Jumping from project to project.

Since making concentrated progress on many different projects at retreat, it has been hard to come back to reality and have no sewing time for several days. I made up for it this weekend, but struggled to know where to focus. So I jumped around!

First off, I sewed over half of the rows of this quilt on my design wall.

The empty corners are due to operator error. I miscalculated when I cut the setting and corner triangles and had to redo them. Haven't cut the new corners yet. I had purchased plenty of the fabric for them, just in case. Good thing!
Who knows, maybe next blog post will have a finished quilt top that isn't a mini! Wouldn't that be a shocker?

I made another row of the little foundation pieced blocks for this Kim Diehl mini.

It has been tricky getting the center points to meet when I sew together the two halves of the foundation for each block. 
Even when I mark the centers with pins and match them, I don't always get a good connection, but I think I am getting the hang of it. I have unpicked and resewn a couple of them, but I am letting the others go. This will get three more rows and then a couple of borders. 
The 2 1/2" square ruler gives you an idea of the block size.


It has probably been a couple of years since Sandi sent me a little Valentine Applique kit. She is trying to convert me to the dark side, I think. :)

I got started on it, and then other things got in the way. When digging for projects to take to retreat, I unearthed this and set it out where I could work on it upon my return. All of the applique is finished, and I added some little flowers and words. Can't decide if I will embellish it more, and then whether to quilt it for a wall hanging, or make a pillow. Even though applique is not my thing, it was fun to put this together.

Saturday evening I started quilted the little snowman block from Karen.

Hoping to have this finished before all of the snowman pillows, mats, and wall hangings get put away at the end of the month. He is so cute.

Finally I got out this wool project that is all prepped for the blanket stitching, but didn't do any stitching on it. This was the one handwork project I took with me to retreat, in case I wanted to relax with it in the evening. But we usually just made it back to our room at night in time to get ready for bed, do a little reading, and crash.

I first saw this on Julie's blog and had to order it. I have mentioned before that I live next door to a bee garden, and DD#2 has always had a thing for bees--also, I live in "The Beehive State". It was a no brainer.

The other project that saw progress is my final mini quilt swap for 2017--yes, I said 2017. I know it is 2018!
Julie and I had a swap lined up for last November. But things got in our way and we agreed to put it off. We have done that a couple of times, but are hoping to actually have our projects completed and swapped in the not-too-distant future.
I have been quilting my quilt for her, and have had a surprising discovery with a new-to-me thread, thanks to Joyce, a blog reader. I will share all about it when this swap is completed.
Until next time, 
Janet O.