A Lovely Year of Finishes - January

I hopped on board A Lovely Year of Finishes again this year.  I loved having that extra push to finish up projects.  This month I chose to finish up a triangle dinosaur quilt that I had been putting off forever.  I had the fabrics sitting in a pile since the summer and just never got around it it.  I chopped them up finally at the end of December.

January Goal

So at the beginning of the month I sat down and finished up this quilt top and even a second top just because... I mean I had the fabrics already and why not make two when it is so easy as this one.  A good back up for anther baby.  (Which has already been claimed)

I quilted this with simple straight lines, just a presser foot width from the seam lines.  It adds such a fun pattern to the quilt.

It is bound with a fun stripe that complements the colors on the front.

I pulled a fun red chevron for the back.

The quilting looks pretty cool on it, too.  it is kinda busy, but that's ok with me.

Tumbling Dinosaurs
31" x  36"
Cotton Fabrics
Pellon 80/20 blend batting

January... gone so fast

Wow, it is hard to believe that January is already almost over.  I feel like new years was just yesterday!  This month is just flying by.

I haven't done as much sewing this month as I had planned, but I hope to catch up as soon as I feel up to it.

I spent new years this year with a couple friends.  It was very low key, which is totally fine with me.  Sewing and talking... my kind of celebration.  I worked on my Tula Pink blocks from her book 100 Modern Quilt Blocks.

Kayce was learning how to use her little machine so she played with scraps until she felt comfortable and then dove into some I-spy blocks making a burp cloth for Orion.

 I seriously just love this picture of her looking through the throat space on my machine.

And because I have a new years tradition, my 2014 toes in the salt water and sand pic... that water so very cold on my toes.  It was dark because I couldn't get to the little beach earlier in the day so I had to make it lighter, not the best quality, but that is ok.  

I am looking forward to 2014.  So many great things are planned for this year.  Lets hope everything all falls into place to reach my goals.  

Project Quilting Challenge 1 - Strings

It't that time again, time for another season of Project Quilting!  I have been looking forward to this fo so long!!

The first challenge for season 5 is String Along With Me.  I love the look of string quilts and even made a string pillowcase as a challenge project last year.

I had a stack of fabrics sitting on my cut space from a bee block so I decided to stick with that color pallet and jumped right in.  I cut 1.5" and 2" strips off of 15 different fabrics and went to town randomly sewing them together, making sure only not to put two of the same fabrics next to each other.  I chopped up my sewn strips and then made a layout that was a little different than the traditional string quilt.

The quilt was then quilted with a checkered pattern, following the diagonals of the blocks, except the diamond which was just outlined.  It is then bound with a fun grey stripe (that is actually a Christmas print, but I love it!)

The backing a a fun green and blue polka-dot from my stash.  I am making a goal to make all my PQ challenge projects from my stash.

Modern Strings
52" x 52"
Cotton batting
mixture of prints from my stash.
Made in Lanoka Harbor, NJ