and warmth.  And, more importantly, I hope that the money it raised helps someone make a new, violence-free start in her life.

The Home Stretch!

Tomorrow starts the last week of school before a nine-day Thanksgiving Break - woo hoo!  I'm doing my best to get my On Ringo Lake quilt done before the release of Bonnie Hunter's new mystery, but I don't know if I'm going to make it; I realized this weekend that I never finished one of the clues, so I'm scrambling to make some flying geese units so I can finish piecing the blocks.  I did get three or four more blocks pieced this weekend, though.

My leaders and enders for the weekend was to sew together the bonus triangles I had laying around from a recent project

and add them to my HST tin.  At some point, I should be able to make something fun from all of these.

I L-O-V-E butter cookies!

I also finished and mailed off five blocks for Carole's Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project.

No finishes to show, except a couple more stockings for my ETSY shop

but I've been thinking a lot about beginnings - five people here at work are having babies this spring!  Five opportunities to make fun little quilts!!

I'm linking up with Oh Scrap and Monday Making.

Dabbling

I  am ADDICTED to making these mini Christmas stocking gift card holders for my ETSY shop.  I love using up little bits of batting and scraps of holiday fabrics.

In between times, I am sewing up some blocks for the Carolina Hurricane Quilts Project coordinated by Carole at From My Carolina Home.  I sent her some blocks back when she was collecting for the California Fire Quilts, so this was a no-brainer for me to get involved again.  I hope you will, too.  The big blocks go together quite quickly, especially since I already have pre-cut scrap squares.

I'm headed to a conference in PA for the next two days, so I will be knitting, not quilting.  I'm hoping to finish a Christmas present while away from home, or at least make significant progress.  I'm only planning to make a few gifts this year; the rest I am trying to buy from local artisans or on ETSY.  Do you have a favorite ETSY shop to buy gifts or a go-to gift that you like to make?  I'm always looking for ideas...

I'm linking up with Monday Making and Oh Scrap!

NOVEMBER!!

In my world (college advising), October is commonly referred to as Suck-tober.  Crass, I know, but whoa, what a crazy, exhausting month!  Today is the deadline for seniors to apply Early Action or Early Decision to most colleges, so tomorrow, things start to slow down to a trot instead of this full-on gallop we've been experiencing all month.  YAY!

To me, that means picking up the guitar again, reading for pleasure (I have a backlog of new-to-me cozy mysteries waiting for me) and SEWING!!  Tonight, in between panicked emails from the kids who didn't listen to me about getting things done early and are just now finalizing essays before submitting applications tonight, I am whipping up a couple of mini Christmas stockings.  They usually sell well in my ETSY shop, and those that don't sell, I use to give gifts to friends and family.  They are the perfect size to hold a gift card, but I've also filled them with candy, lottery tickets, money, any little thing.

When I got online tonight, I found that Bonnie Hunter has announced this year's mystery quilt!  ACK!  I guess I should get back to finishing LAST year's quilt; I had fun working on it last year, and want to do it again this year.  I have 18 more blocks to put together before I can start assembling the quilt.