It's completed ;-)

Well I am checking in to say Happy Holidays to all and a Happy New Year.
I managed to complete Tyler's quilt tonight. Tomorrow is 1/2 day of school/work and then a mad dash to get organized, packed and a good night's sleep. We head to MI Saturday morning bright and early since it will be a 9 1/2 to ??? hour drive dependant on traffic and weather. Pray for no snow till we arrive safely please.
The payoff is great...Holiday will be spent with ALL 3 of my children, their significant others AND my first grandchild CALEB who is almost 10 months old! If I am really lucky I will witness Caleb's first steps since he has been trying to figure it out for a few months so who knows I might just get lucky.
Caleb will fly in with mommy and daddy from Denver and then my middle child will fly in from NY city. Anyway
Here are some pics of the baby quilt I somehow managed to complete this week. What a great feeling and relief. ;-) The chair will wait till I have time possibly in the spring. I want to see if mommy wants trains or martians as the theme for Tyler's coordinating "time out" chair. ;-)

Day two.......

Okay so got home from long day of work..you know how much fun schools can be at this time of year..ha ha....just like a full moon......
but anyway here is day two of the baby quilt...deadline approaching ;-)
But What fun!!!!
Can you believe it is almost Christmas!!

Crunchtime!

So the countdown is here for holiday stuff! Weather has been screwy, I have so much to do yet I took some time to enjoy some mindless but fun quilting today. I'm shooting to complete a baby quilt for my newest great-nephew as a holiday surprise. I also will need to paint a chair to match it since that is what I did for his older sister, Quilt and matching timeout chair ;-) The chair will have to wait till after the holiday. Of course when I made his sister's quilt I had NO idea how to quilt so his quilt should be much nicer ;-)
So here is his quilt top so far, only half completed.

And this is what his sister's looked like. (Notice it was a panel with simple border sewn on.)

Just been plugging away.

So it's Sunday...have you ever noticed how quickly the weekend tends to go?
I did a lot of putzing this weekend, working on too many projects going at once but did finally get my lap quilt done so Bill and I both have one for curling up in front of the fire. We only had one lap quilt so now we each have our own! Oh well now off to clean my sewing machine, want to keep it in tip top shape if possible.

Committed

Okay so I have finally committed to my design for the challenge and we'll see what happens from here. Have worked all morning on the silk challenge (Can't show you since it is a challenge and not due till January so top secret from here on ;-) Thankfully it seems my original design will work so that makes me feel much calmer.
Now a few other items I must work on before I can complete this top to start the quilting and final work. Sooooooooooo back to the sewing machine for me! It's a nice day...hope you are enjoying it!

Snow day????

Well we had one of our famous VA snow days??? About 1-2 inches but you know the roads of VA are definitely not like the roads in MI! So NO school and I got to try to catch up... I got as much done on my projects as I could but of course with about 3 projects going at once, you know what happens...lol and sadly none were my silk challenge. The good news is I have my Christmas obligations just about completed for the guild party next Tues. AND tomorrow is another day. ;-)

I seemed blocked..or lazy?

Well thank goodness for the blog, "my blog"! It's funny a couple years ago I first tried blogging in an in-service class at work. I found it too time consuming to try to keep up and now I am using one as a necessity to keep me on goal. It's a goal I've set for myself so I have a strong desire to want to stay focused but we know how hard it is for women or at least most of us to take time for ourselves? I don't think women were raised during my era to think it was okay to put ourselves or our dreams first? Funny one can go from being a daughter to a wife or/and career, then sometimes a mom, or maybe like me a teacher and single mom for 20 years and you tend to be pulled every which way making it even harder to take time to shoot for your dreams or goals. Heck who even had time to think we had dreams or to be honest my dream at the time was to do a good job raising my kids. Well I've been there, done that and now have some very bad habits formed and sometimes when I find myself overwhelmed I shut down and just plain relax. ;-) I wonder how other quilters break a slump or force themselves to move forward if you feel stuck? I have been neglecting my quilting lately for many reasons? One is just the everyday shit that happens day to day in what we call life ;-) then of course there is my job, it's a busy time of year doing grades, preparing for the annual art displays and just day to day teaching. Then there was the annual drive up north for family Thanksgiving which was wonderful yet is so tiring so we're still playing catchup need energy ;-) (it gets much harder on us as we get older each year, the drive seems so long) still, I remember to be very thankful for my health and family and the opportunity to gather. Then there is the Christmas holiday approaching so one has many things to prepare for. I'm looking forward to the drive back to MI since all 3 of my children AND my grandson Caleb will travel in and gather with all of the family.

Okay so now back to the quilting....I was stuck I have possibly too many projects going at once lol so maybe let that slow me down or dead stop me? not really sure that is the reason ;-) but anyway here you can see a few of my projects laying around...Thankfully today I kicked myself into gear and have completed some more work on my silk challenge.....cross your fingers for me it turns out as I hope? I am learning it is fun to try to design free style but oh so many unforeseen problems lol....especially if you are a new quilter or seamstress as I am.